This is what makes him a great GM. Hopefully Mr.Murray can build us a dynasty one day. One day after winning the Western Conference Finals, Sam Presti and Troy Weaver of the Thunder front office caught an early flight to Chicago to attend a 9 AM workout session at the NBA Pre-Draft Camp. “The Pre-Draft Camp is another step in the evaluation process as we head into the draft,” Presti said. “We place a lot of value on the opportunity to sit down with a lot of the prospects and learn about them on a personal level as we determine who are potential fits for our organization now and in the future." Oklahoma City owns the 29th overall pick. http://newsok.com/okc-thunder-sam-p.../Thunder+(NewsOK.com+RSS+-+sports+>>+thunder)
Presti is a good GM and all but Durant/Westbrook/Harden were all high draft picks. It's not like he got them out of nowhere They were well positioned in the draft and they've picked well.
Man, if only Morey would go to the pre draft camp. I bet only good GMs are there. Presence at the Camp is what separates good GMs from the bad ones.
westbrook and harden were both projected to go lower and while htey were known to be good, not as good as presti took them when he did at 2-3 he had some special finds and on how they would fit together and mentally be ok with okc, etc and the culture
Hope this is sarcasm...Presti did brilliant work drafting guys and establsihing a great, young core. 2008, Westbrook at #4 and especially Ibaka at #24 were brilliant picks. 2009, had the guts to take Harden at #3. Morey ain't got **** on him at this stage of their GM careers.
No disrespect to Presti, because he did hit big on all of those picks, but Morey has not had anything near a #3 and #4 pick to compare. And Morey has done pretty well given the picks he has had, granted he hasn't found an Ibaka. Though it could be argued that Ibaka shines on that team because he isn't asked to do too much -- block shots and rebound, hit the occasional open jumper.
I'm curious to see what Morey could do with a top 5 pick in the draft. Only way to know compare him and Presti.
Absolutely true. But Morey has never had cap space before. It is an incredibly important tool in making trades in the NBA. Presti had lots of cap to work with and the great fortune of the Blazers not selecting KD.
I was looking at some mock drafts and a bunch of them had them picking ricky rubio instead of harden. RW was a top 6 pick on most mock drafts and many of them had him going to OKC. Harden was a consensus top 5 pick so pick him at 3 wasn't that much of a reach. I will have to give him credit for getting Serge. That is one really good pick he made. Even Perkins was a result of trading a top 5 pick (Green). Heck they could have got love and rubio so their big three could be KD,Love, Rubio. The fact is when you have three top 5 picks you can get some really good players.
He got plain ass lucky with Ibaka. There is no way in life he knew he'd be THAT good. I'll give him credit for Westbrook all day long. There were several players that was rated higher than Westbrook in the draft. However, I have to say that going into that draft my two highest rated players behind Rose was Westbrook and Love.
Nice thread. Did you know the Rockets are HOSTING the International players combine? Did you also know Murray takes a trip to Europe and colleges every year during the college season? I guess Presti will check out the players but Murray did that 5 months ago. :grin:
I hope you know it is well documented that Morey is one of, if not, the hardest working GM's in the league.
if kevin durant wasn't on the team..you wouldn't even know who presti is. so you can thank portland for presti's fame.
Presti has done an outstanding job and to say otherwise is stupid. All this "he got lucky" talk is just more excuse making for our management team.
You're forgetting that the Thunder were incredibly fortunate when Jeff Green declined their $50mm extension offer. Had he signed, the Thunder wouldn't have acquired Kendrick Perkins, and they'd be a significantly weaker team.
