Right here’s Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder GM Sam Presti on the cumulative impact of coping with accidents/completely different beginning lineups throughout 2025-26.
(by way of Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder):
“I believe previously, we’ve all the time had that accidents are a part of the game. And I believe in each time we’ve had one thing like that occur, we’ve seen some silver lining in that, like particular person improvement, folks stepping in, altering, making an attempt new issues. And I believe that occurred once more this yr to a big extent. We had a variety of large development in people. I do suppose the one factor, if there’s one factor I’m somewhat pissed off about moreover not successful the ultimate quarter of the season, is I believe we misplaced out on a variety of staff improvement. Simply the quantity of [continuity] after we play 31 completely different beginning lineups, the shortage of continuity with our primary guys. Simply there’s some staff issues popping out of we study from each collection we’re in. So popping out of the Indiana collection, I believe there have been some issues we felt actually good about making an attempt to enhance upon and get higher at. However you want the common season to do this.
“And at some degree, we may by no means get to these issues as a result of it felt like we get one man again, we lose two guys. We get two guys again. So the rotation, the 9 or ten guys we’re enjoying within the playoffs final yr, I believe they performed collectively [and] we had them obtainable for seven or eight video games this yr. So sooner or later, it kinda suggestions somewhat bit. It’s not an excuse as a result of we may nonetheless have gotten to the Finals. Clearly, we pushed ourselves to get to that time and I’m actually happy with that. However by way of what we misplaced out on, I believe the staff improvement part of issues that we had a reasonably good deal with on what we needed to assault. It’s simply laborious to do this with out among the key cogs on the market frequently.”
