Once the teachers, it's now the Spurs' turn to follow in the footsteps of Presti's Thunder
Even during the lean years, the San Antonio and Oklahoma City organizations have remained inextricably linked by their common philosophies.
Their scripts may have been different along the way, but the storylines of the last five and seven years have been remarkably similar for the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder, respectively. And at the very center of it all, the main plot points were nearly identical.
Once the franchise superstars these teams were so fortunate to draft decided it was time to move along, very little could be done to salvage the remnants of what had been championship-caliber rosters and remain among the league’s elite. Kawhi Leonard and Kevin Durant were not just cogs in the machines; they were the machines, and their replacement parts could only hold up for so long before the engines eventually died.
It all illustrates the point most front offices and fans alike have come to understand well: Without The Guy, teams have very little chance of maintaining real title hopes, if that’s the ultimate goal. Russell Westbrook, Paul George, Chris Paul and DeMar DeRozan will all end up in the Hall of Fame one day — the careers of Dejounte Murray, Derrick White and Jakob Poeltl won’t be too shabby either — but Leonard and Durant, they are not. The ceilings the Spurs and Thunder had been chasing in their previous iterations were unattainable in the teams’ newest forms, no matter the pieces they cobbled together in attempts to remain competitive.
So the teardowns in San Antonio and Oklahoma City became inevitable. The free-agency siren songs aren’t sung with the same kind of panache in small markets as they are in the more glamorous NBA cities, and the realization these teams must return to the well that gave them life in the first place became painfully clear. It was time to reset, and the draft, as it always had been, was the best rebuilding tool at their disposal.
The Spurs and Thunder squared off on Sunday night, two sides on the same path with one just a couple of years ahead of the other. Even without budding superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (injury management) and recent No. 2 overall pick Chet Holmgren (out for his rookie season with a Lisfranc injury), Oklahoma City’s young core of homegrown players handled the also shorthanded and injury-managing Spurs in a 102-90 rock fight. But despite the poor shooting and lack of scoring, the depth of talent for the Thunder was evident, even in its infant state.
Rookie Jalen Williams went for 21 points and 10 rebounds, rookie Jaylin Williams led the team with four steals, rookie Ousmane Dieng went for 17 points and eight rebounds off the bench, and second-year forward Josh Giddey scored 15 points and grabbed a team-high 11 rebounds — all players who landed in Oklahoma City on their respective draft nights, and all just part of the initial wave of picks the Thunder have in their loaded bag.
But while the ongoing tally of assets is often the fuel that drives the draft-night conversations, it’s the blueprints in San Antonio and Oklahoma City that make the arms race between these two teams in particular most interesting. Because in terms of development strategy and implementation of culture, there may not be two franchises in the league more similarly minded.
Thunder Executive Vice President and General Manager Sam Presti sprang from the Spurs’ system. From his video-intern days working out of a converted custodial closet in the Alamodome beginning in 2000, to his promotion to assistant general manager in 2005 and his eventual hiring in Seattle in 2007 — the franchise would move to Oklahoma City the following season — the former “second-youngest GM in NBA history” absorbed everything about the way R.C. Buford and Gregg Popovich did business during his time in San Antonio.
The work behind closed doors, the methodical and clinical approach to the job, the avoidance of any sort of spotlight, the silence in the media — the Thunder quickly became Spurs North, and the two franchises have operated as almost mirror images of one another since the day Presti took the SuperSonics job.
“You can tell Sam (Presti) learned a lot from his time here with R.C. (Buford) and Pop, because everything there is professional, super organized, very detailed,” said Doug McDermott, who had a short stint in Oklahoma City during the 2016-17 season. “And that’s not the way it is everywhere. These are the two best organizations I’ve played for in that manner — just the way they treat their players and their families — and I think a lot of that goes to R.C. and what they’ve built (in San Antonio).”
And it isn’t just the cultural element that stands out in Oklahoma City, because the basketball has been pretty damn good, too.
It might sound odd to suggest one tanking team should look to another as an example of what an effective rebuild looks like in progress, but the Thunder have quietly put together a group that is much closer to competing than most may realize. Since Jan. 1, Oklahoma City has gone 19-14 and outscored its opponents by 5.4 points per 100 possessions, the third best net rating in the NBA during that span. It’s boasted the fifth-ranked offense and the tenth-tanked defense since the calendar turned, and Gilgeous-Alexander — who was part of the deal that sent George to the Los Angeles Clippers during the 2019 offseason — has become one of the league’s most prolific scorers at 31.3 points per game.
What makes it all the more impressive? The Thunder, with an average roster age of 22.9 years old, are currently challenging for a spot in the NBA Play-In Tournament as the youngest team in the league. They’re no title contender yet, and given the fact they’re still approaching any injuries with an extra layer of caution and a dollop of load management, they may eventually land once more among the lottery-ball hopefuls when all is said and done this season.
But if Oklahoma City does miss the playoffs again, it might be the last time that happens for quite a while. These players haven’t been in this position before, but their time is coming quickly.
“We may have a young and inexperienced team, but not a team that lacks for competitiveness or team orientation. And there’s power in that. It’s impressive,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said Sunday. “When you’re young and in the NBA and you’re trying to establish yourself, and there’s a lot of individual forces pulling at you, that can distract from the team at different times. And this particular group has done an amazing job staying inside the team and continuing to trust the team and the program and the organization.”
