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Baxter Holmes
Multiple Authors
RASHARD LEWIS NEVER played a game for the Oklahoma City Thunder. But in one obscure way, the two-time All-Star, who spent the first nine of his 16 NBA seasons with the Seattle SuperSonics — the precursor to the OKC franchise — is directly connected to the defending champions.
Lewis is well aware of the connection.
Random fans have presented it to him more and more in recent years as the Thunder have ascended, winning an NBA title in 2025 while barreling toward a potential repeat this season.
They point out the ridiculous, unlikely nature of it all — how a 2007 sign-and-trade that sent Lewis from Seattle to the Orlando Magic marked the first of five moves, all of them connected, that helped form the foundation of the Thunder’s current championship core. And they ask Lewis if he can believe it.
Lewis thought back, connecting the past and the present, and thought of the throughline: the architect behind each transaction and the Thunder team that has earned the top seed in the Western Conference for the past three seasons.
“It just shows you,” Lewis said, “what type of general manager Sam Presti is.”
ON MAY 22, 2007, Tony Dutt, Lewis’ agent, was at his home in The Woodlands, Texas, watching the NBA draft lottery, when the Sonics landed the No. 2 pick.
He imagined that the Portland Trail Blazers, who had landed the top pick, would likely draft Ohio State star center Greg Oden and that the Sonics would then likely draft Texas phenom Kevin Durant, who was about as tall as Lewis and played the same position.
It wasn’t hard for Dutt to imagine that Lewis’ time in Seattle, which had drafted Lewis in 1998, might be over. Lewis himself had been contemplating that very idea. He was 27 and the Sonics had posted losing records in four of their past five seasons. He wanted to win.
Four days later, Lewis opted out of the final two years of his contract, becoming an unrestricted free agent that summer. But who Dutt and Lewis would be negotiating with from the Sonics was unclear.
Two months after Clay Bennett, who led a group of Oklahoma City businessmen to buy the Sonics in July 2006, ousted the team’s general manager, Rick Sund, he had yet to land on a replacement despite months of searching.
A former San Antonio Spurs minority owner during the mid-1990s, Bennett had asked Spurs general manager R.C. Buford if he’d be interested. It was a bold request; the Spurs had won three titles since 1999 and were en route to winning a fourth that season, but Bennett figured he had nothing to lose.
“R.C. was courteous and professional and said while he was in a very good place in San Antonio, he had someone in mind,” Bennett recalled during Presti’s induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in November 2025. an Oklahoma City event in November 2025. “He said the candidate was young but exceptional, with enormous promise: Sam Presti.”
Presti was then a vice president and assistant general manager who had joined the Spurs as an intern in 2000, initially making $250 per month. He’d earned four promotions since and a reputation for his knowledge of the salary cap. He also helped design the team’s scouting database, and was credited for the decision to draft French point guard and future Hall of Famer Tony Parker in 2001.
Bennett knew Presti a little. The two had met during the 2006-07 season in San Antonio when the Spurs were hosting the Sonics. After Buford’s recommendation, Bennett met with Presti at a hotel in Irving, Texas.
“He started off the meeting somewhat awkwardly, opening with some oddball observations about OU football,” said Bennett, a University of Oklahoma alum who later served on the school’s board of regents. Bennett said, “but he found his footing when he told me his middle name was Clay.”
Presti was hired three weeks after the draft lottery, becoming Seattle’s 11th general manager and the second youngest in league history.
At his introductory news conference, Presti, who was part of three championships in San Antonio, quickly dispelled the notion that he’d try to recreate the Spurs culture in Seattle.
“My focus is on Seattle,” he said. “My focus is where we’re going.”
When asked about Lewis, who would enter free agency less than a month later, Presti said, “I can tell you that we’re hopeful to have real positive and tangible discussions with Rashard and his representatives. But we have to evaluate it methodically and see where things go.”
Three weeks later, on June 28, the Sonics drafted Durant with the No. 2 pick as many expected, but then Presti made the first unexpected move of his career, trading star shooting guard Ray Allen, the team’s leading scorer, along with the 35th overall pick, to the Boston Celtics in return for Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West and the No. 5 pick, which Seattle used to draft promising Georgetown forward Jeff Green.
The move signaled, in many ways, the start of a rebuild with the team now centered on two talented rookies in Durant and Green.
Dutt, sensing the team’s direction, asked Presti to meet Lewis in Texas on the first day of free agency, just a few days away, and to be honest about Lewis’ future. Presti agreed to the meeting.
Along with a few members from the Sonics’ coaching staff and front office, Presti joined Dutt and Lewis in a Houston hotel room. Dutt knew Presti from his time working with the Spurs under San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich.
