The Oklahoma City Thunder opted to trade home-grown forward Lu Dort to the Atlanta Hawks, and his lackluster outings in the Western Conference Finals against the San Antonio Spurs may have had something to do with it.
In both the regular season and the NBA playoffs, the San Antonio Spurs were a better team than the OKC Thunder. The Spurs went 4-1 against the Thunder before the playoffs, and then beat them in the Western Conference Finals in seven games.
In that series, both Victor Wembanyama and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander were excellent, and there were elite performances from role players and the supporting cast of both teams.
However, it wasn't all peaches. Lu Dort, known as one of the better defenders in the NBA, played solid defense, but only posted 4.3 horribly inefficient points in those seven games. Despite being a homegrown player and the longest-tenured player on the roster, he was traded to the Atlanta Hawks.
The Spurs might have had something to do with it.
How Spurs Ran Lu Dort Out of Oklahoma City
Dort has never been an offensively gifted player. Across his seven seasons, all as a starter, he only averaged 11.6 points and shot 35.8 percent from 3-point range. Those aren't horrible numbers by any means, but he was always a weak link in an otherwise complete starting five.
The Spurs exposed him, holding him to just 20 percent shooting from behind the arc in the playoffs. He had plenty of open looks, but was unable to convert.
"Just going back to that series, you still have to do things to combat the San Antonio Spurs, and you got to have more shooting on the floor," summed up ESPN's Vince Goodwell. "And although the numbers sometimes will say that you have to guard Lu Dort, sometimes you don't."
Players like Cason Wallace, Alex Caruso, Jared McCain, and Jaylin Williams were all more effective scorers than Dort in the postseason. All of them are on cheaper contracts and aren't as limited, so when the Thunder needed to shed salary, moving on from Dort wasn't a hard choice.
On top of that, he has a reputation around the league as being a pest. When Draymond Green plays dirty, he has four rings and four All-Star appearances to back him up. Dort, meanwhile, has never been a star.
"I wonder if some of that stuff plays a small factor in this, if the juice is no longer worth the squeeze when you have so many young players on the back end ready to take on bigger roles and that you have to make financial decisions on in the future," Goodwell added.
Between being a liability in the postseason and possibly being difficult to get along with, the Thunder made an easy call. In the effort to dethrone the Spurs as the best in the West, losing Dort was a small price to pay.