For all the handwringing over the effects of tanking on a young team — namely the concern over potential for learning bad habits — Oklahoma City is methodically illustrating the idea that those negative byproducts don’t have to be a reality for teams that take this type of rebuild route. They certainly can be, but they don’t have to be.
Much like any new business that goes through growing pains, having the right structure in place is key. And now, in a small reversal of roles, the process the Thunder have followed is beginning to bear fruit the Spurs and the rest of the league can clearly see, and the business practices Presti was taught in San Antonio long ago are still proving to be effective nearly two decades later.
“The other thing I think we’re proud of organizationally is our day-to-day environment has not been reactive to the outcomes of games. If you walked in our gym when we were preparing for a game late in the season that’s got a little more weight to it like we do right now, or if you walked in a year ago when we weren’t in this position, I don’t think you’d feel much of a difference with how everybody’s working, with the emotional mood of the building,” Daigneault said. “It’s just been very steady, poised and consistent — not too high or low. And we take a lot of pride in that because we feel it gives our players the best chance to do good work.”
For their part, the Spurs have preached patience, perspective and development since the opening day of training camp, and they’ve done everything they possibly can to insulate their players from the outside noise. Nobody in that building is trying to convince anyone on the outside the tank isn’t happening, but they’ve cut no corners with the training aspect of the operation.
San Antonio has put some funky lineups on the floor this season, taken extra precaution with every injury, big or small, and given its players a chance to rest for a day or two here and there when the workload has been heavier than usual. The playing field has not been level for much of the season, and it’s hit them harder in the win column than it likely would have otherwise had all things been equal. But on the court, whether it’s at practice or during games, there’s been little doubt of the effort they’ve given with whoever has been available.
Just in the last week we’ve seen a fully healthy Spurs team take down the West-leading Denver Nuggets in impressive fashion on Friday, and then four days later set a franchise record with 22 made 3-pointers in a 132-114 win over another young upstart in the Orlando Magic on Tuesday. Much like Oklahoma City, San Antonio has treated what is an inherently questionable process to many as seriously and with as much good faith as possible. It’s all relative, but so far they’ve done this tanking thing correctly.
“The way these organizations rebuild is different from other organizations. They value high-character, high-I.Q. young guys, and we’re going to play hard every night. We might not win, but I feel like with some teams in the past, the tanking is a little obvious. And we’re going into every game trying to win,” McDermott said. “We don’t even feel that [tanking] when we walk in. We’re legit trying to win every game going into it. And I think that’s what the Thunder have done this year especially with their vets. I think they’re a little ahead of us, but we’re on our way, for sure.”
The Thunder and Spurs have been connected in more ways than one for the last 15 years, from the shared philosophies of the organizations to the multiple heated playoff series between the teams at their previous peaks. But it’s been a long time since the Western Conference ran through these two small markets.
Since then the Los Angeles and Bay Area behemoths have taken the mantle by means of free agency and the trade market, the Dallas metroplex is now home to a pair of superstars of its own in Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving as the Mavs try desperately to remain contenders, Denver has finally put together realistic title chances behind its two-time (and possibly three-time) MVP in Nikola Jokic, and the Phoenix Suns just went all in to trade for Kevin Durant and create the league’s newest superteam. But the little guys are surging again.
The Grizzlies and Kings have seen meteoric rises over the last couple of seasons, finding success with and building around the stars they drafted. But each team took a more proactive approach in acquiring veteran players at an earlier stage than both Oklahoma City and San Antonio have, and they skipped rather quickly toward the front of the line once the pieces were in place.
It’s fair to question whether the foundations upon which Memphis and Sacramento have built will eventually be enough to reach the very top, but regardless of their organizations’ respective outcomes moving forward, they’ve each fielded competitive groups that should be postseason regulars for as long as their cores remain intact. At the very least, they’ve already come this far in what have been objectively successful rebuilds to this point.
But the Thunder and Spurs are attempting to show there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and that their like-minded methodology will prove to be even more effective in the long run — that the way they’re doing things will elevate their future ceilings to a greater extent than the alternative method would allow. Considering their measured and disciplined organizational approach, along with the very obvious talent level, Oklahoma City’s eventual arrival on the scene should hit hard in the coming years, so long as it stays healthy. But it’s technically still a theory, which makes for easy questions.
On the surface, and without the kind of results that typically indicate or reflect team success, it’s difficult notice what the Thunder have accomplished through these losing years. But growth during a tank is not easily quantifiable. One can glance at the individual statistics, or take a moment to watch Gilgeous-Alexander and Co. from time to time, but none of it matters to the public when there are no wins in the bank. And until those start to roll in with consistency, the jury will remain out on whether or not the plan has worked.
Still, the Thunder are confident their business structure will provide coaches and players the tools they’ll need to be successful in the end, and so are the Spurs. The one piece that’s eluded San Antonio since Leonard’s departure, however, is The Guy — someone Oklahoma City already has in Gilgeous-Alexander, and someone the Spurs surely hope to find this summer. They’ve already got a talented and confident group of, at the very least, high-level role players in house, but the next step toward etching the timeline in stone is drafting the player who provides the chisel. That’s when the plan can truly begin to unfold, the way it’s beginning to for the Thunder.
It might still be a few paces behind, but San Antonio can see the Oklahoma City footprints on the track ahead.
“They’ve got a culture that’s been established — professionalism, discipline, standards, accountability — so that’s what you’re seeing,” Popovich said of the Thunder. “The staff and players have been wonderful with what they’ve accomplished.”
From here on out, the Spurs hope they’ll be able to follow suit.