Sam Presti Dishes on Offseason Options for OKC Thunder

Oklahoma City rolls into the offseason with plenty of decisions to make regarding its current roster. Not only do they have team options on a trio of players including two starters, but Cason Wallace is extension eligible and the Thunder currently hold two picks in the first round of the 2026 NBA Draft. At his end of season interview, Sam Presti laid out the summer ahead for the Bricktown Ballers.

"As far as this off-season and what's in front of me, I'd say it begins with a lot of listening. I have to spend time talking to our players. I have to spend time talking to them and understanding where they are, what their priorities are, where their head is at," Presti detailed. "I'm looking forward to spending time talking to our coaching staff and our front office staff about their thoughts and ideas moving forward. And as I do at this time every year, I have to sit down with ownership and try to get a sense for their priorities and objectives and their outlook moving forward as well."

The offseason decisions have a lot of moving parts involved. It is not just about Presti's goal but also the goal of ownership and what the individual players want for their respective careers. Finding out the best path forward for all parties and the team takes time.

"After I spend time having these conversations and doing my best to understand where everybody is, I'll have to synthesize all that information and develop some potential pathways that I'm hopeful can meet everybody's goals. Let me just say this for the record. Wherever we end up relative to the financial investment in the roster, it's as much about giving back to the fans as it is about paying for a basketball team. Our fans mean everything to us. We begin and end with them. We've experienced 18 years of Blue. Whatever we can do to keep continuing to create experiences, moments of joy to lift up the community, to give people a place to congregate and watch some great competition, that's what we're going to do. It's always about them," Presti detailed.

The Oklahoma City Thunder fans being shouted out here by Presti is the most important thing to come of this exit interview to wrap up the 2025-26 season. The team is well aware that giving back to the fanbase that has supported the Thunder in multiple ways including with a new area is a top priority.

"As I've said before, we've had ample time to prepare for this scenario. When we repositioned, replenished, and rebuilt the team, we were well aware of what it would take if we were ever fortunate enough to fall into a perennial contender in Oklahoma City again," Presti revealed. "So this listening process I'm referring to, it's going to take some time."

The Oklahoma City Thunder are going to take their time in deciding what to do, but Presti's comment about being prepared for this scenario should give fans a sigh of relief ahead of the offseason.

"There's several different constituents I've got to talk to, right? You've got to talk to our players. We have to talk internally with our staff. Then obviously, like I said, at this time every year at this juncture, I'm going to sit down with them and get an understanding of kind of how they're seeing things and where we're headed in that direction. Relative to the system question you asked, yeah, we're still early days in the new system. I don't think there have been a lot of teams our age that have been in this kind of apron territory. I thought about it a lot. I think one of the things about once you enter into the second apron, or something along those -- or the first apron or go deeper, you've really got to believe in your coach because the opportunities to really just flip players in and out once you -- the solutions are going to be harder to come by once you're up there, and that's the whole point of the system, right, is to make it very hard to transact things," Presti said.

The Thunder general manager brought up an excellent point about the 2nd apron. While we think of these restrictions mainly on the front office and ownership of teams the real pressure point is on the head coaches who have to problem solve with players currently on the roster as there are not many moves available to shake up the group at that point.

"I think everybody knows how I feel about Mark. The reason why I think you have to believe in the coach if you're going to go into that area is you are restricted in what you can do in terms of just jumping on the trade machine because that's how we make all of our trades, we just get on the trade machine," Presti explained. "But adaptability, creativity, willingness to try new things, looking at roster -- lineup construction. We want to create as many options that can compound off one another so that we have options if we run into different situations. And he loves this team, you know. He loves this team. That's one of the realities, but there just haven't been a lot of experiences with teams in this realm, if we end up there. That's still important."

What is interesting about the team options for Isaiah Hartenstein, Lu Dort and Kenrich Williams is the fact that despite no one predicting it, the Thunder could just simply pick up all three team options and roll into the 2026-27 campaign.

