Thunder GM Sam Presti expects OKC to be 'exceptional' team even after major offseason moves

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Sam Presti knows there is no dancing around the fact the Thunder will have a different makeup this season though that doesn't make OKC's longtime general manager nervous.

The Thunder won 64 games and took the San Antonio Spurs to seven games in the Western Conference finals, then traded longtime starter Lu Dort and key reserves Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins to shed salary needed to get below the second apron — a strict payroll threshold above the luxury tax that imposes severe roster-building and trade restrictions.

“I really do feel that by season’s end, we could have a really exceptional basketball team, if we stay healthy,” Presti said Thursday. “But, we’re gonna be different.

“There’s no way to avoid that because if you look over the last two years we’re losing about 10,000 minutes combined of those players. We’re losing about, oh, like a quarter, of our minutes played with that particular group.”

The new-look Thunder open the season Oct. 20 against the Spurs. The cupboard will be anything but bare when they head to San Antonio.

The Thunder still have plenty of firepower beginning with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the two-time reigning league MVP who averaged 31.1 points per game and shot 55.3% from the field. He will be reunited with 2025 All-Star Jalen Williams, who returns after missing 49 games in 2025-26.

Forward Chet Holmgren averaged career-highs of 17.1 points and 8.9 rebounds per game and made All-NBA for the first time and was named to the All-Defensive team for the first time as well. He also earned his first All-Star nod, plus was second in the Defensive Player of the Year balloting.

Jared McCain, Ajay Mitchell and Cason Wallace are all expected to take on larger roles this season and Presti said moving Dort “is how highly we think of Cason.”

The GM said the key to the Thunder's success this season starts with adopting a “beginner's mindset.”

Presti said the Thunder “can’t come in predetermining how the year’s going to go, who’s going to play where, how we’re going to play. We kind of just have to open our minds and let ourselves kind of take ourselves where ever this team's going to take us.”

The process rarely changes for the Thunder, who will pursue progress and not outcomes, Presti added.

“We've said the same things when we were winning 23 games as we were when we were winning 68 games,” he said. “We don’t know how many games we’re going to win this year. We’re not entitled to anything.”

Presti believes the Thunder are well-positioned for long-term success, particularly with recent changes instituted by the NBA — changes he believes has the league positioned for another golden era that will coincide with the his team's 25th year in Oklahoma City — in 2033.

“I think the current initiatives of the league are putting us on the doorstep of another great era to come,” he said. “And we as an organization, quite frankly, we want to be — and have the choice to be, a part of that when that comes around.”

Those initiatives include the impact of the new NBA draft lottery rules as well as the strict payroll threshold above the luxury tax that imposes severe roster-building and trade restrictions.

Net ratings, records and player statistics are expected to decline as a result, Presti said.

“But the key for us is to not let all of these different initiatives, all these different irons in the fire, distract us from the main thing and to keep it simple," said Presti, adding that means “making the Thunder better, day to day, season to season and believe it or not, decade to decade.” ___

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