{"id":253714,"date":"2026-07-19T18:05:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T18:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/19\/thunder-trading-fan-favorite-luguentz-dort-to-hawks-in-cost-cutting-decision\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T18:05:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T18:05:18","slug":"thunder-trading-fan-favorite-luguentz-dort-to-hawks-in-cost-cutting-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/19\/thunder-trading-fan-favorite-luguentz-dort-to-hawks-in-cost-cutting-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunder trading fan-favorite Luguentz Dort to Hawks in cost-cutting decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nba\/teams\/oklahoma_city_thunder\/85\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> are no longer home to the &#8220;Dorture Chamber.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday, the Thunder traded guard <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nba\/players\/luguentz_dort\/597392\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Luguentz Dort<\/a> to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nba\/teams\/atlanta_hawks\/73\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Atlanta Hawks\u00a0<\/a>in a three-team deal that also included the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nba\/teams\/dallas_mavericks\/77\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dallas Mavericks,<\/a> which sent three second-round picks to Oklahoma City. Dallas, meanwhile, received forward Zaccharie Risacher, the No. 1 pick in the 2024 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nba\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NBA<\/a> Draft.<\/p>\n<h2>Why did the Thunder trade Lu Dort?\u00a0<\/h2>\n<p>Oklahoma City trading Dort is largely a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nba\/articles\/notable_update_emerges_about_luguentz_dorts_future\/s1_127_43977821\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">financial move<\/a>. After exercising his player option earlier this offseason, the wing was set to enter the final year of his contract and make $18.722M in apron salary. An extension for the 2024-25 first-team All-Defense selectee star wasn&#8217;t feasible.<\/p>\n<p>The Thunder were above the second apron ($221.686M, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spotrac.com\/nba\/apron\/_\/year\/2026\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">per Spotrac<\/a>) before the Dort trade. Teams that are above it are subject to penalties, such as frozen draft picks, free-agency bans and sign-and-trade bans.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/plain\" class=\"optanon-category-C0004\">\n    !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n    {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n    n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\n    if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\n    n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n    t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n    s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',\n    'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n    fbq('init', '1324276914788316');\n    fbq('track', 'PageView');\n  <\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nba\/articles\/thunder_trading_fan_favorite_luguentz_dort_to_hawks_in_cost_cutting_decision\/s1_13132_44078440\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Oklahoma City Thunder are no longer home to the &#8220;Dorture Chamber.&#8221;\u00a0 On Sunday, the Thunder traded guard Luguentz Dort to the Atlanta Hawks\u00a0in a three-team deal that also included the Dallas Mavericks, which sent three second-round picks to Oklahoma City. Dallas, meanwhile, received forward Zaccharie Risacher, the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NBA [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":253715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6806],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-253714","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gossip"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}