'Anything is possible': What Sam Presti believes about the Thunder is also true of his press conferences
You never know who or what the OKC general manager might discuss.
A quick note: A few weeks ago, I started writing a Happy Game Day Eve! piece on Friday to get your ready for your college football Saturday. I expect it will be back in this slot next week. But when Thunder training camp is about to start and general manager Sam Presti speaks, I feel that needs some attention. Hope you enjoy the mix!
Sam Presti talked about Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Chet Holmgren, Alex Caruso and pretty much every other Thunder player during his preseason press conference.
But the Thunder general manager also talked about Robert Caro, Benjamin Franklin and Lee Allan Smith.
A Presti presser never disappoints.
As the Thunder prepares to open training camp next week — media day, the unofficial tipoff, is Monday — Presti met with reporters a few days before like he always does. And he talked about all sorts of interesting things like he always does.
I'll be honest, I had planned to write about a singular topic. Maybe the Thunder's impressive roster. Or its offseason acquisitions of Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein. Or its clear championship aspirations.
But after listening to Presti for 92 minutes — yes, he went for over an hour and a half — I realized there were too many good tidbits to focus on any one thing.
And yes, I'll eventually tell you why he talked about Caro, Ben Franklin and Lee Allan.
But first, some basketball.
Chet last season = Caruso, Hartenstein this season
The Thunder added two major pieces during the offseason in Caruso and Hartenstein. Both have been starters, but with Oklahoma City only losing one rotational player off last season's roster (Josh Giddey), there are questions about how Caruso and Hartenstein will be used.
"I think our experience with Chet last year is informative for us because we didn't take Chet into the season and try to wedge him into the team that existed for him," Presti said. "We kind of broke things down and allowed ourselves to ... stay open to whatever the signals were and to learn the trade-offs of each one of those decisions."
Quick aside: you'll remember that with Holmgren coming off an injury that sidelined him for all of the 2022-23 season, the Thunder needed to figure out how he fit. Was he a center? More of a forward? How would his position flex? Could he actually play in the post with his wirey physique?
Ultimately, the Thunder figured out what worked with Holmgren.
So it will be with Caruso and Hartenstein, though Presti cautioned it won't be an overnight process.
"We're going to need some time with this particular group, especially because we're not trying to wedge those guys in or have assumptions about how they're going to fit with certain players," Presti said. "We kind of have to allow that to take its course, and as a result, I think our continuity will not be great early.
"But if you look at continuity in the NBA, continuity generally shows up, or lack thereof, early in the year. I don't think it will be a big issue for us once we get into the year, we get some miles underneath us. The more you play together, the more you rep together, the more you learn.
"We'll just need to kind of get some of that moving in order for us to get the kind of continuity that we'd like to have with this particular team."
Shai-Gilgeous Alexander hitting his prime
SGA turned 26 over the summer.
That means he's on the cusp of what most experts consider the prime years of an NBA player's career, usually from 27 to 31. And already, he's an All-Star, an All-NBA first-teamer and seems poised to be a perennial MVP candidate.
"It's really, really been remarkable to see the evolution of him as a player and as as person," Presti said.
He traveled to SGA's basketball camp this summer in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Presti was impressed with the number of SGA's friends, coaches and teachers at the camp.
"I think he really understands where he's from and what he's built on, and that's really held up," Presti said. "And it's a big reason why I think our team has been able to methodically improve ... because what you need in these ebbs and flows of the regular season and in this environment with the social media and everything, you need to have great emotional leadership within your team, and I think we have that with him and with a lot of other players."
Gilgeous-Alexander is more than a locker-room leader, of course. He averaged 30.1 points a game last season while shooting 53.5% from the floor and 35.3% from behind the arc.
The offensive numbers, however, aren't the things that have impressed Presti.
"I think it was two years ago I got asked, 'What can he add to his game?' ... " Presti said. "I don't remember how I said it, but I was like, 'He can't just have the ball and cook. That's just not a formula to win.'
"He's become a two-way player."
No doubt about it. Gilgeous-Alexander finished seventh in the voting for Defensive Player of the Year.
But his offense is central to the Thunder's success. He's the straw that stirs the drink, and Presti hinted that the roster around SGA might help make things easier on him. Holmgren, Jalen Williams and others continue to mature, and Caruso and Hartenstein are coming off seasons where each had some career bests on the offensive end.
All that helps SGA, which in turn helps the Thunder.
