Thunder Finalizing Extensions With Adams, Oladipo & Roberson

By Randy Renner, Senior Writer

With an 11pm deadline looming to extend rookie contracts Thunder GM Sam Presti and his staff have been busy today working on three major deals.

Various reports including those from Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski indicate the Thunder and shooting guard Victor Oladipo have agreed to a 4-year, $86 million deal and that Steven Adams is very close to agreeing to a 4-year extension worth $100 to $102 million. The Thunder are also working on an extension for Andre Roberson and are hoping to get his deal done before the deadline as well.

If extensions aren’t completed by the deadline players will become restricted free agents at the end of the season. Both Oladipo and Adams would likely be offered max contracts in that scenario so the Thunder are trying to avoid the uncertainty of that.

Oladipo had said while he was still with the Orlando Magic he would be asking for a max extension but the new contract he’s agreed to in OKC falls about $21 million short of that. A max deal for Adams would run about $106 million so the Thunder appear to be saving a little on him too.

There had been some thought that the Thunder might want to wait until the summer to get new agreements so they would have more room under the salary cap to go for a big name free agent, like say Blake Griffin.

But with league and player negotiators closing in on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement the rules could change significantly and Presti felt the time to strike was now not later.

We’ll update later this evening when official word of the new agreements comes down.