Sam Presti is an American basketball executive. Since June 7, 2007, he has been the General Manager of the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team formerly known as the Seattle SuperSonics. In the summer of 2010, the team extended his contract. Presti previously served in several progressively more significant positions for the San Antonio Spurs after beginning as an intern. He met their General Manager R. C. Buford at a basketball camp in Aspen, Colorado. He is given much of the credit for encouraging the Spurs to draft point guard Tony Parker in 2001. In his first move as GM of the Sonics, he traded multiple-time All-Star Ray Allen to the Boston Celtics, whom Allen helped win the NBA title in 2008, in a large trade that included the draft rights to Jeff Green. He shortly thereafter traded All-Star Rashard Lewis to Orlando for a second-round draft pick, generating a 9-million-dollar trade exception which Presti later used to land Kurt Thomas and two first-round draft picks from Phoenix. To lead the team, he selected as head coach P. J. Carlesimo, whom he knew as an assistant coach at San Antonio. [More at Wikipedia]

1976 in Concord