Few have to be feeling more fulfilled about the Oklahoma City Thunder finally scaling the mountaintop than their longtime executive Sam Presti.
The Thunder won the 2025 NBA championship on Sunday night with a 103-91 victory in Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the Indiana Pacers. With the win in front of their home crowd at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, O.K., the Oklahoma City franchise captured their first title ever since relocating from Seattle back in 2008.
In the wake of the Thunder championship, everyone said the same thing online about the Thunder general manager and executive vice president Presti — that he had officially cemented his legacy as an all-time great executive.
Sam Presti has finally cemented himself with the great executives in history with a championship pic.twitter.com/pyhzg4uBgg
— (@twowayshai) June 23, 2025
Sam Presti cements himself tonight as the best GM of this century. Built this Thunder team from the ground up – multiple times – in a small market and has his franchise set up beautifully for the next decade or more.
— David Weiner (@BimaThug) June 23, 2025
So happy for Sam Presti. One of the greatest General Managers in sports history.
— Thunder Film Room (@ThunderFilmRoom) June 23, 2025
Sam Presti has to be up there among the best executives in sports now that he’s reached the mountaintop with a ring.
— Chase Hughes (@chasedcsports) June 23, 2025
Presti, 48, has been the general manager of the franchise since 2007 (at which point he was just 29 years old). Despite having limited resources on a team that was never much of a destination for free agents, Presti achieved remarkable success through countless shrewd moves over the years. He drafted Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden and rode that trio to an NBA Finals berth in 2012.
Then after trading Harden in 2012 and watching Durant leave in 2016, Presti maintained a competitive team based around Westbrook and new co-star Paul George (whom the Thunder traded for in 2017). Then Presti tactfully ended the Westbrook era by trading him in 2019 and also managed to flip George later that very same year for a franchise-altering package that included Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the draft pick that eventually became Jalen Williams, and many other future assets. Additionally, Presti later drafted Chet Holmgren, found some diamond-in-the-rough role players like Luguentz Dort and Cason Wallace, and smartly filled out the rest of the roster last summer by trading for Alex Caruso and signing Isaiah Hartenstein.
Oklahoma City was the best team throughout this regular season, winning a franchise-record 68 games. Now they have a championship as well (with the youngest average age of any NBA champion over the last 40 years) and the legacy of Presti (who was also recently the story of a fantastic viral story) as an all-time great front office figure is fully secure.
