A massive reason why the Oklahoma City Thunder has cracked open a contention window this season is their durability.
Outside of the occasional small injury, the Thunder have been relatively healthy all season long. This has caused OKC to enter several contests with a fully healthy or nearly healthy 18-player roster.
This predicament has forced Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault to have healthy scratches. Fourth-year forward Aleksej Pokusevski has been a popular choice by OKC to not suit up.
Pokusevski is averaging career lows across the board, only appearing in seven games this season for a total of 43 minutes. He last played on Dec. 11.
In the final year of his rookie deal, Pokusevski’s time with OKC is likely near an end as he’ll enter restricted free agency this offseason. When asked why the seven-footer remains an inactive, Daigneault said it’s about suiting up the best 15 players against their opponents.
“He’s healthy. You can only dress 15 guys and we’ve had kinda an uncommon run of health here. We’ve really had a healthy team for much of the season, which is hard to do,” Daigneault said during Monday’s practice. “Some of that is luck and some of that is the work these guys have put in. Some combination of the two.
“You have to make three guys inactive and we usually just put out the 15 in uniform that we think are most relevant for that game that night.”
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— The Daniel Bell© (@BasketballGuruD) January 23, 2024
It sounds like barring a long list of injuries, the 22-year-old will continue to receive inactives and DNPs. Pokusevski will need to rely on his first three seasons of data as a pitch to other teams in the league this summer to receive a second deal.
