Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti announced during his exit interview on Monday that the G League affiliate Oklahoma City Blue will be in the search for a new home arena this offseason. The Blue spent the 2020-21 regular season playing their home games at Paycom Center, being the only G League team to share an arena with their NBA counterpart. Before that, the Blue played across the street at Cox Convention Center. The NBA and G League told the Thunder that they needed to find a new home arena for the Blue that is a separate gym and can draw in a crowd.
Presti voiced his opinion and said that he did not agree with the decision to make the franchise move the Blue elsewhere. Presti said that the franchise benefitted from having both teams play in the same arena and that it made calling players up and down a seamless transition.
“We have a challenge on our hands because the NBA or the G-League doesn’t want us playing in our arena next year. You know, conversation probably not for the public, but like it is an NBA arena, so it should be good enough for the G-League. But I don’t get into that.
To me it’s about — development is about players. It’s about players. It’s what’s best for the players. We have NBA facilities, everyone loves playing in our facilities, hotel right there. I understand the G-League has a view on how they want to be perceived, but I wouldn’t want to sacrifice the environment for our players because we don’t have enough people in the stands. I get it, we’ll try to get some more people there for the G-League if that’s the key, but the G-League is for investment and to help our parent team, have them be ready for that. So that’s how I look at it.
But I’ll fill you in once we know how that’s going to go. We’ve got to find a solution there.
We’re not a major metropolitan city where there’s a million small venues everywhere, and we have designs on maybe potentially doing something locally where we build our own, our own G-League facility, but we can’t do that, execute a plan like that that would be great for the community if we’re renting everywhere.”
