Did Kevin Durant Make Sam Presti’s Legacy?

The First Rule of Coaching is timeless:

Player makes the coach.

You’ll notice the San Antonio Spurs with the best coach in NBA history in the collective bargaining era aren’t anything special without Timmy Duncan in his prime being the face of the franchise in the Alamo City.

I would also hope the local scribes who cover the Thunder would take notice the Thunder aren’t all that much without No. 35 making Russell Westbrook appear to be a point guard who can take an NBA team to at the minimum a division championship and perhaps a second round appearance in the NBA post season tournament.

So really what has Sam Presti done in Oklahoma City once Kevin Durant decided nothing was going to change with the Thunder in relation to the way Russell Westbrook plays the point guard position?

In these three years since the Hamptons—the Thunder have won 47, 48, and 49 regular season games. They have not won an outright Northwest Division championship. They have been the No. 6, the No. 4, and the No. 6 seeds in the rugged Western Conference. They are 4-12 in post season games when as real sports people know is when the real NBA season separates the pretenders from the contenders.

The Thunder with Presti making the decisions did not opt for a gradual rebuild after the Durant escape from Oklahoma. The best trade Presti ever made was to trade Serge Ibaka for Victor Oladipo, Domas Sabonis and Ersan Ilyasova who was later traded for the rights to Jerami Grant. This was a great trade. This was the trade which if left alone would have produced three young players all on rookie scale contracts who would have been the obvious core of the Thunder moving forward.

Imagine if you will the Thunder right now with Oladipo, Adams, Sabonis, Grant, and Ferguson as the starting core with some 6th man later acquired who could score the ball.

This isn’t a championship team, but at least it’s not a farcical joke bordering on the Little Miss Sunshine version of an NBA team with acute dysfunctional disorder.

This would actually be a young team one could like and somewhat respect.

Instead–Presti and Clay Bennett pushed all their chips in the middle for Carmelo Anthony and then made the trade for Paul George. Only problem is—they still had a point guard who to date has proved he can’t win anything without Kevin Durant carrying his lunch pail for him.

Paul George is a ball player. I’d roll with Paul George because he’s an honest two way player on both ends of the floor. In fact–after Durant’s escape from Oklahoma Crazy … Paul George was the player at the top of my list to replace Kevin Durant.

But we’ve witnessed to date that is Paul George is not enough to mitigate the absurdly high usage Russell Westbrook who turned into Frankenstein during the Oscar Roberson triple double season when every bad habit he previously had was stoked even more by Sam Presti and his decision making.

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