What you need to know from Sam Presti's end-of-season availability

Sam Presti talked for almost 45 minutes on Monday, answering questions about Kevin Durant’s free agency, Steven Adams and Dion Waiters’ future, Anthony Morrow, Mitch McGary, Billy Donovan and more.

Here are the highlights:

First, the relevant Kevin Durant quotes: “When we signed Kevin to his extension five years ago, we knew that he’d be a free agent at the end of that contract. And we’ve done, I think, a really good job of just focusing on the things that we can control.” Huge news there. Durant signed a five-year deal, and it’s been five years. Checks out.

And: “We’ll get an answer from him at the appropriate time. I think it really is important for him to take his time, get away from things. Look, Kevin is a highly, highly intelligent person. He’s a mature person. He’s a rational person, and he’s going to work through the decision in a way that will help him do what he feels is best for him. We’ll react accordingly once we have that information, and we’ll try to be as prepared as possible.”

And: “I also think Kevin deserves a tremendous amount of credit for the way he’s handled his affairs, because what it really did was it allowed our team to focus on the season and really made the season we had possible. I thought it was a tremendous example of a franchise player putting the franchise first. I thought it was also a tremendous example of leadership on his part, because we’re not able to have that season unless he’s handling his affairs the way that he did.”

And: “We’ve had a relationship with Kevin in Oklahoma City for eight years, nine with this particular franchise, and we talk to him all the time. I think when those conversations occur, it’s really just a continuation of a dialogue that’s been going on for eight or nine years. It’s a chance to reflect and recognize that relationship and continue the conversations that we’ve had on going.”

And finally: “Again, like we’ve been with this player for quite a while, and the way I personally choose to look at it is we’ve got to take a step back and realize how incredible, how fortunate are we that Kevin Durant has been one of the first players to ever wear a Thunder uniform. He’s played for eight years in Oklahoma City. Kids that were six years old watching the Thunder and now 14 years old, and they’ve watched this evolution of Westbrook, Durant, Ibaka and company through their adolescence, and now we have the opportunity to sit down with him and talk about what looks like an incredibly bright future together. I think you have to embrace that. You have to really lean into that in an excited way without knowing what the outcome might be. But I don’t see any reason to shy away from that. I think we should be really excited about recognizing the relationship, and as I said before, it’s a continuation of a dialogue that’s been going on for eight, nine years, and it’s an opportunity to talk about what the future might hold for us together.”

Presti on Dion Waiters, who it sounds like the Thunder want to bring back: “I never want to speculate on how free agency will go. The only thing I can tell you is it generally bodes well when the player is wanting to be back. Any time you have the opportunity to have a mutual goal, that’s always a positive. I do think that in his case, I think the odds are more likely in the event that we’re working in partnership. I think it becomes more challenging and more difficult in the event of it becoming an offer sheet type situation. But we don’t have the answers. I can’t predict the future. I’m happy for Dion. I think he’s working toward realizing his potential, and I’m happy for him.”

Presti said they’ll look at extensions for Andre Roberson and Steven Adams, but noted there’s quite a lot of time to get to that.

Presti was asked if he sees Serge Ibaka still fitting into the core of the team: “Oh, absolutely. I mean, when you look at what that group of guys as a collection have accomplished, and many of you guys have covered it, we’ve had the second best winning percentage in the league over the last six years. I think we’re second in the league in playoff series wins during that period of time. You know, a lot of things. I don’t want to sit up here and read our media guide to you. But when you have a group of guys that have gone through that and a continuity, as I said earlier, that’s something we’ve always strived for here, and we believe that’s directly connected to sustainable success. That’s a tremendous advantage for us.”

Presti also talked about Ibaka’s season, and whether or not he took a step back: “I thought Serge had a really good season in this respect. I think people look at maybe his shot blocking was down or this — I think when you are being asked to become more an all-around player, like you said, you’re not going to be able to concentrate everything towards one skill. So you’re going to like kind of broaden out your contributions to cover more area, and you’re not going to be able to just be specifically great as a rim protector. He’s still an elite rim protector, but if I’m devising an offensive scheme against the Thunder, the number one thing I’m trying to do is drag Serge Ibaka away from the rim, and then I also think just the way that he performed in the postseason, the way he dealt with Nowitzki, Aldridge, he executed those game plans to a T, and he wasn’t going to get a lot of help individually by design, and he was fantastic.”

Presti on Alex Abrines: “Any time you have players overseas, the obstacles are, first, they’re under contract with another team; second, you have your own timeline and your own decision pathways that you have to make. The question is whether or not those things can join up at the appropriate times. You know, our conversations with Alex have always been really productive. We’ve in constant communication with him. He’s having a fantastic year. I’m sure all of his focus and attention right now is on Barcelona, finding a way to make it to the ACB Final again and hopefully winning. But whether or not he joins us this season or future seasons, I think that it’s incredible that we have him in our pipeline of young talent.”

Presti quoted Teddy Roosevelt. Because of course he did.

Presti on Billy Donovan: “I thought Billy did an excellent job through the year. He was intentional. He was curious. He was supremely disciplined, I thought. Again, he embarked on a season to trying to build a team so that we could play various ways, that he could discover as much as he could about his own players, how they fit together, ways to put them in positions to be successful, and to get to know them as people. I thought he was — I thought he did an excellent job of putting the tenets or the foundation in place for a system that could be transferable into the postseason, and what I mean by that is when we got to the postseason, a lot of the general principles and things we were looking to try to accomplish were able to transfer. In fact, some of the things actually got better as we entered into tougher competition.”

Presti on not having a draft pick this season: “We will prepare for the draft like we’re picking 60 times, no different than we’ve ever done or prepared for any draft, but we can use our minds a little bit differently, trying to decide how to get in, and if we were to get in and who to get in for. I’m kind of looking forward to that. Again, I feel like the opportunity that we at the trade deadline to get Randy and then to create that much flexibility from a salary cap standpoint, we saved about $9.5 million on that particular transaction, that we can then apply to this season’s team or future teams, and we can still find ways to get in the draft.But we felt like that was the right decision for us, and I think it’ll be fun to prepare for a draft with we have to be more creative.”