The league shifted on Saturday night when the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks got together for a trade, swapping superstar Luka Doncic for All-Star Anthony Davis and the dominoes have continued to fall since.

De’Aaron Fox is a Spur, Zach LaVine is a King and the Oklahoma City Thunder even got in on the action on Monday night.

While the caliber of trades was not expected even a week ago, the movement was. This is what happens as the league inches toward Thursday’s deadline. After all, deadlines make deals.

For the OKC Thunder, this trade is not going to draw attention, or carry conversations. But it is still a swap that matters.

On Monday night, the Thunder sent the Suns’ 2029 second-round pick to the Charlotte Hornets for the right to the Nuggets’ 2030 second-round selection.

On the surface, this trade is much like decaf coffee – why bother? But, it is another illustration of how to elongate your window of assets.

Oklahoma City entered the day with a jaw-dropping six second-round picks in 2029 – an unreasonable number that has more value on the trade market than come draft night. This trade pushes one of those six to 2030 where the Thunder have three second-round selections.

Years fly by, but staying ahead of the curve allows you to never get caught in a pick-less bind which is nixing plenty of other hopeful trade requests at this very moment. This summer, once 2032 picks are eligible to be traded, the Thunder can only again make a similar swap to give them bonus picks in the 2031 and 2032 drafts… and so on, and so forth.

So, as people ponder “Why does Presti keep collecting picks?” the answer is simply: To never run out of them.

In the same way, the bank doesn’t run out of money. This summer, there will be asset-strapped teams looking for a quick fix, that loan will come due in a year that we can’t even fathom right now, but it will still come due.

If Presti and company continue to play their cards this way, there is a strong possibility the Thunder never head into any certain summer with just one or two picks available.

Draft selections are as much the currency of the NBA as cash is. In a small market that has to nearly ignore free agency, even more so. You can never have too much money and you never want to stop receiving deferred dividends.

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