“I didn’t do anything with OKC. I just did the interview at the combine,” Aday Mara said after the Thunder took him with the No. 12 pick in the 2026 NBA draft. “I think it went really, really good. That’s why it was surprising to me.”
The 21-year-old center had spent the predraft stretch mocked in the lottery range, and Oklahoma City was among the teams he was commonly projected to land with. Still, he said, there was almost no contact. “I didn’t have a lot of contact with them. It was more of an agent thing. I guess it was a little surprising. But I’m happy to be in this program.”
Mara, 7-foot-3, spent two uneven years at UCLA before moving to Michigan, where he anchored a defense that helped the Wolverines win the national championship. The frontcourt of Mara, Morez Johnson Jr. and Yaxel Lendeborg went 37-3.
Now he joins a roster built around Chet Holmgren. The Thunder see him as an eventual replacement for Isaiah Hartenstein, with the two bigs working together later in the decade. Oklahoma City has held lottery picks from other franchises since Sam Presti’s negotiations at the start of the rebuild, and Mara is the latest to come through.
He expects to spend about nine months of the year in the city, and he has plans for the rest of his time. “Last year, I was fishing with a couple of teammates for example. I know they have a couple of lakes here. So hopefully I can do the same here,” he said. “I like to play golf.”
