Sports fans who managed to stay awake during and beyond “Monday Night Football” may have read late-night NBA tweets half-jokingly predicting that every Western Conference finals in the late 2020s will feature Oklahoma City and New Orleans. The Thunder and Pelicans have both adopted an approach that will seemingly put them in a position to capitalize over the next several years, based on trades of star players (such as Russell Westbrook and Anthony Davis), in exchange for future first-round draft picks.
The fruits of those deals may not be evident right away, but in the short term franchises like Oklahoma City and New Orleans will use Wednesday’s 2020 NBA Draft (7 p.