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I was hoping you all can clarify something for me. I was having a discussion with a friend and said there is no difference between what Presti is doing in OKC than what Hinkie did in Philly. The only variation is Hinkie got vilified by the league and the media. Am I wrong?

Presti had previous success. Also OKC is a small market so no one really care about them "being a disgrace to the league"

The only thing Sam Presti excels at is drafting within the top 3. Besides that he's a terrorist that sucks at his job, can't build a team and has been plaguing fans in Oklahoma since 2007.

Hinkie oversaw 2.5 seasons worth of games so he could get the timeline right. Lets take a trip back to 2016 when Jerry Colangelo snaked his way into the org:

1. Embiid on a rookie contract
2. The rights to the #1 pick in the draft (Simmons) on a rookie contract
3. Room for max contract #1
4. Room for max contract #2
5. Robert Covington on a Hinkie special
6. Dario Saric about to come over on a rookie deal
7. Jerami Grant on a Hinkie special
8. Richaun Holmes on a Hinkie special
9. TJ McConnell on a Hinkie special
10. Lakers top 3 (later top 5) protected
11. Kings unprotected
12. 2 Kings pick swaps
13. 2 extra first round picks in 2016
14. Okafor in talks to go to Boston for the Jaylen Brown Nets pick
15. Noel is still being talked about as a near max guy
16. Innumerable 2nd round picks

Ok so where did we start? With Jrue Holiday, Thad Young, and Spencer Hawes as your three best players. In 2.5 seasons he turned water into wine.

This is not the same thing as pouting and throwing a fit and blowing up your roster because you couldn't build around Kevin Durant or James Harden and then sending Paul George away for 10 first round picks. That's just loser behavior and incompetence of the highest degree.

Hinkie took on a worse situation on the heels of the Bynum trade. His downfall was three straight centers and wanting to trade Okafor at his highest value after trading MCW at his highest value. Presti wasn’t able to make three mvps work, which might have been more of a Scott rooks problem

The Rockets, Magic, and Pistons have a worse win percentage both last year and this than the Thunder. Yeah, Presti is tanking, but he's not doing it in as embarrassing a fashion as Hinkie was. Again, the Thunder haven't even been the worse team in the NBA these past couple of years.

I don't like Hinkie or Presti...and Morey has 2 months to fix this mess or I'll be done with him too.

stormi wrote:Hinkie oversaw 2.5 seasons worth of games so he could get the timeline right. Lets take a trip back to 2016 when Jerry Colangelo snaked his way into the org:

1. Embiid on a rookie contract
2. The rights to the #1 pick in the draft (Simmons) on a rookie contract
3. Room for max contract #1
4. Room for max contract #2
5. Robert Covington on a Hinkie special
6. Dario Saric about to come over on a rookie deal
7. Jerami Grant on a Hinkie special
8. Richaun Holmes on a Hinkie special
9. TJ McConnell on a Hinkie special
10. Lakers top 3 (later top 5) protected
11. Kings unprotected
12. 2 Kings pick swaps
13. 2 extra first round picks in 2016
14. Okafor in talks to go to Boston for the Jaylen Brown Nets pick
15. Noel is still being talked about as a near max guy
16. Innumerable 2nd round picks

Ok so where did we start? With Jrue Holiday, Thad Young, and Spencer Hawes as your three best players. In 2.5 seasons he turned water into wine.

This is not the same thing as pouting and throwing a fit and blowing up your roster because you couldn't build around Kevin Durant or James Harden and then sending Paul George away for 10 first round picks. That's just loser behavior and incompetence of the highest degree.

Just wanted to repost this.

Kobblehead wrote:The Rockets, Magic, and Pistons have a worse win percentage both last year and this than the Thunder. Yeah, Presti is tanking, but he's not doing it in as embarrassing a fashion as Hinkie was. Again, the Thunder haven't even been the worse team in the NBA these past couple of years.

Team management tanks. But players out there playing don’t tank. The difference between okc 6th worst and the 2nd worst nba record was merely 2 game. That’s it.

Okc was trying to tank last season. Except other teams tanked even more. What happen to okc was the players won’t a game in Boston they shouldn’t have. Than the clippers purposely trying (and successfully losing to okc on purpose end of the season to try to avoid the lakers in playoffs)

That’s 2 games okc had no business winning but the players on the court beat the Celtics. And Clippers gave away a game on purpose.

Kobblehead wrote:The Rockets, Magic, and Pistons have a worse win percentage both last year and this than the Thunder. Yeah, Presti is tanking, but he's not doing it in as embarrassing a fashion as Hinkie was. Again, the Thunder haven't even been the worse team in the NBA these past couple of years.

