Sam Presti Stands Up for OKC Thunder Superstar Against Narratives

The Oklahoma City Thunder have seen superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander be put under the microscope throughout the last year and a half. As he has risen from a fringe All-Star, to solidified All-Star starter and All-NBA member, to NBA MVP contender and now back-to-back winner of the NBA MVP hardware, the narratives have only grown as well.

Around Gilgeous-Alexander's game you will see plenty of criticism online, in opposing arenas and even on some supposed professional TV broadcasts about his ability to get to the free throw line, the craft of selling a call and, yes, the flopper label. Despite the fact that the Oklahoma City superstar only ranked third in free throw attempts per game with 9.0.

The facts of the matter have not factored into the growing frustration of NBA fans when watching Gilgeous-Alexander dominate the sport.

At his annual end of season interview, Thunder General Manager Sam Presti was peppered with questions for over 100 minutes. The conversation did shift to the free throw narrative around Gilgeous-Alexander.

"Of all the things that I've talked to Shai about, this is actually one I've never talked to him about. He's probably going to kill me for talking about this, truthfully. First of all, let me just start with the opposing coaches for one second. The post-game press conference has turned into the bully pulpit to create competitive advantage. I mean, we know what that is. It used to be you'd get up there, you'd talk about your own team. Now everyone gets up there and they talk about the officials and they discredit the other team. Again, like they're great competitors, so we know why that's happening, and I don't fault them because I think they may think it works," Presti started by explaining.

It was interesting to hear that Presti and Gilgeous-Alexander have not discussed the free throw narrative behind the scenes and the Thunder General Manager even went as far as to say Gilgeous-Alexander would not enjoy the public defense of his game. However, that didn't stop Presti. Sometimes you just have to stand up for your superstar.

This conversation has gone beyond fans on social media into coaches and players around the league to lick their wounds of Gilgeous-Alexander's success against them by holding up this false narrative. A bitterness that is rarely seen from the position of power that coaches are in.

"So the question is why are they continuing to do it? Because there's financial incentives not to do it. But everyone's competing. Let's also recognize that it's the bully pulpit for competitive advantage, and that's what it's kind of turned into, which is part of competing. We all get that. Relative to Shai and the narrative on that, he's playing against six people. He's got five defenders, and the sixth defender is social media. That's a reality. He's not going to be the last player that the machine decides to target, but no one's going to handle it as gracefully because, when they turn it on somebody else, they're not going to step up there every night and not acknowledge it," Presti detailed.

After addressing the coaches, Presti looked to examine why do fans solely focus on this aspect of the Thunder's superstar's game? Especially when you compare it to the typical complaints of fans and NBA media.

"A couple things more just on the whole topic. We think all the time or we hear all the time about things that people don't like about the NBA, which are inaccurate, but they're narratives that exist on the alternate reality. One, players don't play defense. Shai's a two-end player. Now, he plays with four or five All-NBA defensive players, so sometimes his defensive ability gets undersold, but he plays two ends. Second, all NBA players do is complain, [expletive] and moan and try to intimidate the officials with bad behavior in the games to give foul calls. He's gotten three technical fouls this year. None for complaining. One for waving a towel in support of someone that hit a shot that doesn't play very often. Okay. So he's not doing that," Presti laid out. "The other thing is load management. Nobody plays. They take all these games off. Shai plays every night. He missed a bunch of games this year for an oblique strain, and we might give him a night off two or three times a year, maybe. But he plays back-to-backs. He plays heavy minutes. He plays against good teams. He plays against teams that are bad teams. He plays every night. His consistency is well documented. So you can't get him on that."

It isn't just about the fact that he doesn't cry foul to the zebras on the court, but you look at how he makes his money on the court in the mid-range this is something NBA fans have clamored for since the mid-2010s when the league got away from playing inside the arc and got 3-point happy. Gilgeous-Alexander playing inside the arc is why he nets calls and gets to the charity stripe.

"The next one is all you do is shoot 3s. NBA players, all they do is shoot 3s. Okay. Well, he's brought the mid-range back to an art form. He's transcendent for any generation, any player. That's why like older players love his game. It's also one of the reasons he gets fouled a lot. Because he plays in the mid-range because we don't call the landing space fouls in the mid-range the way we do at the 3-point line, right, because he's avoiding that oftentimes because there's too many bodies in there. With the 3-point shot, you can see it easily, and I think a lot of times he's trying to avoid that. So he's not a guy that's just launching 3s. So we can check that off the box," Presti gave a great example.

Then Presti tackled another big complaint from NBA fans that the modern day player shuts off the outside world, which could not be further from the truth for the Thunder's NBA MVP.

"The other one is like these guys are just totally inaccessible. They're in their own world. Well, the guy signs 400 autographs before every game. Before the Western Conference Finals Game 7, he's signing autographs, " Presti finished his comparison. So we've got a litany of things that generally the narrative is about NBA players that they do wrong. Well, based on those narratives, I don't agree with them, but he would be doing them right. And he doesn't really complain about any of it. So if we're just talking about trying to draw fouls, well, every other great player in the NBA, that's part of the game is drawing fouls."

Of course, it would not be a Presti answer without stats and facts to back his claims up. He went over all the foul calls that Gilgeous-Alexander recieved this season and pointed to the lack of over turned calls as a push back to the likes of coaches who he didn't name but you can look at Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch as the poster boy for crying postgame.

"He drew 415 fouls this year; 11 were challenged. 11. Four of those were overturned. So that's like 2 1/2 percent of the foul calls were actually challenged. Again, that's part of the bully pulpit part of this thing, which I get and it's part of competing. As far as those fouls, I think in the fouls drawn -- I had this written down here -- he's tied with Embiid for 8 and 9 in terms of number of fouls drawn in the season. 6 and 7 are Jaylen Brown and Wembanyama. So that's kind of the group of players that he's in. But I understand, if you listen to the narrative, you'd think he's 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. He drew a lot more fouls before we got much better, and when we got better, obviously people pay much more attention to him," Presti laid out the facts.

Presti once again reiterated that Gilgeous-Alexander will not say a word negatively about the backlash he recieves from opposing fans, media and online discourse and what maturity that takes while also discussing he isn't the first superstar to see the meida machine turn against.

"We'll have to see where that goes, you know what I mean? We don't know. He'll never say anything about it. And the only thing I'm pointing out is I don't think he's being unfairly handled, I just think, instead of talking about something that we are looking to find as a negative, can we please also acknowledge that he also does a lot of positive things for the game, most of which are the things that people are very unhappy -- not unhappy, but they don't like on social media. And I know that a lot of us live on social media. I would think they would love him for that reason," Presti dished.

In closing, Presti pointed to the fact that in this modern era negativity sells in the modern era and he is 100 percent right about that.

"This is like the world we live in today. There's a lot of financial incentive to create these things, career ambitions, like I said before. The best thing we can do when those things happen is stay above it. Now I'm pointing it out now at the end of the season, but we're going to have to stay above it because it's probably not going to change. But he does a lot of good things too," Presti finished.

It is clear this narrative isn't going away but it also does not detract from the elite play on the hardwood of Gilgeous-Alexander.

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