The Good Place: Why Sam Presti thinks highly of what the Thunder already has

The OKC general manager isn't about to weaken the team's core after playoff successes.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Sam Presti often talks in metaphors and analogies.

You can't buy the paint for your house that you haven't bought yet.

You can either pick the lock, or you can crack the code.

Scared money don't make none.

The Thunder general manager sprinkles that flavoring into each one of his press conferences. So it was Tuesday when he met with reporters for his end-of-season interview. At points, I felt like Batman trying to decipher the Riddler.

But there was a subject on which Presti was plain-spoken. No flowery language. No riddle-me-this approach.

"It was a great year, and there's still so much to learn and so much to figure out," he said. "But I think we did learn not just what we need but what we have.

"Sometimes when you don't know where it is that you're headed or what the final result will be, it helps to know where you are.

"And I think we're in a good place."

Much has been made about what the Thunder lacks after it was bounced from the Western Conference semifinals by the Mavericks. The primary hole: rebounding. In losing the series in six games, OKC was outrebounded in five of those games, including all four of its losses.

And the rebounding deficit became more skewed as the series went on.

Game 1: +13

Game 2: -3

Game 3: -7

Game 4: -2

Game 5: -13

Game 6: -16

Now, rebounding, especially on the defensive end, was a season-long struggle for the Thunder. Oklahoma City has a great rim protector in Chet Holmgren, but he isn't a camp-out-under-the-basket center. So with the Thunder's lacking height, it struggled often during the regular season to outrebound opponents.

During the postseason, that struggle was exacerbated.

Seeing the Mavs win the battle on the boards was tough, but it was worse seeing them do it with a rookie who the Thunder initially drafted, then traded to the Mavs (Dereck Lively) and a trade-deadline acquisition who the Thunder helped facilitate (Daniel Gafford).

So, once Thunder fans stopped lamenting how it coulda shoulda woulda had one of those bigs for their own, they started plotting how OKC might add a big man during the offseason. What package of players and picks might move up the Thunder high enough in the draft to get a big man? What deal might be struck to trade for one?

Hey, I believe that the Thunder needs to add a big man, too. The Western Conference has so many great teams with talented bigs that for the Thunder to survive that gauntlet in the playoffs, it simply must have more size inside. But here's where I may differ from some fans and may lean more into Presti's thinking: don't cut into the foundation to bring in a big man because it may compromise the whole structure.

The Thunder has a core that is the envy of just about every other team in the NBA. Supremely talented. Still young. Super mature. Those ingredients could potentially give the Thunder an extended runway to contend for titles.

That was born out during the regular season, then even more during the playoffs.

Presti referenced a Frank Lloyd Wright quote: "Youth is a quality, not a number."

"I would say the team is youthful, but they're mature," Presti continued. "It takes maturity to see the sacrifice of other people and how that ladders up into what it is that you do.

"We're trying to put them in the best positions to let that really flower out."

And in some cases, it already has. Presti mentioned the top-five offensive and defensive ratings that the Thunder had during the regular season, and in addition, the offense was the best in franchise history and fourth best in the history of the league.

But of course, the Thunder offense struggled in the playoffs. After shooting just a smidge under 50.0 from the floor during the regular season, it had only one game over that mark in the postseason.

"Quite frankly," Presti said, "if you look at the postseason, the least surprising thing to me about the postseason was that we weren't a good rebounding team. It also was not surprising to me that we were a very, very, very good defensive team in the postseason.

"What was surprising to me in the postseason was that we dropped off significantly offensively. To me, that would be the surprise of the postseason."

That surprise was disappointing to lots of Thunder watchers, but Presti saw it as part of the learning process.

"When I say that, I say that with optimism because this was our first attempt at postseason success with this iteration of the team," he said.

Then, he repeated that last bit just to drive home his point.

"This was our first attempt at postseason success with this iteration of the team."

The Thunder had to play in the playoffs to learn things it couldn't learn any other way. Yes, some of the lessons were hard, such as the offensive struggles.

(Oddly, the point differential in the series against the Mavs ended up being zero. For as clunky as the Thunder was offensively, it still scored just as many points as the Mavs did during the series.)

"Regular season, I think you can win with the dribble. Postseason, I think you win with the pass," Presti said. "Then toward the end of the game, your best players got to make the plays off the dribble.

"I think our intentions were good. We just hadn't seen that yet. I think we'll get better with it."

This team learned how tough the playoffs are, how small the difference between winning and losing is.

Presti has long known the struggle.

"There's no silver platters in Oklahoma City," he said. "We're going to have to take it. We're going to have to improve. We're going to have to scratch. We're going to have to claw. We're going to have to battle to get progress, especially in our conference.

"Our guys are fine with that. Those are the types of people that we want. We want people that don't need the wind at their back all the time."

The wind has been in this team's face for the past few years. Lots of losses. Few wins.

But several of the players who endured two seasons with a combined 46 wins are now central to this squad that won 57 games this past regular season, that swept the Pelicans in the first round of the playoffs, that pushed the Mavericks in ways the Clippers didn't and the Timberwolves aren't.

Which brings us back to Presti's belief that the Thunder is in a good place.

No, I don't think that means he is against bringing in another big man. In fact, I believe the Thunder will have an additional one on the roster when next season starts, someone who fits the Thunder's style and doesn't carry too high a price tag.

No, I don't think Presti is content to just see what happens with this current roster. That wasn't his modus operandi when he had Durant and Westbrook, and even this season, Presti tried to improve the squad with Gordon Hayward, though it didn't work.

(By the way, Presti refreshingly copped to making a mistake with that trade.

"I missed on that," he admitted. "That's on me, but I'm learning."

He added that the trade had lots of facets, including freeing roster spots and getting cap space, but that he misread how Hayward would fit with the team mid-season.)

Still, there is way more to like about this squad than dislike, way more to build around than tear down, way more reasons to stay the course than find a new path.

Presti even offered a bit of advice to fans.

"Try to not contort yourself into misery as we find ourselves and go through difficult challenging times," he said. "It's a young group of players that will need support, that will not be perfect, that are going to need to continue to find themselves by getting as close to the razor's edge of competition as possible.

"But if we have that mutual commitment and we have the awareness that we have so much to learn, we have to be extremely humble about what we're doing, I think we're headed in the right direction."

The Thunder has already reached a good place.

Will it get to a better place?

Maybe even the best place?

If watching it all play out is as fun as this past season was, sign me up.