Sam Presti’s Genius (Or: How I Learned to Portal)

Leading groups of people doesn’t come easy; there is an unquantifiable cost that comes with being a leader. In his 2024 interview with JJ Redick, Bob Myers, the man responsible for orchestrating the Golden State Warriors dynasty, noted that his role as general manager was primarily focused on conflict management. On top of those duties, Myers helmed roster construction and front office staffing. Although the stakes are higher, Myers’ roles and responsibilities may not look too different from that of a corporate middle manager.

Weekly one-on-ones, confirming PTO, and assigning work are just a few tasks that fill the plate of many professionals. These tasks, in their own right, can become conflict management for the manager. One person wanting a colleague’s work becomes a problem for both the employee wanting the work and the one currently handling it. Leaders that have to make these decisions are thus required to run through the work trade’s pros and cons. 

In Myers’ case, that calculus looks a bit different. One player being upset can have a domino effect, resulting in losing games, losing players, and becoming a less desirable place to play. All of the above can have an eight-figure effect on the organization down the line. 

A core commonality between Myers and a corporate middle manager is that they are both in charge of a zero-sum game. For Myers, there is only so much usage that can go around a basketball court. He doesn’t have unlimited minutes to allocate and there’s only one ball that can go around. Other sports, like baseball, diverge from this reality. Baseball teams can theoretically add as much WAR via free agency as possible and reap all the benefits without the law of diminishing returns having an effect. The corporate world mirrors the world that Myers operates in.

A shining light in the team management field is Sam Presti, the long-tenured Oklahoma City Thunder general manager. Most end-of-season press conferences are filled with the lion’s share of coachspeak that leads you to believe the person speaking at the podium isn’t so much the general manager as they are the team’s lead spokesperson. However, Presti deviates from this industry standard. At the end of last season, Presti’s presser lasted north of two hours, speaking with brevity while also giving fans an in-depth view of his machinations on the team’s past, current, and future state. 

Presti’s comments are a refreshing viewpoint given the way fans are constantly inundated with sports discourse that poses questions in a vacuum. Presti doesn’t believe anything is set in stone. Moreover, he believes that each team is its own unique iteration and that players aren’t always the same. A player may not seem to fit during one season, but during another they may fit perfectly into what the team needs. Presti achieves this disposition by not having preconceived notions about his team at the season’s beginning. “We’re not set in any way. I think our way is to maintain an open mind, to have a beginner’s mindset about everything.” 

Presti also speaks on the kind of people the Thunder have on their team. On Chet Holmgren, Presti says he’s “ambitious, but without an agenda.” This kind of mindset is one not only valuable in sports, but in any workplace. Presti has identified that if everyone buys into the culture of doing things the right way, then people don’t go home upset about sharp elbows boxing them out of their role. Presti adds, “When envy is driving things versus competition … sometimes that can overwhelm people and when that happens it can really screw your team up.” 

Presti’s comments in these press conferences aren’t so much a masterclass about basketball as they are about teams in general. The dynamic of any team is a fragile binding, held together by those that are deemed part of the collective covenant. Many things can disturb this binding, be it money, or frustration with a role, or not agreeing with the culture set by team leaders. Presti claims, “I think the thing that’s happened in Denver and in other places that have long strings of success is this concept of mutual commitment. And I think you need to have a mutual commitment with your best players.” Mutual commitment, lack of agendas, and a management system set up to promote success play in any setting.

To close his press conference, Presti imparts a story to the observing reporters. While touring NASA alongside some of America’s finest scientists, President Lyndon B. Johnson saw a custodian emphatically polishing a railing. Shocked by his enthusiasm and apparent ignorance of Johnson, the then-president approached the custodian and asked, “Why are you working so hard at that?” The custodian replied back, “Because we’re trying to put a man on the moon.” A microcosm for how Presti thinks about constructing a team, the custodian's story embodies what an ideal team member looks like. It’s about having people that know their role, aren’t out for themselves, and can work cohesively in their assigned role to achieve a collective goal. 

One field that hasn’t seemed to quite grasp these concepts is men’s college basketball. With new portal rules at play, we often see the teams with the most money buying the most expensive players thereby creating a team culture founded on money, rather than team success. Presti teaches us that stacking a team with just name value doesn’t necessarily correlate with creating the best version of a team. 

At college basketball’s mountaintop, you’ll find that the teams excelling in the portal era either have a plethora of returning talent or a well-constructed transfer class. Among those falling short of the public’s expectations, you’ll find groups of transfer players with conflicting skill sets, creating dysfunction within the team’s dynamic. 

The group of overperformers I speak of features Auburn, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Auburn centers their team around 5th year forward and Naismith College Player of the Year front-runner Johni Broome, a staple of Bruce Pearl’s last two Auburn teams. Denver Jones, Miles Kelly, Dylan Cardwell, and Chad Baker-Mazara accompany Broome in Auburn’s starting five. Once transfers, Jones and Baker-Mazara are in their 2nd and 3rd years on the Tigers while Cardwell, known by some as Mr. Auburn, finds himself at Auburn for the 5th consecutive year. Last year, Auburn lacked spacing and found themselves as an early March exit. To fill this need, they identified Kelly, a then Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket sharpshooter, as a player who could remedy their three-point shooting need. This returning talent paired with Kelly has helped Auburn be regularly found at the top of any worthwhile rating system this season. 

