2024-25 Thunder player grades: Dillon Jones

USA Today

3 hours ago

The calendar has flipped to August, which means we've officially hit the low point of the NBA cycle. The next couple of months are the driest part of the year. Everybody has headed to vacation and awaits training camp to kick off the 2025-26 season.
The Oklahoma City Thunder continue to enjoy their NBA championship. They had a historic 68-14 regular-season campaign that eventually led to the franchise's first title with a 2025 NBA Finals Game 7 win. They'll enter next season as a favorite to be a rare repeat winner.
To reflect on their title run, Thunder Wire will conduct 2024-25 season grades for all 19 players who suited up for the squad at one point during the year. Fourteenth up is Dillon Jones, who only lasted a season in OKC before being traded to the Washington Wizards:
2024-25 statistics:
Advanced stats:
Significant Percentile Finishes:
Contract:
Thoughts:
After sending a package of second-round picks to acquire him, Jones' tenure on the Thunder only lasted one season. It's one of the shorter stints of a first-round selection in OKC history. The 23-year-old learned under Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as he hopes to carve out an NBA career elsewhere.
It was a forgettable rookie year for Jones. Because the Thunder regularly blew teams out, he was afforded plenty of garbage time. He appeared in 54 games. The tape doesn't show much as he struggled to make a positive impact on the court. Instead, it was filled with avoidable mistakes and slip-ups.
The Thunder eyed Jones for a couple of years in the predraft process. Maybe they underestimated his adjustment from Weber State competition to the NBA. There's still time for him to turn it around, but he must figure out how to be effective in a role player capacity rather than being the primary ball-handler he was in college and even in the G League.
Jones spent a healthy amount of his rookie season on the OKC Blue. He managed to put up numbers there. You could see the vision of him being a ball-handling tweener who could create off the dribble a little bit. But his ultimate downfall always returned to his poor catch-and-shoot numbers.
If Jones wants to stay in the NBA, he must be a better outside shooter and defender. Plain and simple. He didn't show that on the Thunder in his first season. Now, it's about changing that over the offseason. Like most role players, that'll be the swing skills that decide if he can carve out a career.
Unfortunately for Jones, that likely wasn't going to happen on the Thunder. The NBA champions are too deep to afford him or anybody else real developmental minutes. They have one of the deepest teams in the league. It was difficult to imagine him getting more minutes in his second season because of it.
That likely explains why Jones was traded to the Wizards. The Thunder needed to create a roster spot. He was last on the depth chart. Let's see if he can turn his trajectory around at his new spot, but his short OKC tenure will be pretty forgettable in the big picture.
Moving Forward:
The Thunder needed to create a roster spot for Thomas Sorber. In a bit of a surprise, that turned out to be Jones. He was salary-dumped to the Wizards. He gets a fresh start on a rebuild that could afford him to learn on the court with low-leverage minutes.
Let's see if Jones can take advantage of being in Washington. As said earlier, he must be better from the outside. That will decide how long his NBA career is. Most role players attempt catch-and-shoot looks for their shot diets. Maybe he can sprinkle in a few drives to the basket because of a lack of a primary ball-handler on the Wizards, but that won't make or break his ambitions.
Considering how deep their draft pick pockets are, Jones was worth the swing and miss. Five second-round picks might be a lot to give up in quantity, but in quality, the Thunder didn't stomach agreeing to the deal when it happened.
The Thunder had hopes that Jones could fit the forward playmaking archetype they had chased over the years. It hasn't happened yet. The low-level NBA production, paired with being an undersized wing, created a bad matchup that hindered the type of career development that could have occurred.
Oh well. It happens. The Thunder were still able to have one of the greatest seasons ever despite getting little production from their rookie class. They have enough ammo to afford a few misses on projects they want to take on. It didn't work out with Jones, but that shouldn't discourage their draft process. Results speak for themselves.
Final Grade: D