New England Roots: Sam Presti on life in Concord, beating A-B, Little League lessons and his Spike Owen phase

Up next in our ‘New England Roots’ series: Thunder executive vice president and general manager Sam Presti. The Massachusetts native was raised in Concord and played basketball at Emerson, serving as a co-captain during his final two seasons before graduating in 2000.

Presti worked his way up the NBA front office ranks under the tutelage of RC Buford and Gregg Popovich in San Antonio, before being elevated to the position of vice president and assistant general manager. As a member of the Spurs, Presti was part of NBA Championship teams in 2003, 2005 and 2007. He was named general manager of the Thunder in 2007 at age 29 and has helped build a perennial contender in the West for the majority of the past decade.  

You grew up in Concord, what was that town like as far as youth sports growing up?

Presti: I am sure like most towns in that area, everyone played sports. We were outside all the time, it was how you made your friends and got to know the kids you would be spending your adolescence with. I can still tell you the names of the Little League teams all my friends were on just like I can remember their phone numbers for some strange reason. Now, today, I don’t know one person’s phone number, but I can recall Pat Savage, Richie Snell, Mike Johnson and Tyler Dewings if you would like.

What’s your most vivid youth sports memory?

Presti: January 13th, 1995, my senior year we beat Acton-Boxborough in our home gym at Concord-Carlisle — you could call that vivid I guess. My high school team was incredibly close, we put in a lot of summer hours training to win that game, and when it happened, it brought us even closer. Some of my teammates are still my best friends to this day. I think it taught us all some valuable lessons about hard work, togetherness and the strength of a unified group, even if you’re not the most talented.

I also remember after one Little League traveling game, I was pitching, and I just got absolutely shelled. I had never been tagged like that before and I was 10 or so, and I just remember my father having to explain to me after the game that sometimes you get your ass kicked, that no one goes through life undefeated and that I better get used to it and decide what time I was going to get out to the field tomorrow to practice. It made losing, getting beaten, somewhat of a platform for getting better, and also took the sting off coming up short as long you were competing to your fullest. I remember, as the tears were running down my face and he was talking to me, that this was like some kind of movie scene. Cue the strings right? But I knew I better listen to what he was saying because I could just tell this was important, it was real. Here I am recounting it 30 years later. Getting pulled off that Northborough mound after what seemed like a parade of line drives and base running practice for the other team was a pretty important lesson for me.

Did you have a favorite New England team and/or athlete growing up?

Presti: Outside of the obvious guys, I think there were some others that definitely had an impact on me. I basically learned my left from my right by remembering that Rice played left and Evans played right, so I have to say those guys were important beyond sports. Even today when I am driving I can see Dewey Evans when I am flipping that blinker on. Andre Tippett and Ray Bourque, wow how lucky to have those guys in your backyard growing up? Both of them had this quiet toughness to them, competitors, reliable. I remember that I liked Ellis Burks a lot too. Don Baylor. I went through a Spike Owen phase. I had a poster of Reggie Lewis and Brian Shaw that I treasured, I remember that well.

Favorite memory from a Boston sports event?

Presti: I wasn’t there, but the one that had I would have to say I can remember the most was when Bourque gave up number seven so that Esposito could have it retired. That had a profound impact on me. It really brought a lot of things together for me about sports, about honor, and about respect for those that have come before. I will never, ever, forget it, it will be something I show my three-year-old son one day. It’s all right there in that moment, in that gesture, words can’t live up to the meaning of those things.

Favorite Boston sports venue?

Presti: Fenway, on a spring afternoon. I don’t know that there is anything like catching your first glimpse of where the infield dirt meets the outfield grass, that line is razor sharp, the contrast, and you have The Monster in the background to add some kind of aesthetic geometry, it’s magical as far as I am concerned. I will be taking my son to an opening day game there, when he is old enough to start to learn left from right. I still need a cheat sheet.

What's one thing you miss about living in New England?

Presti: I would say that when I was growing up in Concord, I was just not aware enough or mature enough to truly understand the history I was literally living around. I would drive by the Old North Bridge on my way to school every day and if you think it ever crossed my mind that our nation’s freedom was won about 20 yards from my passengers' door, you would be mistaken. Not once. My mind was on whatever happened yesterday or was about to happen today, I was never present to appreciate that history and significance. Same thing with Walden Pond, or any number of historical aspects of the area. I am deeply nostalgic, so I have great memories of growing up there across the board, I am grateful for it. One of my favorite things to do is drive the roads in Concord and Carlisle whenever I am back there. It reminds me how simple things can be so good, and how happy that makes me knowing my son is coming up on those ages and how many memories he has yet to form. So much distance to run as they say. It’s all good.

What was your experience like playing basketball at Emerson?

