The Oklahoma City Thunder have seen two massive injuries to start the 2022-23 NBA season. With team media day coming on September 26th, NBA Training camp opening on September 27th, Chet Holmgren is already sidelined for the entire 2022-23 season, while Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is going to miss at least the start of training camp with a grade 2 MCL sprain. Sam Presti held his preseason media availability Thursday Morning at the team’s practice facility.
As we gathered in the Thunder ION, all of us in the media knew the main topic of discussion would be Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s MCL injury, which was revealed by the team the day prior. Sam Presti started by saying “This injury just happened, everybody’s body is different…we have to see what happens in two weeks. We’d love for him to be ready .”
Oklahoma City Thunder General Manager Sam Presti held his annual preseason Media Day availability on Thursday and addressed Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s injury
When asked if this makes Shai Gilgeous-Alexander injury prone, the OKC Thunder general manager said all of Gilgeous-Alexander’s injuries are “unrelated” and explained at the workout SGA lost his footing, continued his workout, but woke up stiff the next morning.
Presti took it a step further pointing out that these past two seasons people wondered if Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was truly hurt, and now they wonder if he is injury prone “we can’t win.”
The National Media will make this a bigger story than it is. With referendums on tanking, jokes about Sam Presti holding SGA back or only caring about draft picks, but that all is simply not true. The Thunder need Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to play in as many games as possible to help them evaluate the other young players on their roster.
Even with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the lineup, the OKC Thunder will struggle to win games as most young teams do, not to mention playing in the stacked Western Conference. This is just another spell of bad luck for OKC, but it should hardly limit SGA long-term.
The Oklahoma City Thunder roster, including head coach Mark Daigneault, will hold their media day on September 26th. It is standard for executives to hold their portion of media day beforehand. We will have you covered at Thunderous Intentions with updates throughout Media Day, Training Camp, and the 2022-23 season.