The Oklahoma City Thunder opened their Summer League schedule Saturday afternoon in Salt Lake City against the Memphis Grizzlies, the first game of a three-game stretch in Utah.
The roster is headlined by all three of the Thunder’s 2026 draft picks: Michigan’s Aday Mara, taken at No. 12; Iowa’s Bennett Stirtz, at No. 16; and Kentucky’s Otega Oweh, at No. 41. They are joined by Brooks Barnhizer, Oklahoma City’s 2025 second-round pick and a current two-way player, and Josh Dix, recently signed to a two-way contract, per SI’s Thunder site. A group of undrafted free agents — including Christoph Tilly, Lamar Wilkerson and Sam Alexis — rounds out the group.
July basketball means more in Oklahoma City than in most markets. The Thunder have built one of the NBA’s best rosters largely without leaning on free agency, and this offseason has reinforced that approach: the front office’s significant moves have been about retaining its own players rather than importing anyone else’s. When a team’s roster-building runs through the draft and the development staff, Summer League is not an exhibition — it is the first audition for the next wave of cheap, homegrown rotation pieces the model depends on.
The specific questions this week are concrete. Mara, a 7-footer, is the rare OKC draft pick whose calling card is size rather than positional versatility, and how quickly his game translates will shape how the frontcourt depth chart looks in camp. Stirtz arrives with lead-guard responsibilities to prove he can handle against NBA athleticism. And somewhere in the undrafted group is, if history holds, at least one name that ends up mattering — the Thunder’s development pipeline has a habit of turning July roster filler into October roster answers.
Two more games in Salt Lake City follow before the league’s annual gathering shifts to Las Vegas.