Tennessee may have had the most impressive portal by adding Felix Okpara, Igor Milicic Jr., and Chaz Lanier. Each of these players fit a very specific need for a Tennessee program whose calling card under Rick Barnes has been elite defense coupled with lackluster offense, a formula that has led to minimal March success. Okpara provides this Tennessee iteration with the rim defender and rebounder that they desperately needed with previous center Jonas Aidoo’s departure to Arkansas. Milicic’s addition raises Tennessee’s offensive ceiling to heights we haven’t seen in recent years, making him one of college basketball’s best portal acquisitions this season. At Charlotte last season, Milicic, a 6’10 forward, shot 37.6% from three while also averaging 8.5 rebounds per game. This kind of floor spacing entity is a college basketball anomaly and makes them a nightmare to defend when paired with North Florida transfer Chaz Lanier who has averaged north of 45% from three this season, one of the highest marks in the country. Pairing Milicic and Lanier with returning point guard and known-distributor Zakai Zeigler has been a dynamite combo for the undefeated Volunteers this season. As of writing, Tennessee's starting unit ranks 2nd in adjusted offensive efficiency among Power Five offenses with at least 150 offensive possessions per EvanMiya. 

Newly-hired Kentucky coach Mark Pope was tasked with building an entirely new roster as departing coach John Calipari took much of the talent that made up Kentucky’s previous team with him to Arkansas. Pope didn’t go out and get the best on-paper names, but rather found a cohesive group that can play his style. Their starting five of Andrew Carr, Amari Williams, Otega Oweh, Jaxson Robinson, and Lamont Butler accelerates due to the optionality that the group affords. Williams, a Drexel transfer, is one of the best rebounders in the nation but can get played off the court against a floor-spacing five man. Enter Carr who doubles as a stretch four and five man on any given night depending on what the opposing team throws at Kentucky. Oweh and Butler accelerate as guard defenders while Jaxson Robinson is a plus three-point shooter, shooting 35.4% last year at BYU on an above-average amount of attempts. Butler and Oweh can score in their own right, but Pope also recruited Kerr Kriisa, a West Virginia transfer,  who is more of a prototypical score-first guard than his backcourt counterparts. The beauty of this Kentucky group lies within the lack of overlap that Presti speaks of. It’s a group that can beat you in a lot of ways with myriad lineup combinations possible.

The antithesis to the aforementioned teams would most notably be Kansas, Kansas State, and Texas. Kansas basically went out and got three of the same players in David Coit, Rylan Griffen, and AJ Storr. Or at least that’s how Kansas coach Bill Self is choosing to deploy them. It should come as no surprise that Storr has struggled since being forced into a three-point shooting role after excelling as a rim attacker at Wisconsin. It turns out getting a driving guard to pair with a lane-clogging big in Hunter Dickinson wasn’t the best idea after all. Because of Dickinson’s tendencies, Coit, Griffen, and Storr have been forced to fight for minutes. 

Kansas State embodies the idea of spending money just to spend money after paying late portal entrant Coleman Hawkins north of a million dollars. They also decided to throw money at Dug McDaniel who has already become a regular in head coach Jerome Tang’s doghouse this season. Kansas State saw Samford transfer Achor Achor depart in the middle of the season, likely due to his lack of minutes. Could this stem from the fact that they also picked up Kentucky transfer Ugonna Onyenso, a player with a similar skillset to Achor and has barely touched the floor this year? I can only imagine the strife that this glut of big men has caused in the locker room. On top of their big man overlap, Max Jones transferred in from Cal State Fullerton who at his previous stop had the 2nd worst effective field goal percentage of all players shorter than 6 '4 with a usage rate greater than 30% in all of Division I. Pairing a player with Jones who clearly struggles around the rim with another known driver of the ball in Dug McDaniel doesn’t necessarily lead to a cohesive offense. 

Texas also fell victim to the same mismanagement that led to Kansas State netting McDaniel and Jones in the portal. In a game with one ball, Texas acquired Tramon Mark, Julian Larry, and Jordan Pope, three players who led their previous teams in pick and roll ball handling and isolation. They paired these overlapping skill sets with Kadin Shedrick, a known low-post black hole, and Arthur Kaluma who sported a sub one assist to turnover ratio and a sub 50% eFG all while having a usage rate that exceeded 20%. It should come as no surprise that this amalgam has largely underperformed this year prior to the start of SEC play. 

Although my criticism may seem harsh, make no mistake, team-building, whether it’s in a corporate or basketball setting, isn’t an easy task. As a leader, you must be attuned to what threatens your team’s dynamic, whether it is performance or culture-related. The college teams that understand the intricacies of this stasis stand to gain exponential returns. Harboring talent and allowing players to be the best versions of themselves make schools a more coveted location in future transfer portals. By knowing the talent they need and, more importantly, the talent they have, college teams afford incoming talent the opportunity to increase their prospects to play at the next level. This same logic applies to any manager. Make sure team members are in it for the right reasons, understand what they do well, let them accelerate in that role, and watch the success ensue.