As the postmortem begins on the Oklahoma City Thunder’s season, Sam Presti has hit back at the criticism surrounding Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
The Thunder general manager believes that the two-time NBA MVP is the victim of the social media discourse that aims to downplay his achievements by building a narrative that his success is down to his crafty ability to draw fouls.
Sam Presti Fires Back at Social Media Criticism of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
As Gilgeous-Alexander has established himself as one of the most dominant players in the NBA, criticism has started to emerge over his playing style. Many have called out the 27-year-old for artificially creating contact to draw fouls, and the “foul baiting” label has seemingly become synonymous with him.
However, Presti has come to the defense of his franchise player, claiming he has to face six opponents every time he steps onto the court. He noted how the “social media machine” attempts to scrutinize players who reach the elite level.
“Relative to Shai, he’s playing against six people. He’s got five defenders and the sixth defender is social media. And that’s a reality. He’s not going to be the last player that the machine decides to target. But no one’s going to handle this gracefully. Because when they turn it on somebody else, they’re not going to step up there every night and not acknowledge it,” Presti said during his postseason press conference.
“He’s playing against 6 people. He’s got 5 defenders and the 6th defender is social media”
Sam Presti says the social media machine is targeting SGA pic.twitter.com/9RwCuMLIL8
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) June 8, 2026
The Thunder general manager also noted that Gilgeous-Alexander was tied with Joel Embiid for the eighth-most fouls drawn this season, behind Jaylen Brown and Victor Wembanyama.
“If we’re talking about trying to draw fouls, every other great player in the NBA, it’s part of the game. He drew 415 fouls this year, 11 were challenged. 4 of those were overturned. So that’s like 2.5% of foul calls are actually challenged,” he added.
Not just those on social media, but many opposition players and coaches including JJ Redick and Devin Booker, also called out Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder for receiving favorable calls from the referees throughout the playoffs.
The Thunder enjoyed another promising run this year, finishing as the top seed in the Western Conference.
Gilgeous-Alexander was the second-highest scorer in the NBA during the regular season, averaging 31.1 points, 6.6 assists, and 4.3 rebounds per game. However, he narrowly fell short in his bid to lead the Thunder to a second straight trip to the NBA Finals as they were beaten by the Spurs in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals.