Presti: It was great. Like anything else, it all comes down to the people you are with and close to, I loved it. Hank Smith was my coach, he’s now a college scout for us. He was a great mentor and now a great friend. My teammates and other guys from the program who either played there before or after our group are the best. So many of them are a part of the basketball community either at the NBA level, college or the high school level. I just appreciate the friendships, and when you compete alongside someone you can really understand them and learn a lot about them, what makes them tick, where they need their support and how they can support you. Being on teams has been so important to me, no matter how old I was then or am now. I don’t play golf and never played tennis, competing for me has always been with someone to my left and to my right, and because I was usually less talented it was for the best that way.

You have been in Oklahoma City for over 10 years now. What has it been like building roots there over the past decade? How has it been to see the city embrace the Thunder franchise so much during that span?

Presti: I would say the first word that comes to mind is grateful. People here have been incredibly welcoming, not just with myself, but with everyone involved with the Thunder and their families. When we arrived here, we were all transplanted. There was no basketball team, no logo, no name for the team. The city really welcomed us with open arms and it continued to be incredibly supportive of the human beings that make up the organization. We all feel really grateful. For me, it's been an honor to be a part of something that was started from the ground up. Obviously, it is heavily influenced by the community that supports us. We say all the time, ‘we're the people's team’ here and we're proud of it. Being the only pro sports team in town carries a significance for us and probably even above that, we're still only 11 years young. A lot of other organizations that we compete with in our league and in general have 70-plus years of history. What we're trying to do here is bigger than basketball for us, and we're trying to establish an identity and a legacy in real time for an organization that's going to last long after all of our tenures.

You’ve been involved with a lot of great causes in the community in Oklahoma City and back here in the New England region as well. How important are those causes and that part of your life to you?

Presti: I think part of being a good citizen is trying to improve the quality of life in the area in which you reside and you have come from. Make it better for the people you live amongst and that will come after you. That's something my grandfather instilled in me. There are several different things that I've been interested in and that we've started here. At the end of the day, I think just doing whatever you can to give back. The most valuable thing it your time itself, and then trying to be as present as possible with the programs here is important.

One of the things that I am happy about is the scholarship program that was initiated at Concord-Carlisle. It recognizes the METCO program and it's named after two of my teammates from high school and are still close friends of mine. Without that program ... I think for sure it helped me so much as a high school student in Concord. The lessons learned from that program and my relationship with Keenan and Anthony, those are transformative experiences. One of the recent recipients actually came down here to Oklahoma and did a job shadow program with the Thunder business office. To see that program go full circle was meaningful, with the relationship with my teammates and the lessons learned from understanding them and the challenges that they faced, getting out to school in Concord. To have the outcome of that be another METCO student that followed in their footsteps 20 years later and is now getting a chance to see the rest of the country and Oklahoma City, it's humbling.

You’ve built the Thunder into one of the most competitive franchises in the league over the past decade, despite not having the benefits of a ‘major market.’ How much pride do you and your staff take into what you guys have put together out there?

Presti: The greatest opportunity for all of us is to create and to build, and to have your work be a platform for people to form memories and feel emotions. With the Thunder, we truly still feel that we're on the front end of writing our history. We began as s start-up, and we have evolved but we try to not lose the mentality and inspiration that established our foundation. We've taken to embracing that challenger spirit and a healthy understanding that we have a long way to go. There will be plenty of ups and downs, but during the first 10 years, we've been able to establish an identity for how we are going to handle and navigate successes and coming up short.

The most gratifying thing for me is the people that I've been so fortunate to work with. We've had so many incredible people come through the organization, with players and staff, ownership, I just get overwhelmed thinking of the people and how deep the program has been with such great people. It makes the work meaningful. All of us want to have a purpose in what we're doing and feel that what we're doing has impact.

Ultimately, we stand for more than what we do, it comes down to the people you are working with and the change you feel like you can create in unison. I couldn't ask for better partners and better people to spend my professional time with. They make the journey worthwhile, I learn from all of them, they inspire me. As an organization, we don't know what lies ahead, the industry has become so disrupted in recent years for various reasons, learning agility has become key, improvising and adaptation have become fundamentals. We remain optimistic and excited about what's in front of us. As long as we put our focus on being relentless about pursuing progress, internal development at every level of the organization, and embracing the fact that we are building a legacy in real time for a community that will endure long after this era of the team has passed, we will find our way. We have to keep an open mind and roll our sleeves up every day ready to embrace change but enjoy the present and take stock of how fortunate we are and have been.

BSJ: I know (vice president of insight and foresight) Rob Hennigan is a Massachusetts native. How many other New Englanders are out there with you?

Presti: We actually have a bunch of people from Massachusetts. Glenn Wong is from Amherst. Mark Daigneault is from Leominster. Will Dawkins is from Springfield. One of the first things that Nerlens Noel said after we signed him was, ‘Wow, there are a lot of Boston people here.' I would say there is a pretty heavy New England influence in the program. A few of the guys are really diehard Patriot fans. Unless, it's really important on Sunday, I can't get a hold of them. It's been fun to have a bunch of Boston people in Oklahoma.