As currently constructed, there is a strong argument that the OKC Thunder roster is comprised of the best collection of young talent the association has to offer.

In fact, Oklahoma City enters the 2024-25 season with an average age of just 24,148 youngest in the league. Considering they're coming off a campaign in which they secured first place in the Western Conference and won their first playoff series since 2016, that's a truly wild fact.

With a core full of rookies and first-contract players, the future seems astronomically bright for Mark Daigneault's ballclub, and recently the front office made some pretty lucrative financial decisions that will lock this young unit up for at least the next two seasons.

Prior to Thursday's season opener against the Denver Nuggets, the team announced in a press release that it has exercised its rookie team options on four second- and third-year players for the 2025-26 NBA season.

At the start of this year's run, all players involved were already locked into guaranteed payout days. With this announcement, their salaries for the next league year have now been set. Their financial numbers are as follows:

– Chet Holmgren: Fourth year: $13,731,368
– Ousmane Dieng: Fourth year: $6,670,882
– Jalen Williams: Fourth year: $6,580,997
– Cason Wallace: Third year: $5,820,240

In addition to Ousmane Dieng, three of these newly trained young players have established themselves as key cogs in OKC's main team.

Chet Holmgren is coming off a Rookie of the Year runner-up season in which he posted impressive two-way averages of 16.5 points, 7.9 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 2.3 blocks at 53.0 percent field shots and 37.0 percent distance shots.

Jalen Williams served as No. 2 on the Thunder's 57-win team last year, posting 19.1 points, 4.5 assists and 4.0 rebounds while shooting 54.0 percent from the floor and 42.7 percent from deep .

As for Cason Wallace, he had an under-the-radar, All-Rookie Team-selected debut season in which he played in all 82 games and posted 6.8 points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.5 assists 49.1 percent shooting from the floor and 41.9 percent completing percent shooting from beyond the arc.

Ousmane Dieng is still developing after two full seasons, but showed great potential in this year's preseason and could be in line to start the season with the Thunder after the recent string of injuries.

While all of these players are currently at different stages of the youth spectrum, they have done more than enough over the course of their respective tenures to convince the Thunder that they are worth a total of $32.8 million for 2025 promised to get season -26.