I don’t want to trigger any bad feelings for Thunder fans, but it’s going to be hard to do a team preview without mentioning the loss of Kevin Durant.

On the plus side, they pulled off a huge draft-day steal, trading the disgruntled Serge Ibaka to Orlando for Victor Oladipo, Ersan Ilyasova and pick 11 in the draft (which turned out to be Domantas Sabonis).

On the other plus side, this dramatically increases the value of Russell Westbrook and Victor Oladipo, who are ideally suited as running mates in the open court. They’re set to do some damage without the pressure of trying to secure a top seed in the West.

Player Movement

Notable Ins	Notable Outs
Domantas Sabonis NBA Draft Ersan Ilyasova Orlando Magic Joffrey Lauvergne Denver Nuggets Ronnie Price Phoenix Suns Victor Oladipo Orlando Magic	Kevin Durant Golden State Warriors Randy Foye Brooklyn Nets Serge Ibaka Orlando Magic Dion Waiters Miami Heat

Oklahoma City Thunder Depth Chart

Point Guard	Shooting Guard	Small Forward	Power Forward	Center
Russell Westbrook Cameron Payne Ronnie Price	Victor Oladipo Anthony Morrow	Andre Roberson Kyle Singler Josh Huestis	Ersan Ilyasova Joffrey Lauvergne Domantas Sabonis Nick Collison	Steven Adams Enes Kanter Mitch McGary

Rotation Player Projections

POS	PLAYER	USG	MPG	PTS	REB	AST	STL	BLK	3PM	FG%	FT%	TO
PG	Russell Westbrook	35	36	27.2	8.2	12.1	2.1	0.3	1.5	44.9	81.2	5
SG	Victor Oladipo	27	34	19.4	4.9	4.7	1.6	0.8	1.7	44.2	83	2.6
C	Steven Adams	15	28	10.6	7.8	1.1	0.6	1.3	0	61.3	58.2	1.5
C	Enes Kanter	23.4	28	16.9	10.8	0.5	0.4	0.5	0.1	57	79.7	1.9
SF	Andre Roberson	11	26	6.7	4.2	1	0.9	0.7	0.7	49.6	61.1	0.7
PF	Ersan Ilyasova	18.2	24	9.6	6.5	0.6	0.7	0.4	0.9	42.2	71.1	0.6
PF	Joffrey Lauvergne	19	16	7	4.5	0.8	0.2	0.3	0.2	51.3	89.9	0.8
PG	Cameron Payne	20.4	16	6.6	2	2.5	0.8	0.1	0.8	41	79.2	1
SF	Kyle Singler	11.9	16	3.8	2.3	0.4	0.4	0.1	0.4	38.9	65.9	0.6
SG	Anthony Morrow	17	16	6.6	1.1	0.5	0.4	0.1	1.4	40.8	74.4	0.4

Position Battles

Starting Power Forward

Ersan Ilyasova, Enes Kanter and Joffrey Lauvergne will be fighting for minutes at Power Forward, and while Kanter is the better fantasy player, I think Ilyasova will start. Outside shooting is something this team desperately needs to allow the driving lanes to be somewhat open for Westbrook and Oladipo to do their thing, and Ersan helps spread the floor. I don’t expect Ersan to have much of an impact outside of deep leagues thought.

Rise in Value

Russell Westbrook

This section is usually reserved for players who are set to take a huge jump in value, but Russell is projected to be the second best fantasy basketball player this season (first if you’re punting TO), so I feel that’s worth mentioning. The team is now his, and while the coaching staff has indicated that Russell will be looking to distribute more often, but I’m not buying it. He’s too big of a competitor to allow that to happen.

Victor Oladipo

Anybody who owned Oladipo in fantasy last season knew how misused he was in Orlando, and he has finally woken up from the nightmare that was Scott Skiles and the Orlando Magic. He’s set for big minutes, and big fantasy production, so expect good things from Oladipo this season.

Steven Adams

No Ibaka means 30 fewer minutes to compete for, and one less quality player to share time with. It’s now just Adams and Kanter who will be logging huge big man minutes, and this bodes well for both Kanter and Adams, but especially Adams. Expect close to a double-double a night.

Other Player Summaries

Enes Kanter

Kanter gets a lot of slack for not being a great defender, but that doesn’t matter a whole lot in fantasy basketball. He’s a walking double-double, who shoots 50% from the field and 80% from the line. If you can ignore his lack of AST, STL and BLK counting stats he makes for an excellent punt-blocks big man.

Domantas Sabonis Dynasty Stash

While I like Sabonis’ game, he’s not going to be getting a lot of minutes this season to be fantasy relevant (unless there’s an injury to Kanter or Adams). He’s a dynasty stash target thought.

Cameron Payne Deep League

It looks like we might be getting a good look at Payne this season with the pressure of trying to lock in high playoff seed out of the mind of Thunder players. We saw glimpses of the ability to hit a three, get a steal and hand out some assists, but I think he’ll only get enough minutes to be deep league relevant this season.