GM Presti talks optimism, news about young Thunder
The Thunder’s 2021-22 season, the 14th in team history, is unofficially underway.
General manager Sam Presti tipped things off Friday in his preseason press conference. Coach Mark Daigneault and the players will have their turn with the media Monday, and training camps across the NBA will open Tuesday.
The Thunder’s preseason opener against the Hornets on Oct. 4 is just over a week away.
Presti last held a press conference on July 31, when he introduced draft picks Josh Giddey, Tre Mann, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Aaron Wiggins. Since then, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander signed a max extension, Kemba Walker was bought out and Summer League happened.
Presti addressed all of that and more. Here’s what we learned Friday:
Thunder team fully vaccinated
Some teams are in uncomfortable territory, trying to convince COVID vaccine holdouts to get the shot before training camp starts.
That’s something the Thunder doesn’t have to deal with.
Presti said Friday that the entire roster is vaccinated.
That doesn’t mean this is going to be a smooth season.
“The disruptions, in my opinion, are going to come by way of the fact that the NBA isn’t testing players or staff members,” Presti said.
Presti added that the Thunder’s basketball staff will be tested regularly to avoid outbreaks that can stem from breakthrough cases.
The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported Friday that 90% of the league’s players are vaccinated — a mark significantly higher than the national average.
SGA ready to play
Gilgeous-Alexander will enter the season with “no limitations at all,” Presti said.
That was the expectation, but it’s still significant news for the fourth-year guard.
Gilgeous-Alexander played just 35 games last season before being shut down with a torn plantar fascia in his right foot. The plantar fascia is a band of tissue that connects the heel bone to the toes.
“One of the reasons why I think he’s in the position he is and looks the way he does right now is we took a really conservative approach last season, as everybody knows, to make sure he wasn’t dealing with this on and off,” Presti said.
The injury forced SGA to miss out on representing Canada in the men’s basketball Summer Olympic qualifying rounds. The Canadians, without Gilgeous-Alexander and Denver’s Jamal Murray, didn’t advance to Tokyo.
Gilgeous-Alexander was on a ridiculous pace prior to his injury. He was shooting north of 50% from the field and 40% from 3-point range while averaging a career-high 23.7 points and 5.9 assists.
The Thunder went 16-19 with Gilgeous-Alexander in the lineup. Without him? 6-31.
Signing Gilgeous-Alexander to a fiveyear, $173 million maximum contract extension this summer was a no-brainer. The two sides agreed to the deal as soon as possible. It will kick in at the beginning of the 2022-23 season.
“He’s certainly one of the bright rising stars in the NBA, but the thing about him and the thing that I really appreciate and I think is a great thing for our organization is his mindset and his mentality is really mature,” Presti said. “He understands the process of improvement. He understands how to stay present. He knows things don’t happen overnight.”
Explaining the Walker buyout
The Thunder has, somewhat miraculously, been able to avoid buying players out. Presti isn’t one to relinquish an asset without getting another in return. No contract has been untradeable — from Russell Westbrook, to Chris Paul to Al Horford.
Then Kemba Walker came along. The Thunder acquired Walker and the 16th pick in the 2021 draft from the Celtics for Horford and Moses Brown. Presti was willing to trade one mega contract (Horford) for another (Walker) so long as it came with a draft pick attached.
It was assumed the Thunder would flip Walker, a four-time All-Star point guard, for yet another pick or young player, but that didn’t happen. No teams were willing to take on Walker at his price, age (31) and injury history.
A buyout was agreed upon. Walker had two years and $74 million left on his contract. The details weren’t revealed, but Keith Smith of Spotrac reported that Walker agreed to give up $20 million to get out of his contract.
The Thunder, in better financial shape than you might guess, ate the rest.
“Kemba was great, but clearly this wasn’t the last stop for him,” Presti said. “I think we were going to be having to accommodate something at the middle of the season or at the end of the season.”
In other words, Walker was never going to be a long-term fixture in OKC. Better to move on and let the young guards grow than finding time to audition Walker for other teams.
“If you have Kemba Walker here, you’re working around him to a degree,” Presti said. “This is not in a negative sense, but truthfully with where we are, we need a baseline on what we have so we could measure progress.”
The buyout was mutually beneficial. Walker signed a discount deal with his hometown Knicks.
Giddey injury update
Thunder rookie Josh Giddey played all of five minutes in Summer League before spraining his left ankle. The injury sidelined him for the rest of the event, but Giddey is good to go now.
“The one advantage I think Josh has, if we’re looking at a silver lining, is he played in a men’s league the whole year,” Presti said of Giddey’s time in Australia’s NBL. “The competition he was playing against is equal or probably better than the Summer League, quite frankly.”
Presti was asked about the pressure Giddey might face as the Thunder’s highest draft pick (No. 6), since James Harden was taken third overall in 2009.
“I think that every rookie, every first year player puts enough pressure on themselves,” Presti said. “I don’t think it matters where they’re necessarily drafted. They’re just trying to get to the gym on time and figure out what the cadence of a season is.”
3-pointers
❚ A year ago today, Chris Paul and Steven Adams were on the roster, and the Thunder was only a few weeks into its search for a new head coach. “It seems like it was ages ago,” Presti said. “It’s amazing what life in this environment does.”
❚ Daigneault wasn’t hired as head coach until Nov. 11, 2020. “I’m excited that he’s going to be able to have practice with the team,” Presti said. “We really couldn’t practice last year because of all the protocols. It will be a different year for him, and I’m excited to watch his continued development.”
❚ Presti didn’t shy away from the rebuild (more on that to come), or the rough patches this young roster is about to go through. “I don’t believe in bubblewrapping people from adversity,” Presti said. “People talk about adversity being really important to growth when it’s convenient to them, but I think it actually is universally important.”