To find the heights, the Thunder does not want to take shortcuts | NBA

With 22 wins for 50 losses, the Thunder ended up low in the Western Conference standings, finishing second to last, just ahead of the Rockets. But Oklahoma City has in the end only the fourth worst record in the league, tied with the Cavs, behind that of Houston therefore, but also Detroit and Orlando in the East.

In his end-of-season press conference, the Thunder boss, Sam Presti, said he was enthusiastic before the next Draft which promises to be very rich, in any case on the “lottery picks” with why not, the local hero in Oklahoma, Cade Cunningham. Like Cleveland, OKC has a 45% chance of winning one of the top four draft picks, and an 11% chance of hitting the jackpot in number one. That’s a little less than Houston, Detroit and Orlando, which each have a 14% chance of shooting first.

“We think he’s one of the rising stars of the NBA”

“You never know how it’s going to turn out. The only thing we can do is react properly, continue to take the right direction and follow our principles, not to overreact one way or the other ”, he explained in The Oklahoman. “But we have to accept even more the fact that we have no control over it, and that this will have a huge influence on the future of our team. “

After the departures of Chris Paul, but also Dennis Schröder and Danilo Gallinari among others during the last offseason, the Thunder have fully assumed their reconstruction project, hiring a new coach, Mark Daigneault, along the way.

In this brand new scheme, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander almost looks like a veteran at just 22 years old. It is in any case the keystone of the new edifice under construction on the ruins of the Durant – Westbrook era. So much so that his injury during the season was synonymous with the end of the season!

“We’re going to have a big conversation with Shai this offseason. We look forward. His influence on the team is pretty obvious. We think she is one of the rising stars of the NBA ”, reprend Sam Presti. “We are very happy with his progress, as a player but also as a leader. He’s made a huge leap forward on his pass rate. I believe he’s the NBA leader in penetrations [ndlr : exact, avec 25 par match]. He progressed to 3-points. All of this is tangible and obvious progress. “

“When we return to the playoffs, we want it to be a point of arrival and not just an appearance”

With Lu Dort and Darius Bazley in addition to SGA in “executives”, but also young shoots like Moses Brown, Aleksej Pokusevski and Théo Maledon, the Thunder has already established a very promising bottle-feeding class. The upcoming Draft must further strengthen this hard core and propel it to a higher level next season. But in the idea of ​​a sustainable progression, viable in the long term.

“As they say, shortcuts can shorten periods of success, but we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that doesn’t happen. When we come back to the playoffs, we want it to be a point of arrival and not just an appearance. It will mean that we can go back, that we are here to last, that we can try things and that bad luck can strike without completely sinking us. We had experienced that during our younger years. We don’t want to be in a position where we get to the playoffs one year and we don’t get there the next. It is with this precise idea and this concentration that we work. “

Well aware of having come back to square one, when he inherited the levers in the run-up to the move from Seattle to Oklahoma City in 2007, Sam Presti wants to take his second major construction project to the next level. In search of a second star, therefore, to find the heights in the long term …

“We understand the NBA ecosystem very well. We know how it works. We know what situation we are in and what we can do and I am extremely confident and optimistic about our future. We see continuing to move forward and continue to respect our values. “