The Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder have executed one of many shortest rebuilding durations in NBA historical past. For the reason that breakup of the Kevin Durant/Russell Westbrook pairing, main into the present Thunder 2.0, solely lasted three seasons of utmost tanking. These shedding efforts netted them the sixth decide within the 2021 NBA Draft, the second and twelfth decide in 2022, and the twelfth decide final summer season. These picks landed them the problematic Josh Giddey, the way forward for the middle place and Rookie of the Yr favourite Chet Holmgren and future All-Star Jalen Williams, together with a draft-night swap with Dallas for Cason Wallace. These 4 gamers are all essential components of the present core. They be a part of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, our decide for MVP and an All-NBA First Group choice final season.
SGA got here to the Thunder in the perfect commerce of the twenty first Century for Paul George, together with 5 first-round picks, plus two swaps from the Los Angeles Clippers. No different NBA govt hits on lottery picks like GM Sam Presti. And whereas he’s struck out on virtually each late first- and second-round decide throughout this time, his absurd variety of draft capital (the Thunder come clean with 37 draft picks between 2024-2031) ensures him to be versatile shifting ahead to take swings and bundle in trades.
Presti is without doubt one of the high NBA execs and was chargeable for establishing the Thunder as a critical contender for years on finish within the 2010s. He’s a beloved savant in Oklahoma Metropolis, a metropolis that’s quickly working to maintain up together with his hipster-chic aura with experimental eating places and edgy modern museums. If not for Presti, the Thunder would have by no means reached contender standing with Durant, Westbrook and James Harden. With markets like Las Vegas, Mexico Metropolis, and even Seattle angling for an NBA franchise, they might have been the most definitely candidates to be relocated. In appreciation of all that Presti has completed for the town of Oklahoma Metropolis, you could acknowledge he was a present from the Sonics franchise.
From the mud of Seattle rises the Thunder storm
Presti predates the Thunder, as he was employed in 2007 by proprietor Clayton Bennett, at simply 30 years previous, the youngest GM within the NBA on the time. Presti joined the San Antonio Spurs, the place he began as an intern at 23 and labored his method to assistant GM. With the Thunder, Presti would emulate the Spurs’ dedication to tradition and growth in Oklahoma Metropolis, replicating what made the Spurs a purposeful and dedicated small-market franchise for many years. In the course of the first Thunder U, the crew received 4 straight division titles and made the Finals in 2012, however misplaced to the Warmth within the Finals, all throughout the first 4 years as a franchise. Presti was the mastermind of turning a rebuilding crew right into a contender by way of shrewd draft picks and a mega commerce. Sound acquainted?
The 2004-05 Seattle SuperSonics had loved a profitable season, racking up a formidable 52 wins behind All-Stars Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis, who every averaged greater than 20 factors per recreation earlier than shedding within the second spherical. Sadly, the next years noticed Seattle’s efficiency plummet. Seattle was unable to agree on funding for a brand new area or improve, prompting Howard Schultz to promote to Bennett. In Bennett’s first season as proprietor in 2005-06, the crew struggled, managing simply 35 wins, adopted by an additional decline to 31 wins in 2006-07. By this time, the writing was on the wall. Then GM Rick Sund was fired and changed by Presti in June of 2007, laying the groundwork for the crew to rebuild by way of the draft with a model new identification.
The drama in Seattle started in 2006 when the CEO of Starbucks Schultz and The Basketball Membership of Seattle LLC, offered the crew to OKC oilman Bennett for $350 million, who on the time promised Sonics followers he would preserve the crew in Seattle. As Durant stated on the “Old Man and the Three” podcast, even he was shocked on the transfer because the bright-eyed, naive younger star prepared to start out his profession in Seattle,
“See, they told us we will be there for at least three or four years, so I settled in. Yeah, I bought a house,” Durant stated. “Towards the end of the year, we just kept hearing, ‘Hold up, I think they making the change sooner than we thought.’ I remember we were in San Antonio, probably a week left in the season.”
Even Durant believed Bennett and the brand new possession group would keep in Seattle. Whether or not a relocation was deliberate from the beginning, there was proof it was the ulterior aim, as Aubrey McClendon, co-owner of the Sonics with Bennett, advised the media, “We didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle. We hoped to come here.” Simply 10 days later, the NBA fined McClendon $250,000 for the feedback. A month later, Bennett filed papers to start an arbitration course of to get out of the ultimate two years of the lease at Seattle’s Key Area. Eight months later, NBA house owners authorized relocating the Sonics to Oklahoma Metropolis by a 28-2 vote. The transfer was official, with Presti heading the crew’s rebuild beneath a brand new title, the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder.
