Newly Crowned Champion Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Makes NBA History By Signing A 4/$285M Supermax Extension To Stay In OKC For The Foreseeable Future

Nic Antaya. Getty Images.

There are a lot of benefits to winning the NBA title. For starters, you're the Champs. Your legacy is cemented forever no matter what happens for the rest of your career. For both players and fans, there's nothing better than getting to spend the entire summer reliving your title and living life with the Larry. It's tremendous. Fans can talk all the shit they want and everyone has to just take it on the chin. For the players, the good times don't just stop at the parade. As we've seen in recent years, if you're extension eligible and you're coming off a title, chances are you're cashing in.

The Thunder are no different, extending guys like Jaylin Williams for 3/24M as a reserve bench guy, but that's not the purpose of this blog. This blog is about the highest per year extension in NBA history

We all knew this was coming, and it's obviously well deserved considering SGA just put up one of the greatest seasons by a guard in NBA history, finishing as the scoring champ, MVP, WCF MVP and Finals MVP. I don't want to get too dramatic here, but you pay that guy and you give him every possible penny that he's earned/worth.

You had to be out of your mind if you didn't think SGA was going to be signing a supermax extension, and as you can see, the annual salary numbers are starting to get pretty insane. This is something that's only going to continue to go up as the cap continues to rise, so while this is the most expensive contract on July 1, 2025, it won't be in a few years. That's why I never really understood why people freak out about these contract amounts. It's all fluid! The highest paid today will be the 20th highest paid in a few years. Instead, focus more on the cap percentage than the dollar amount.

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What this extension also means is that the Thunder are inching closer and closer to 2nd apron territory. Remember, both JDub and Chet are also extension eligible this summer, and something tells me those aren't going to be cheap. Eventually, the Thunder will have tough choices to make, through no fault of their own. This is why the 2nd apron is bullshit. We're seeing what happened with the Celtics just 1 year after handing out all their extensions post-title. They've already been forced to sell off pieces because of that 2nd apron/tax penalties. The Thunder will ultimately be forced to offload pieces once their rookie contracts expire (JDub/Chet) combined with SGA's supermax, which is so annoying. They'll be penalized for great drafting like the 2nd apron teams before them.

The good news is that no team is better prepared for this reality than OKC. Given their allotment of picks, they can find ways to attempt to overcome these tough decisions and cuts that will become unavoidable. Maybe that's sending some picks to a team to absorb money, maybe that's drafting guys that can develop and turn into a new wave of great cost-controlled talent, similar to what we're currently seeing. They have the ability to take a shit ton of swings, which is really all you can do and hope a couple land.

But at the same time, there's no guarantee those picks turn out as good as the players they'd be forced to give up. There's no guarantee they get perfect health during another playoff run. As we know, winning one title is hard enough, so to now live in a world where you'll eventually be forced to sell off key pieces of a title team is what makes winning that 2025 title so crucial.

It remains complete bullshit that this is a reality that champioship teams have to deal with, especially ones that were built "the right way" like BOS, OKC, DEN etc. As a team, you have to offer these max extensions to your best young players when they are eligible, or they walk. But by doing that, you essentially start the clock on your team needing to be dismantled strictly due to financial reasons. Starting in 2026-27, we'll have the Chet/JDub extensions kicking in, that next season, you have SGA's supermax kicking in. That gives the Thunder a 2ish year window before the cuts start happening. They'll start with the role guys like iHart, Caruso, Dort etc, but all of those guys were key pieces to their title run. It's all so fucked, and I really can't believe the NBAPA agreed to this CBA. 

So for SGA and the Thunder, this was obviously a well earned extension and a complete no brainer. It's just hard to ignore what it's now the start of. My advice to Thunder fans would be to soak up every moment and every season over the next 2ish years, because things can change quickly before you even know what's happened. Trust me.