The excitement for Josh Giddey’s summer league debut lasted all of five minutes. The No. 6 pick in the NBA draft sprained his ankle in the opening minutes of the first game and missed the remainder.
During media day on the first day of training camp on Friday, Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti said that Giddey is doing fine now.
“The worst thing in those situations in summer league when someone gets nicked up like that is you just don’t have enough time to get them back before summer league is over,” Presti said.
Giddey was the first of the Thunder’s four draft picks in July. He was forced to miss summer league, which is often a nice marker for rookies to begin before jumping into preseason and regular-season games, but Presti is confident that Giddey will be ready because of his experience in the NBL last year.
“If we’re looking at a silver lining, he played in a men’s league the whole year,” Presti said. “The competition he was playing against is equal or probably better than the summer league, quite frankly.”
The team now has time in training camp and the preseason to get to learn Giddey.
“We’re going to learn as much in six days of practice as we would in summer league (by) just being around the guys, getting into a routine, building relationships and getting a sense of how things are done,” Presti said.
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