Day: May 6, 2025

Sam Presti has been named the 24-25 NBA Basketball Executive of the Year. The Oklahoma City Thunder had a 68-14 record, which is tied for the sixth-best record in NBA history. The award is the first in Presti’s tenure with the Thunder.

Presti received 10 First Place votes, six Second Place votes and six Third Place votes to finish ahead of Koby Altman of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Trajan Langdon of the Detroit Pistons. Rafael Stone of the Houston Rockets and Lawrence Frank of the LA Clippers rounded out the top-5.

The current iteration of the Thunder began when Presti traded both Paul George and Russell Westbrook during the 2019 offseason. Those trades helped the Thunder acquire the likes of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams.

The Brooklyn Nets were able to bottom out during the 24-25 season with a chance at a high lottery pick after they reacquired their 2025 first rounder in a trade last June with the Houston Rockets. The Nets have the most salary cap space this offseason and are not expected to embark on an extended rebuild.

The Nets only have Cameron Johnson and Nicolas Clayton on long-term contracts.

“The buzz from rival teams has been the Nets aren’t planning for a true long-haul tank, even after reacquiring their own picks last summer,” writes ESPN’s Jeremy Woo.

Brooklyn still owes a 2027 first round swap to the Rockets as part of the James Harden trade. Sean Marks has run the Brooklyn front office since February 2016.

The Oklahoma City Thunder have a set philosophy when it comes to protecting a three-point lead in the waning moments of the game. The Thunder are going to foul to prevent the opponent from attempting a game-tying three-point shot. Despite their Game 1 second round loss to the Denver Nuggets, Oklahoma City is unlikely to move away from this strategy. Instead, they prefer to think about executing it better.

“I probably could have let (Aaron) Gordon dribble a couple of more times, run some more time off the clock,” Thunder wing Alex Caruso said. “But at the same time, we’ve talked about, ‘When in doubt, just make sure you get the foul done.'”

Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault took the blame for how his team executed the strategy.

“The fouling up three, that’s on me,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “I think giving the foul and getting the foul executed is critical. So, if there is something to be learned from that, it’s probably giving it too early on my part. But that’s not on the players. They’re executing what I’m telling them to do.”

Thunder MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t have much issue with the strategy, because of how it’s worked in the past.

“It’s hard now because we lost, and it’s going to seem like we should have did the other thing obviously, because what we did led to a loss,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “But we’ve been in that situation before, we’ve fouled, and we’ve won the game. And (Monday), it didn’t go in our favor.”