Steven Adams is the last real remnant (Andre Roberson is technically still around, but I’m considering him deceased until he proves otherwise) of the glorious “big three” days of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Their big three of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and Hasheem Thabeet saw a lot of playoff success, but no championships. If you want to go back to their previous big three, before the replaced James Harden with Thabeet, well, obviously no one’s still around from back then. Cole Aldrich is totally a free agent though, just saying.
In only a few more years, we’re going to be thinking about Adams and all of a sudden be like “damn, he’s played with the Thunder for a decade now”. This description will be far enough in the past that I won’t remember either, and I’ll be pleasantly surprised to see the mututal decade-long loyalty between player and franchise.
At the very least, he’s definitely going to be on the Thunder for the rest of this year and probably most of next, because NO ONE is taking on his ginormous contract until it’s an “expiring”. I don’t know what that means, but I’ve gleaned over the years that huge, awful contracts magically transmute into desirable ones once you get into the final year of them.