"On the team option stuff, first thing, like I said, I've got to talk to everybody. I've got to get a sense of kind of where everybody is. There's a human component, an emotional component to all of these things that I think sometimes people don't understand or don't -- because they don't have to, you know what I'm saying? With all the constituents I'm talking to, you know what I'm saying? I've got to be able to take it in and understand it and see how I can position it for everybody, if possible. But until I have those conversations, I won't know like how things are lining up, how -- is there alignment? How are things unfolding, are they lining up for us? Is it possible that we just pick up the options for everybody and roll into next season when we really have a bigger financial jump for the team? That's certainly possible. That could potentially be one of the pathways that we take. I certainly wouldn't rule that out because we haven't gotten through those conversations," Presti detailed.

The Oklahoma City Thunder are not going to rush into any move. These are not only important decisions but ones that will have ripple effects in how the rest of this run pans out for the Bricktown Ballers.

"I do feel comfortable saying like the process itself to get to what these potential options might be, it could take a little while. I could see it going a little deeper into the summer than we're used to because I want to try to understand everything that's available to me in terms of how to put things together, and I wouldn't put like a specific timeline on it because I've got to spend time really trying to sort it all out," Presti laid out. "We could even be in a situation, because we have the draft coming up, where we might have more players -- like if we feel it's more beneficial for the organization to have the draft rights to certain players, like we might draft those players irrespective if they're going to be on the team or what have you. So it could take some time. It might not look clean into a box, but if that's what it's going to take, that's what it's going to take. It just depends what I hear."

These options go beyond trying to hammer out deals for players currently on the roster and extend to the NBA Draft.

"Yeah, everybody knows we try to move up every year. We try to get a price for what it would take for us to move out entirely, and then we also have contingencies to move back in the draft if we think that would -- it's all about creating value. That's how we see each one of these picks. That's what I mentioned before, sometimes the best value is to take the best player on the board and figure it out later," Presti explained. "What you don't want to do is plan yourself into a pretzel and say, well, because this isn't figured out yet, we're not going to take this opportunity in front of us even though this might be where the best value is, and you let an option go away. Especially where we're picking, those players are extremely valuable. They're in the top 20 of a really good draft. So we're not going to let that opportunity pass us by because we haven't sorted through everything else yet."

The Oklahoma City Thunder have the flexibility to pull off plenty of moves. The Bricktown Ballers could just simply keep both picks No. 12 and No. 17 in a deep 2026 NBA Draft class and bring in a pair of talented players. They could move up the draft board and even back or completely out of a selection.

"But we'll look at all these different options. I think one thing that happens during the draft is people kind of look away from the probabilities, you know, where the picks are. There's -- I don't know what the bias would be, but there's all these different biases and psychological biases. You can offer somebody something that maybe is an actualization of what they already have -- an actualization of what they're hoping to have with the pick, but they won't do it because all of us want the opportunity to pick the player even though you know the odds at where you're picking are so slim," Presti revealed. "Once you get into the 20s, the chances of getting an elite player is like 3 percent, or maybe even less than that, because I think when people always say, oh, just pick Bam at 15, pick Giannis at 13, I think it's a 3 percent chance, you know what I mean? If you walk in to your boss and say I've got a great plan, it's going to fail 90 percent of the time."

Presti wrapped up his draft discussion with his thoughts on the draft historically.

"But we sometimes, especially when we're going through lottery reform, everyone says, oh, it doesn't matter. People will just find Giannis at this or find Kawhi Leonard here or Steve Nash there. I think those are all 15 guys. That sounds good, but generally the best players are found towards the top of the draft, and that's the reason we've had such a jockeying position to get up there. So the probabilities are what they are. 12 is a good pick, but it's not like a given that we'll find something there that's going to impact the roster," Presti concluded.

The Oklahoma City Thunder sit in a good spot this offseason but have plenty of decisions to make between now and the start of next season. A process, that in Presti's own sentiment, could take a while.

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