Entering his third summer league, Dieng is the veteran of the group. Even though he’s the youngest player at 21 years old, he must show out against the competition or risk leaving a flat impression in his most important offseason yet.

Like Jalen Williams last year, Dieng must have a strong debut. Odds are, he’ll only play a handful of games before he sits out the latter half of the event. He can’t look shaky or inconsistent against summer league competition or that could spell doom to his Thunder tenure.

The 21-year-old must be aggressive from the start and look for his shot. There’s no reason to think he can’t dominate in this environment. He’s had two years in the NBA now, which gives him a significant boost against most players who participate in summer league.

With Topic out, all eyes will be on Jones as the standout rookie in this year’s class. OKC paid five second-round picks to acquire him in the draft and the two-week event will be the first chance he’ll get to show off why he’s worth the investment.

It’ll be interesting to see how Jones looks with the Thunder. He will be in a smaller role in OKC than at Weber State. Does he try to make that adjustment now or take advantage of the available on-ball reps at this event? It’s probably smarter to lean on the former despite how enticing the latter might be to rack up numbers.

Nonetheless, the novelty will exist during Jones’ entire summer league tenure. His unorthodox playstyle will be on full display for the first time against a significant upgrade in competition from the Big Sky to pseudo-NBA talent. This will also be most Thunder fans’ first chance to see how Jones performs.

The Thunder have already filled out their three two-way spots for next season. Ajay Mitchell, Alex Ducas and Adam Flagler are locked into the deals. This means Johnson will likely need to earn OKC’s final full-time roster spot if he wants to stay next season.

The Thunder renounced the free agent rights of Johnson recently, which means the 24-year-old can land on any NBA squad. The second-year forward showed flashes last season but had a redshirt rookie season as he seldom played for the Thunder.

For Flagler, this marks his first healthy offseason. He recovered from a meniscus tear he spent last offseason recovering from. Just because he’s on a two-way deal, doesn’t mean he can’t graduate to a standard contract with a strong offseason. Summer league will be the first step in that.

Johnson and Flagler should have a leg up against most of the rest of the roster considering they’ve played in OKC’s system for a season already.

Meanwhile, Mitchell and Ducas will kick off their Thunder tenures in summer league. Expect both to play most of the event. They will also likely spend most of their rookie seasons with the G League’s Blue, this gives them a chance to get acquainted with Woods and Dixon.

This one is for the summer league sickos. Gohlke became a national phenom during this past March Madness. He headlined Oakland’s upset win over Kentucky in the Round of 64 with 32 points on 10-of-20 shooting from 3. He was one of the biggest winners of the tournament as he went from an unknown to a household name.

Gohlke is a textbook gunner. In his lone season at Oakland, the 24-year-old averaged 10.1 3-point attempts at a 37.6% rate. 364 of his 372 shot attempts were from outside. Once summer league boils down to undrafted rookies and borderline NBA players, it’ll be fun to see how Gohlke’s game translates to the NBA level.

He’ll be an essential watch that can make the second half of summer league from usually forgettable to entertaining. Expect lots of eyeballs to be attached to their screen to see Gohlke light it up.

Dixon will coach the Vegas squad. He’s spent the last two seasons as a Blue assistant under Woods — who will be the Utah coach. The 30-year-old had a brief career split between the G League and overseas before he exchanged the sneakers for a clipboard.

Since the Thunder have participated in two summer leagues, they’ve split the coaching duties into two between the events. Assistants get a chance to absorb some reps as the main play-caller. It fulfills the summer league’s purpose of an inconsequential environment that encourages development.

Woods is a little bit of a known commodity. He’s coached the Blue the last two seasons and was a previous summer league coach. This will be Dixon’s first shot as a head coach. It’ll be interesting to see how he handles the situation — especially in clutch scenarios.

The Thunder are notorious for being one of the best developmental programs in the league. The roots of that come from the behind-the-scenes work assistants like Dixon do with individual players.