Try as you might to tune it out — and boy did I try — the Shai Gilgeous-Alexander free-throw shooting/foul-baiting/flopping discourse was unavoidable this season.
It seeped from the dark corners of social media, to national TV broadcasts, to locker rooms and press conference podiums. Whether you’re the biggest Thunder homer, hater or OKC agnostic, we’re all worse off for participating in it.
But as Thunder general manager Sam Presti shared Monday in his postseason news conference, he and SGA avoided the topic entirely — at least with each other.
“He’s probably going to kill me for talking about this,” Presti said.
In his one-hour and 40-minute Q&A — short by Presti standards — the Thunder GM spent more time debunking the “SGA is bad for basketball” narrative than he did on any other question.
Today’s edition of Mussatto’s Minutes is loaded with Presti presser thoughts (and you can read more of them here from our guy Justin Martinez), but we begin with Presti’s perspective on how the rest of the league talked about SGA, who, for the record, ranked eighth in the NBA in fouls drawn per game and fourth in free-throw attempts per game.
Here’s what OKC Thunder GM Sam Presti said during end-of-season news conference
“First of all, let me just start with the opposing coaches for one second,” Presti began. “The postgame press conference has turned into the bully pulpit to create competitive advantage … It used to be you’d get up there, you’d talk about your own team. Now everyone gets up there and they talk about the officials and they discredit the other team.”
Presti didn’t mention Timberwolves coach Chris Finch by name, but he didn’t have to. Finch was a pioneer in whining about the Thunder.
“Relative to Shai and the narrative on that, he’s playing against six people,” Presti said. “He’s got five defenders, and the sixth defender is social media.”
OK, a few thoughts here.
Do I think most of the outrage surrounding SGA is unfounded? Yeah. Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Deni Avdija attempted more free throws per game than SGA in the regular season. SGA was second behind Paolo Banchero in free-throw attempts in the playoffs.
Gilgeous-Alexander shoots a lot of free throws. Name an all-time scorer who didn’t.
Does SGA sometimes grift for calls? You bet. Does he complain when he doesn’t get them? Not nearly as much as Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic or practically any other superstar. Does he ever blast officials in his postgame interviews? Never.
Beyond the foul talk, Presti pointed out that SGA bucks a lot of NBA (false) narratives.
Stars don’t play defense. They whine too much. They don’t play. All they do is shoot 3s. They’re inaccessible.
Gilgeous-Alexander is a two-way star who doesn’t lose his mind who’s played in at least 65 games four years running who’s brought back the mid-range shot who signs hundreds (literally) of autographs before every game.
Let’s pick something new to complain about next season.
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The NBA recently approved a new draft lottery system to curb tanking. Most notably, the teams with the three-worst records will lose lottery balls. The seven teams that miss the play-in but avoid the bottom three will all have the same odds.
The incentive to lose in hopes of better lottery luck has been drastically reduced.
This new system will be in effect for three drafts, starting in 2027.
The Thunder and 28 other teams voted in favor of it.
“Because there’s (been) such an increase the last few years in trying to position to get those higher draft picks, it was taking away from the games themselves, taking away from a product,” Presti said Monday. “And (NBA commissioner Adam Silver) made a very clear argument in my mind about the business ramifications of what we were dealing with.
“So I think the solution is good in the short term for sure. The best part about it to me is that it sunsets in three years. So we’re not boxed into relying on such a luck-driven solution. Hopefully, we can get to a point where we have a system that isn’t tied to record entirely. But that will take some time to work that through.”
There’s been a lot of speculation about a “draft credit” system as one of those options.
The Thunder has until June 29 to decide whether or not to exercise the team options for Lu Dort, Isaiah Hartenstein and Kenrich Williams.
The NBA Draft is on June 23. The Thunder has three picks (No. 12, 17 and 37).
The Thunder could go into draft night not knowing what its roster is going to look like, or how many roster spots it will have available.
But the Thunder, in the offseason, can carry more players than it has spots for. Presti alluded to that on Monday.
“If we feel it’s more beneficial for the organization to have the draft rights to certain players, we might draft those players irrespective if they’re going to be on the team or what have you,” Presti said.
In other words, the Thunder could draft a player, or players, and then figure out the roster crunch later. Whether that’d be trading away a player it just drafted, or trading a player already on the roster.
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Presti’s exit interviews are long. He answers questions until we run out of ones to ask.
When someone finally asks Presti what he’s reading, that’s the white flag. The last question.
Here’s what Presti has recently read/is reading:
◼ “How My Heart Sings” — A biography of jazz pianist Bill Evans. “Great book,” Presti said.
◼ “Finding the Right Notes” — A biography of jazz bassist Ron Carter. “He’s got videos on YouTube and interviews. I literally could sit there and listen to Ron Carter talk all day. He is such a class person and such a craftsman,” Presti said.
◼ A coffee-table book about filmmaker Wes Anderson. “It’s got unbelievable pictures in it,” Presti said. “He did several movies that I like, and I think he’s a really creative person and marches to the beat of his own drum.”
◼ Presti pitched a book called “Basketball Empire” by Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, a sports diplomacy expert. Presti and Krasnoff grew up together. “It’s a tremendous book,” Presti said. “It’s about the diplomacy nature of relationships and government and how sports can transcend things.”
Joe Mussatto is a sports columnist for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joe? Email him at jmussatto@oklahoman.com. Support Joe’s work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Thunder GM Sam Presti debunks narratives about Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
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