“Sam was like Pop,” Dutt recalled. “He just had that air about him that he was young, but he was old beyond his years, really. You could tell he was always thinking, always putting pieces together down the road and looking ahead. He knew the foundation of building something.”
During the meeting, Presti explained how much the team liked Lewis and how they’d love to have him back, but Dutt and Lewis knew that the Sonics were financially limited.
Days later, the Magic offered Lewis a six-year, $118 million contract. The Sonics couldn’t match it, and Presti asked Dutt to work with the team on a sign-and-trade, just so Seattle could get something in return for Lewis’ departure. Dutt agreed.
On July 11, the Sonics traded Lewis to Orlando for a second-round pick, carving out a $9 million trade exception.
It wasn’t a huge haul, but given his interaction with Presti, Dutt imagined that Presti would use it wisely — that “it would have an impact down the road,” and he told him so.
Even so, he had no idea how right he’d be.
UNDER NBA RULES, teams have one full year to use a trade exception. Presti didn’t wait nearly that long.
Nine days after the Lewis sign-and-trade, Presti used the exception to take on Kurt Thomas’ contract from the Phoenix Suns, getting two first-round picks, one in 2008 and 2010, for giving Phoenix the salary relief. The swap gave the Sonics five first-round picks over the next three drafts — the start of a war chest.
Later that fall, in an interview with The News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, Presti laid out his philosophy:
“Our approach to building a team and improving our basketball decisions is to look to make sound decisions on a daily basis — not to be hunting the grand slam or the big fish,” Presti told the newspaper. “But we will try to accumulate a number of very good decisions that culminate in consistency over the long term.”
The following summer, Presti used the first of those two first-round picks to draft center Serge Ibaka, who, as fate would have it, became the last player the Sonics would ever draft in the first round. The team officially relocated to Oklahoma City, where it would become known as the Thunder, just six days after the draft.
In the years ahead, the Thunder quickly ascended, with Durant, Ibaka, Russell Westbrook and James Harden leading the team to the 2012 NBA Finals against LeBron James and the Miami Heat in what seemed to mark the beginning of a potential dynastic run.
But the Thunder lost to Miami, and Presti traded Harden to Houston a few months later, in part to keep Ibaka — both players were eligible for contract extensions and keeping both of them would have pushed OKC into the luxury tax.
Ibaka played four more seasons with the Thunder, never returning to the Finals. On the night of the 2016 draft, Presti traded Ibaka to the Magic for power forward Ersan İlyasova, guard Victor Oladipo and the draft rights to forward Domantas Sabonis. (Lewis was long gone by then, having played his final NBA game in 2014.)
The next year, Presti traded Oladipo and Sabonis to Indiana for star swingman Paul George. It was seen as a risky move at the time because many around the NBA believed George wanted to play in Los Angeles and would leave OKC as soon as he got the chance. Instead, he signed a four-year, $136.9 million contract to remain with the Thunder in the summer of 2018.
However, the euphoria from that move was short-lived. In 2019, George’s agent approached Presti with news: George wanted out.
LA CLIPPERS PRESIDENT of basketball operations Lawrence Frank recalled the particulars during a 2022 deposition as part of a lawsuit — later dismissed — surrounding the team’s pursuit of star forward Kawhi Leonard.
As Frank recalled, the Clippers were in talks in the summer of 2019 with Leonard, a free agent who had just won a championship with the Toronto Raptors.
But Leonard wanted the team to pursue another star player to play alongside him. The Clippers presented options, one of them being George, then with the Thunder.
“[Leonard] really liked Paul George,” Frank said in the deposition, which was obtained by ESPN. “Unbeknownst to us, after our meeting, Kawhi and Paul George had spoken, and had spoken about playing together and playing together for the Clippers.”
Frank continued, “Also unbeknownst to us, Paul George spoke to his agent and had his agent call the general manager of Oklahoma City Thunder, where Paul George was playing at the time and asked for a trade.”
Frank added, “Also unbeknownst to us, that general manager/president, Sam Presti, met with Paul George to confirm he wanted a trade.”
After all the unbeknownst-to-the-Clippers elements unfolded, Frank said the Clippers received a call from Presti “saying they were going to trade Paul George, that they were going to make him available to a couple of teams, and that we should make our best offer.”
Team sources previously said the Clippers feared that Leonard would sign elsewhere, particularly with the Lakers, which provided the Thunder considerable leverage.
And it showed.
The Clippers sent Gilgeous-Alexander, forward Danilo Gallinari, a then-unprecedented five first-round picks and two first-round pick swaps for George.
