Salary Expert Warning, Thunder or Celtics

As the strongest team this season, the Thunder have successfully entered the finals. The team's core Alexander has become the mainstay of the team. He not only won the scoring title and regular season MVP this season, but also led the team to make great progress in the playoffs.

If Alexander leads the Thunder to win the Finals and wins the FMVP, he will become the fourth player in history to win the scoring champion, regular season MVP and finals MVP, with the top three being Jabbar, Jordan (4 times) and O'Neal. Outside the

, Alexander's contract renewal also attracted much attention.

ESPN salary expert Bobby Marks analyzed that since Alexander has been selected for the Best Team many times in a row and has been playing in the league for 7 years, he is eligible to sign a designated veteran's super maximum salary contract this offseason.

The contract is worth up to US$293.4 million in 4 years, with an average salary of over US$73 million. Including his remaining contract this season, Alexander will take $372 million from the Thunder in the next six years.

Alexander's sky-high contract puts the Thunder's future salary structure facing severe tests.

Homegren and Javier's rookie contract expire next summer, and they are both eligible for early renewal this offseason. If both of them ask for maximum salary, the starting salary is expected to be $40 million each. By the 2026-27 season, the three will add up to $120 million in annual salaries, and the pressure is still affordable.

However, after the 2027-28 season Alexander's super maximum salary comes into effect, the Thunder's salary pressure will increase in a geometric multiple, and there is even a risk of team demolition.

Looking back on the past, the Thunder once let Harden go for more than 4 million US dollars, causing the Thunder's Three Young Master to fall apart. Now the team's management obviously does not want to repeat the same mistakes and tries to keep the new Third Young Master.

Referring to the lessons learned by teams such as the Celtics in recent years - signing a bunch of big contracts after winning the championship, and being forced to dismantle the team after being injured - the Thunder need to maintain their competitiveness while carefully managing the salary structure.

The NBA has produced seven different championship teams in the past seven years, which is largely due to the league's strict luxury tax system that limits the dominance of high-paying teams. The finals showdown between the Thunder and the Pacers also marks the entry of a new era in the NBA - two teams built with young cores have reached the top at the same time, breaking the monopoly of traditional powerful people.

The Thunder Three Young Masters 2.0, composed of Alexander (26), Homgren (22) and Jewish (23), against Halliburton (25), Mathering (23) and Walker (24), heralds the reconstruction of the league's power territory.