The making of a brand new franchise
Bennett, the previous co-owner of the Spurs, had intel on Presti as the fitting man for the job and as such, handpicked Presti to turn out to be the GM of the Sonics in June of 2007. Upon being employed, Presti pulled off a blockbuster transfer on draft night time with the Boston Celtics, buying the fifth decide and choosing ahead Jeff Inexperienced in alternate for All-Star Sonics guard Ray Allen. Allen had been the face of the franchise for years, and buying and selling the crew’s finest participant was a daring transfer. Nevertheless it netted Inexperienced to pair with Presti’s different lottery decide that night time, Durant with the second decide. That night time, Presti laid the groundwork for the legacy of the Thunder, but it surely occurred because the Sonics. Durant wasn’t a Thunder decide. Neither was Inexperienced. To be truthful, the Sonics took Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka, whom Presti chosen fourth and twenty fourth the next season within the first spherical, earlier than they relocated to OKC. Most significantly, Presti didn’t originate with the Thunder. He was employed by the Sonics and drafted what would turn out to be the crux of the Thunder crew that may get away of the Western Convention as the subsequent nice “dynasty.” After the Sonics have been on the transfer to OKC, protests, lawsuits and handwringing ensued, but it surely was all for naught. The Sonics have been useless and the Thunder was born.
As soon as the crew landed in OKC, Westbrook can be the primary star rookie to play their first season with the crew, one of many causes “Brodie” is often thought of as “Mr. Thunder.” A lot of this historical past is chronicled in Sam Anderson’s 2018 ebook, “Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis.” In it, Anderson parallels the early settlement of Oklahoma Metropolis out of the feral chaos and bedlam of the undeveloped Oklahoma territories with the Thunder’s rise from quickie upstart to NBA contender throughout the 2012- 2013 season. It additionally pulls again the curtain on Presti’s ticks, his obsession with symmetry and group, going as far as ensuring all of the apply basketballs are confronted the identical manner on the racks. For a decade, the OKC Thunder have stormed the NBA, securing the second-highest profitable proportion of any crew since 2010, surpassed solely by Presti’s earlier crew, the Spurs.
Throughout a current episode of his podcast, 7PM in Brooklyn, Carmelo Anthony singled out the Thunder because the best-run group he encountered throughout his NBA profession, praising their understanding of participant wants, communication model, and accountability. Sadly, Presti didn’t get an opportunity to influence the Sonics franchise as he was imagined to upon being employed, however the Sonics loss was the Thunder’s achieve. And hopefully, Seattle is the subsequent metropolis to have an NBA crew from enlargement. In 2022, Presti spoke on the potential of Seattle getting a franchise once more.
“I do think it’s important to recognize also that Seattle is an incredible place,” Presti stated. “It’s an incredible city. They will have a basketball team again, and I think all of us here are like that’s a positive thing. We’re hopeful that happens because it’s a great place great fans, and the arena that they’ve built there, it’s spectacular. So when it happens, it’s going to be great.”
Seattle is the place nearly all of Thunder U’s first championship run began. And the mixing of the Thunder and Sonics histories has by no means been seamless. Whereas it’s honorable to have Michael Cage as the colour analyst for Thunder dwelling video games, Cage was a Sonics rebounding legend and by no means performed a recreation in Oklahoma Metropolis. Particularly contemplating how in 2014, the Thunder was the one championship-winning franchise within the league that selected to not put on a commemorative patch, honoring the Sonics 1979 championship.
“We have several teams who have a lineage that exists prior to the city that they’re in,” Christopher Area, the NBA’s vice chairman of outfitting, identification and gear, advised The Oklahoman on the time. “Some teams embrace that past, some teams don’t. Whether it’s because of ownership changes, or perhaps the lineage is too great of a distance, or the team nickname changed, or whatever it may be, that’s their decision.”
Mockingly, late final yr, the Thunder confronted the same subject because the Sonics did, probably shedding their crew primarily based on disagreements on financing a brand new stadium. Invoice Simmons stirred the pot, claiming OKC “stole” the Sonics franchise, and insinuated the Thunder have been reaping what they sowed.
“I hate to start sh-t, but you know, OKC did steal a team from somebody else,” he stated. “This is the smallest market in the league. They have the smallest arena in the league. Google ‘Oklahoma City Thunder arena lease.’ Go Google all that stuff. It’s been a story there for a couple of years. They want the taxpayers to pay for a new stadium.”
Oklahoma Metropolis Mayor David Holt championed a proposal for a minimal $900 million area, financed by a short lived one-cent gross sales tax, whereas the Thunder would contribute $50 million. In December, Oklahoma Metropolis voters authorized a penny gross sales tax to construct a brand new, publicly owned downtown area, securing OKC as dwelling to the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder past 2050. As well as, there’s now a model new Seattle area, gleaming with the newest tech, that serves as the house for the NHL and WNBA groups Kraken and Storm, able to welcome the NBA again to the town sometime.
A clumsy connection to the previous
The Thunder have at all times had an ungainly relationship with the Sonics lineage, incorporating and acknowledging some components whereas rightfully ignoring others, just like the Sonics’ 1979 championship. Or like when Kendrick Perkins, upon being traded to OKC, needed to change his quantity as a result of 43, his jersey quantity in Boston, was retired for Sonics nice Jack Sikma. Most OKC followers don’t know who Sikma was, nor do they maintain in depth information of the Sonics franchise, so it could be disingenuous to have the town declare Seattle’s lone championship as their very own. And why would they? Presti summed up in a 2020 interview how the crew has discovered from previous errors.
“You look to the past for inspiration, but you’re certainly having to create something new going forward. I think that’s kind of the exciting thing about sports in general. It’s always evolving.”
The very best consequence for each the Sonics and Thunder is for each to have an opportunity to increase their legacies as NBA franchises, with the town of Seattle bringing again knowledgeable NBA crew and the historical past of the Sonics together with it.