The titanic haul, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, created an enviable collection of assets, one of which was used in 2022 to draft future NBA All-Star Jalen Williams with the 12th pick.
Once again, the Thunder ascended.
In June 2025, while watching the NBA Finals between the Thunder and the Indiana Pacers from his home in Traverse City, Michigan, Dutt thought about the 2007 sign-and-trade involving Lewis. He wondered if anyone from that transaction trickled down to the team he was watching on his screen. When he learned that one of them became Gilgeous-Alexander, he laughed.
“I feel like I did my part,” he said. “I should probably have gotten a ring from Oklahoma.”
A RIVAL EXECUTIVE who was on the other side of one of the five transactions between the Lewis sign-and-trade and the Clippers-Thunder swap in 2019 said it’s not unusual for teams to look back on specific deals and see how aspects of them branch out over time.
“It’s basically a way to track decision-making,” the executive said.
And another team executive said that anyone could look at the moves Presti made across that span and assess specific patterns in his decision-making.
“What it says about Sam is that he’s been pretty good with his asset management,” the second executive said. “If you start to trace the asset trees of the things he’s done, there aren’t very many dead ends. He’s going to try to use every piece that he can — every aspect of the trade, every trade exception, every draft pick, every little thing — and he’s going to try to make something out of it. He has always had a vision, and he’s always been decisive.”
The executive added, “People would say it’s obvious when he took over the Sonics to trade Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis and do a rebuild, but at the time it was not obvious. They were only one year removed from having a pretty good team, and [Allen and Lewis] were regarded as good players and the rebuild was regarded as uncertain.”
The moves were bold; Presti had quickly parted ways with the Sonics’ two best players, both of whom went on to have immediate success elsewhere. Allen won a title in Boston the next season. Lewis, meanwhile, led the NBA in 3-pointers made (220) in 2009 and reached the Finals with the Magic the year after that. He also won a title with the Heat in 2013.
P.J. Carlesimo, whom Presti hired as the Sonics’ coach in July 2007, looked back on that time — and the ensuing moves under the rebuild — as a signal for Presti’s long-view approach to team-building.
“Sam, as smart as he is and looking at the big picture, didn’t know how many other subsequent deals it was going to take before they hit on something that they thought was the right thing,” Carlesimo said. “One of the things about OKC is, Clay and Sam have stayed the course. It’s really easy to say, ‘Well, Sam’s so smart, look at all the moves he made.’ But it took 17 years to win a championship. So there’s something to be said for staying the course and having somebody good and believing in him and supporting him over the years.”
Bennett and Presti have worked together for 18 years, making them the owner/GM duo with the second-longest tenure in the league behind Miami’s Mickey Arison and Pat Riley.
“I’m often asked about a relationship and our partnership,” Bennett said during the Oklahoma Hall of Fame ceremony. “Our North Star has always been pretty simple: Do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons, every time. No shortcuts, no workarounds, just the honest hard work.”
Presti has drafted three NBA MVPs and traded for a fourth in Gilgeous-Alexander.
Still, his résumé has blemishes, and fans don’t let him forget them. At Presti’s 2025 induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, Bennett introduced him by telling the backstory of how he hired Presti in the first place. After Bennett spoke, Presti delivered his acceptance speech and talked about his interactions with Thunder fans.
“When you don’t win, you might hear, don’t worry, we’ll get ’em next year,” Presti said. “Or perhaps on some very rare occasions you might hear, ‘Never should have traded Harden, you idiot.'”
Presti paused while the crowd laughed, then added, “They may have had a point.”
AT THE 2026 All-Star Game — held in the home of the team that traded all those assets to OKC for George — Lewis reflected on his sign and trade from Seattle and the full-circle notion of it all. He now works as a player development coach for the Spurs, the same organization that Presti worked for before joining the Sonics.
“It’s like a family,” Lewis said of the Spurs while standing next to other team officials who were in Los Angeles for NBA All-Star Weekend. “They do a lot of stuff, but they support each other. They support the players and not only that, they’ve got good young talent, a smart general manager. We were losing for the past four or five years, but now it’s kind of turned around this year.
“It was the same thing with Seattle when they made that 2007 trade. It took a while to build the organization and see the light with those pieces.”
Today, the Thunder hold one more pick remaining from that 2019 trade: their first-round selection this June, which will land in the lottery as a result of the Clippers missing the playoffs. As for Lewis, he admitted that he has never discussed that 2007 trade — or all the transactions that followed it — with Presti.
“I haven’t seen him in person,” he said.
Then Lewis smiled again.
“But I’m sure I will one day — especially with the little rivalry we got going.”
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