It's often the case that people learn through trial and error. It appears OKC Thunder GM Sam Presti has done just that when it comes to assessing the value of his team's third options, as his mishap with James Harden seems to have directly created an elite level of patience with Chet Holmgren.
At least, that's what NBA insider Brian Windhorst seems to believe, as he noted during a recent edition of The Hoop Collective Podcast, that the storied executive has "learned from his mistake" from parting ways with The Beard early on in his professional development by retaining Holmgren.
Harden trade argued as driving force in Thunder keeping Chet Holmgren
Though he may be the leader of the league's top front office, even with all the assets collected and diamond in the rough players fielded via the NBA Draft throughout his 18 years running the show, for the longest time, all anyone could seemingly talk about was how he was the guy who let Harden walk.
During the summer of 2012, following an NBA Finals run and a Sixth Man of the Year win for the guard, in an attempt to penny-pinch as he looked to make room for the contracts of Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins, rather than offer a max rookie-scale extension to retain his services, Presti opted to offload Harden to the Houston Rockets.
Ultimately, the move proved to reflect rather poorly on the executive, as the departed Harden would go on to establish himself as an MVP and top-75 player of all-time down in Space City, while the Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook-led OKC consistently failed to get back to the championship round and, in the end, were forced to enter a complete tear-down just six years later.
Fast forward to this new era of Thunder basketball, one spearheaded by the likes of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, and Chet Holmgren, many were questioning not two years ago whether Presti should entertain the idea of moving on from the latter-mentioned big man to try and better position themselves for a title bid following an upsetting second-round loss to the Mavericks in 2024.
Needless to say, a lot seems to have changed between the 2012 psyche of Presti and this more advanced one, for not only did he fight off the urge to offload his team's third option once again, but the decision to refrain from such an act helped lead them to the franchise's first title of the Sooner State era just last year.
With their successes, this summer the Thunder decided to shell out a max extension to Holmgren, as well as SGA and J-Dub, which, in some ways, rights the wrong committed 13 years ago by actually retaining their championship-aspiring Big Three rather than chipping away at it piece by piece.