PHOTO/Randy Renner
Thunder GM Sam Presti began his Thursday news conference by thanking Paul George and Russell Westbrook for their service to the team and especially for their involvement in the community but Presti denied PG's claim that his trade request was not a surprise to OKC was in fact a "mutual agreement" and that it did not come from "out of the blue."
"I wouldn't necessarily agree with that because that would infer that we were wanting to trade Paul George," Presti said, "which I think most people would agree that that probably wasn't on the top of our off-season priority list."
But Presti did appreciate "that it was not adversarial at all, and I also fully respect the way that it was handled. And the fact that we were able to make it work in a way that benefitted the franchise made it something that we could do."
A couple of other highlights...Presti says he is excited for the opportunity to add Chris Paul to the team, "I think he's going to have a really good year for us, and I do think he's excited about the opportunity to have an impact on the team." Presti didn't want to speculate how long CP3 would be here but he made it sound like, at least most of the season would be a good possibility.
Presti didn't want to get into the conversation about player tampering saying it's something for the league to address not him.
He also said he believes Andre Roberson will be ready to go for the start of training camp.
The entire news conference is available below, it runs just shy of 40 minutes.