‘Get them to draft me’: Rookie Josh Giddey Eager to Play for Thunder
Rookie Josh Giddey was ecstatic when his named was called sixth overall on draft night.
“Ever since the pre-draft process starter, Oklahoma is where I wanted to be,” Giddey said. “I said to my agent, ‘you’ve got to do everything you can to talk to these guys and get them to draft me.”
Before being selected sixth overall, Giddey played for the Adelaide 36ers of the NBL, the same league LaMelo Ball played in prior to earning Rookie of the Year in the NBA. A lengthy pass-first cutter, the 6-foot-10 prospect averaged 10.9 points, 7.5 assists and 7.4 rebounds per game.
But Giddey had bigger dreams than the NBL, and those dreams included the Thunder.
“The way they talked and told me about how they want to lift their program and the direction they're headed in, it was something I wanted to be a part of,” Giddey said following the draft. “It's a young team and I think it can be something really special and I wanted to be a part of that. Moving forward hopefully in the next coming years we can have a lot of success in Oklahoma.”
But the match isn’t just a good fit on Giddey’s end. General Manager Sam Presti, a notably meticulous scouter, spent weeks in quarantine researching Giddey on film.
“A big part of the success of any player in my experience is not just the player's talent, but also the fit that they find with the organization and their ability to plug into the situation that they are in,” Presti said of Giddey. “We think (Giddey) is a great match for us, and somebody that with where we are as a program, can really have a role for us over time.”
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