"One of the things with him is just reducing the degree of difficulty, making it a little bit easier on him, especially during the regular season," Presti said, "and that comes with experience a little bit and then things, ways we can (play)."
Expectations or possibilities for Thunder?
After winning 57 games and finishing first in the Western Conference last season, then making a couple of big off-season moves, expectations are high for the Thunder.
Lots of pundits believe Oklahoma City has a team that can win an NBA title.
Presti didn't pooh-pooh such expectations.
Or did he?
"Anything is possible," he said. "It just can’t be expected.
"There's no silver platters in Oklahoma."
Presti acknowledged that outside expectations are always part of the equation. Sometimes the expectations are for greatness. Sometimes for disaster.
But regardless, Presti said the team tries to think of expectations as possibilities. It's something that could happen, but there are lots of other things that could happen, too, for better or worse.
"We as an organization and as a team have to earn our arrival," Presti said.
"We've got an extremely young, energetic, ambitious team that's constantly striving, and they're inspiring people to be around. They inspire me."
Best Presti-isms
Presti went back to some of his favorite phrases — "We’ve always focused on being pacesetters versus clock watchers" is a goodie — but he also shared some new ones.
Here are some of the best:
"It’s more important to know what is going to slow you down than what’s going to speed you up."
"Social media is a sport, but scrolling is a lifestyle."
"Less patterns, more rhythm."
"We're not competing against the internet. We're not competing against the expectations."
"There's a difference between moving the ball and passing the ball."
That last one might need a little explanation.
"To me, moving the ball is when you have nowhere else to go with it," Presti said. "Passing it is when you're keeping the energy of the ball and giving your teammate time to make decisions. Passing keeps you in rhythm. Moving the ball doesn't keep the possession flowing."
Will the Josh Giddey trade hurt the Thunder's offensive flow?
There are many reasons to like the Thunder's trade of Josh Giddey to the Bulls, but losing his passing ability isn't among them.
His passing ability is world-class.
"One of the things that Josh did for us was, especially early in games and early in halves, was keep our rhythm moving," Presti said. "That's certainly something we're capable of doing and we will do, but it will take intentionality and it will take consistency to do it."
Presti said being a great passing team is all about creating time for players on the offensive end. Now, NBA players are so good, they don't need a ton of time to get off a shot or make a move.
"But every fraction of a second matters to be able to process and make the next decision," Presti said.
Caro, Ben Franklin and Lee Allan
As promised, an explanation of why Presti mentioned a few unexpected names during his press conference.
^ Robert Caro: The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author is known for his political biographies, and he happens to be one of Presti's favorite authors. Presti said, "Robert Caro has a great saying about research where he says, 'You have to turn every single page,' and I really like that relative to what it is that we have to do in order to discover the team."
^ Benjamin Franklin: This might have been the most unexpected mention during the presser because Presti brought up one of our country's founding fathers while talking about this Thunder team's defensive abilities.
OKC had a great defensive core with SGA, Lu Dort, Jalen Williams, Holmgren and Cason Wallace, then added an All-Defensive first-teamer in Caruso and a beefy interior defender in Hartenstein.
"The other thing in thinking about these individual pieces or players is not just seeing them as individuals, but how they can compound or how they can generate even more value when put with somebody else," Presti said. "What kind of got me thinking about that was Ben Franklin was a writer, a publisher, and he was the printing press. Each one of those things amplified the other skill he had. So it actually made me think about these defenders.
"It's like, well, individually Caruso is really good, but if he was put with somebody like Chet? Now, how much better does that make Caruso?
"I think defensively we have the opportunity to have a lot of compounding talent that can make it very hard for us to play against."
^ Lee Allan Smith: It's become a tradition during Presti's pressers that as questions start to wane, someone will ask what the general manager is reading as a signal that it might be time to wrap it up.
(To Presti's credit, a couple of years ago when the team was not good, he said he'd stay till every question was answered, and even as the team has improved leaps and bounds, he doesn't try to cut things short.)
On Presti's summer reading list: "If I Live to Be 100," "An Unfinished Love Story" and "Lee Allan Smith: Oklahoma's Best Friend."
"If you don't know who Lee Allan Smith is, he's a legendary Oklahoma citizen and really maybe the most prideful and passionate Oklahoman I have come in contact with," Presti said. "This is a man that brought in Doc Severinson, Bob Hope. He was friends with Curt Gowdy. This guy has lived a life. Just the most generous person maybe I've ever met in my life. He has a biography, and it's an amazing story."