{"id":1979581,"date":"2026-06-09T00:16:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T21:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1979581"},"modified":"2026-06-09T00:16:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T21:16:54","slug":"thunder-lead-exec-pushes-back-on-narratives-surrounding-shai-gilgeous-alexander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1979581","title":{"rendered":"Thunder lead exec pushes back on narratives surrounding Shai Gilgeous-Alexander"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Oklahoma City Thunder lead executive Sam Presti said he\u2019s never talked to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander about the internet\u2019s relationship with his drawing fouls, and that the back-to-back NBA MVP would \u201ckill me for talking about this,\u201d but Presti needed to say his piece.<\/p>\n

In a near-seven-minute tangent during Presti\u2019s annual end-of-season availability, which ran almost two hours, Presti addressed the discourse surrounding SGA\u2019s proclivity to draw fouls \u2014 a subject that swelled this season between opposing coaches and players to fans and pundits.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe\u2019s playing against six people,\u201d Presti said Monday. \u201cHe\u2019s got five defenders, and the sixth defender is social media. That\u2019s a reality. He\u2019s not going to be the last player that the machine decides to target, but no one\u2019s going to handle it as gracefully, because when they turn it on somebody else, they\u2019re not going to step up there every night and not acknowledge it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This past season, several coaches vocalized their frustrations with the way Gilgeous-Alexander is officiated, including New York\u2019s Mike Brown, Detroit\u2019s J.B. Bickerstaff, Golden State\u2019s Steve Kerr and Minnesota\u2019s Chris Finch. Their comments ranged from taking exception to the application of rules and discrepancies in how SGA is officiated relative to other players, all the way to the physicality teams are allowed to defend him and the frequency they feel he flops.<\/p>\n

Presti noted that postgame news conferences had \u201cturned into the bully pulpit to create competitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe know what that is,\u201d Presti added. \u201cIt used to be you\u2019d get up there, you\u2019d 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\u2019re great competitors, so we know why that\u2019s happening, and I don\u2019t fault them because I think they may think it works.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As a point to derail from the discourse, instead of hoping to credit Gilgeous-Alexander on the season he had and the career he\u2019s built, Presti cited the critical narratives he feels surround the league\u2019s product and how Gilgeous-Alexander contradicts them.<\/p>\n

Among those narratives, he noted claims that \u201call NBA players do is complain, b\u2014- and moan and try to intimidate the officials with bad behavior in the games to give foul calls. (SGA has) gotten three technical fouls this year, none for complaining.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He also cited load management \u2014 such a controversial topic of the past decade that it spawned the now-contentious 65-game rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody plays. They take all these games off. Shai plays every night,\u201d Presti said. \u201cHe plays back-to-backs. He plays heavy minutes. He plays against good teams. He plays against teams that are bad. He plays every night. His consistency is well documented. So, you can\u2019t get him on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he continued, Presti noted the issue fans have taken with the increasing 3-point rate among teams and the idea that it\u2019s damaged the product.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next one is, \u2018All you do is shoot 3s. NBA players, all they do is shoot 3s.\u2019 OK. Well, he\u2019s brought the midrange back to an art form,\u201d Presti said of SGA. \u201cHe\u2019s transcendent for any generation, any player. That\u2019s why older players love his game.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Eventually, he circled back to the fouls. It always comes back to the whistle.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe drew 415 fouls this year; 11 were challenged,\u201d Presti said. \u201cFour of those were overturned. So, that\u2019s like 2 1\/2 percent of the foul calls were actually challenged. He\u2019s tied with (Joel) Embiid for eight and nine (eighth and ninth) in terms of number of fouls drawn in the season. Six and seven are Jaylen Brown and (Victor) Wembanyama.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I understand, if you listen to the narrative, you\u2019d think he\u2019s (Nos.) 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the season-ending loss in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals to the San Antonio Spurs, Gilgeous-Alexander was asked whether he\u2019d offer any input on the impending offseason changes. He denied that notion, saying he\u2019d trust Presti, \u201cthe greatest GM ever,\u201d<\/a> to rearrange things accordingly.<\/p>\n

When asked whether he\u2019d then lean on SGA at all this summer, Presti noted he\u2019s always in conversation with players \u2014 even if they aren\u2019t necessarily having an impact on team-building directly.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAll my conversations aren\u2019t necessarily going to somebody for input, but just a lot of the conversations that I\u2019m having with the players are (because) I like to learn from them and understand what they\u2019re seeing,\u201d Presti said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShai is the same. Like, I love talking to him and understand what he\u2019s seeing and what he\u2019s thinking during the season. When it comes to these types of things, I\u2019m never going to put him in a position where it could compromise him with anybody or his teammates or anything like that. I know how to handle that. I would never do that. Ultimately, I have to make the best decisions for the team. I hope I have enough of a relationship with him where we can talk and I can decide what I feel we need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oklahoma City Thunder lead executive Sam Presti said he\u2019s never talked to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander about the internet\u2019s relationship with his drawing fouls, and that the back-to-back NBA MVP would \u201ckill me for talking about this,\u201d but Presti needed to say his piece. In a near-seven-minute tangent during Presti\u2019s annual end-of-season availability, which ran almost two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1979581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1979581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1979581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1979581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1979581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}