The Oklahoma City Thunder keep finding ways to make cap space history, and their latest move pushed the league into a first-of-its-kind financial moment.
Sunday’s three-team trade sent wing Lu Dort to the Atlanta Hawks, with the Dallas Mavericks also involved. The Thunder got back multiple future second-round picks. More importantly, they got under the second apron.
And that meant something bigger than just OKC’s books.
According to cap expert Yossi Gozlan, there are now zero teams projected to be in the second apron for the upcoming season. That’s never happened since the rule was implemented. Gozlan posted on X that the Nuggets could still slip into it if they re-sign Peyton Watson, but he expects Denver to find a way under too.
The second apron was designed to punish the biggest spenders by limiting roster-building flexibility. For an entire league to avoid it? That’s a quiet shift in how front offices are operating.
Oklahoma City has been leading that trend. Before shipping out Dort, they already moved Isaiah Joe to the Detroit Pistons and sent Aaron Wiggins to Atlanta earlier this offseason. Each deal chipped away at the payroll. The Dort trade was the final piece to slide under the threshold.
The Thunder can afford to lose guys like Dort, Joe and Wiggins because they’ve built absurd depth over the last couple years. Ajay Mitchell and Jared McCain emerged last season as legit rotation players. That gave the front office cover to make moves other teams couldn’t — cutting salary without cutting into the product on the floor.
Still, Dort had been around longer than almost anyone else on the roster. He was a fixture in the locker room, a guy who’d been there through the rebuild and the rise. His teammates are going to feel that absence, even if the cap sheet won’t.
For the league as a whole, this sets up a weird kind of arms race in reverse. Nobody wants to be the team sitting alone in the second apron. And for one season at least, that’s exactly where every team will be — nowhere near it.
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