The Sixers were only the worst team in the league record-wise for 1 of the 3 years that Hinkie was here and that was the infamous 10 win season in 2015-16. The Bucks were worse than us in 2013-14 and the Knicks and T-Wolves were both worse than us in 2014-15.

He probably went a little too far that 11 win season I think it was. The year Okafor rolled out of bed for 20 and 10.

*missed it right above me, 10 win season. So brutal

Negrodamus wrote:Hinkie took on a worse situation on the heels of the Bynum trade. His downfall was three straight centers and wanting to trade Okafor at his highest value after trading MCW at his highest value. Presti wasn’t able to make three mvps work, which might have been more of a Scott rooks problem

Yup. Really his downfall was Embiid's setback and needing a second foot surgery just before the 2015 draft which prompted him to take Okafor out of fear that Embiid would never play for us.

In hindsight, while a number of other guys taken after Okafor have had better careers than him, the only one that really makes me say "Oh man, if only Hinkie had taken him instead of Okafor..." is Devin Booker who fell to 13. Aside from him and Towns, nobody from that draft class has had what I'd call an amazing career.

One could argue that he also messed up by passing on Giannis in favor of Noel and MCW in 2013 but to be fair a lot of teams passed on Giannis.

Sorta. I think Hinkie was a little more extreme with his measures in terms of just making the team completely uncompetitive and circumventing the cap floor.

But also... So what? We really need to still be dwelling on this?

We could talk about Ben some more if you'd rather

stormi wrote:Hinkie oversaw 2.5 seasons worth of games so he could get the timeline right. Lets take a trip back to 2016 when Jerry Colangelo snaked his way into the org:

1. Embiid on a rookie contract
2. The rights to the #1 pick in the draft (Simmons) on a rookie contract
3. Room for max contract #1
4. Room for max contract #2
5. Robert Covington on a Hinkie special
6. Dario Saric about to come over on a rookie deal
7. Jerami Grant on a Hinkie special
8. Richaun Holmes on a Hinkie special
9. TJ McConnell on a Hinkie special
10. Lakers top 3 (later top 5) protected
11. Kings unprotected
12. 2 Kings pick swaps
13. 2 extra first round picks in 2016
14. Okafor in talks to go to Boston for the Jaylen Brown Nets pick
15. Noel is still being talked about as a near max guy
16. Innumerable 2nd round picks

Ok so where did we start? With Jrue Holiday, Thad Young, and Spencer Hawes as your three best players. In 2.5 seasons he turned water into wine.

This is not the same thing as pouting and throwing a fit and blowing up your roster because you couldn't build around Kevin Durant or James Harden and then sending Paul George away for 10 first round picks. That's just loser behavior and incompetence of the highest degree.

Thank you for sharing this. I proposed the same question in the Knicks forum where I usually post. I will share your answer which I think is extremely well thought out and makes an amazing point. I thank you again for taking the time to write this.

Embiid P wrote:

Negrodamus wrote:Hinkie took on a worse situation on the heels of the Bynum trade. His downfall was three straight centers and wanting to trade Okafor at his highest value after trading MCW at his highest value. Presti wasn’t able to make three mvps work, which might have been more of a Scott rooks problem

Yup. Really his downfall was Embiid's setback and needing a second foot surgery just before the 2015 draft which prompted him to take Okafor out of fear that Embiid would never play for us.

In hindsight, while a number of other guys taken after Okafor have had better careers than him, the only one that really makes me say "Oh man, if only Hinkie had taken him instead of Okafor..." is Devin Booker who fell to 13. Aside from him and Towns, nobody from that draft class has had what I'd call an amazing career.

One could argue that he also messed up by passing on Giannis in favor of Noel and MCW in 2013 but to be fair a lot of teams passed on Giannis.

I don't know what caused them to take Okafor, but I would say just Embiid having to miss the second year was the biggest reason that ultimately led to Hinkie's firing. Like if Embiid plays a decent chunk of that year and is anywhere near as good as he was the following year they probably win an "acceptable" amount of games and more importantly they have a tangible on-court success story.

Instead it was just raw Cov, Jerami and TJ along with injured Embiid, never coming over Dario, out-of-position Nerlens, bad Okafor, traded MCW and a bunch of future picks. It just reinforced the narrative that he didn't have a plan and was just going to stink forever.

Presti has a least put some decent players on the court. Plus it's easier to invest in developing players with the two-way spots now, Hinkie had to use actual roster spots to do that.

The real difference is that Hinkie flat out tested the limits of what you can do when you rebuild, the league punished him for it, and now the rebuilding GMs know what lines you can't cross.