Sam Presti awaits ‘appropriate time’ to address Billy Donovan’s future

Will Billy Donovan return to the Thunder next season? It’s probably too early to tell.

With everyone else going on, it’s easy to forget that Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Billy Donovan is rapidly approaching the end of his contract.

Those five years sure flew by.

On Thursday, general manager Sam Presti hosted a video call wherein he addressed a number of issues surrounding the team, most notably being that the organization hasn’t committed to reopening their training facilities on May 8.

An an entity, the NBA has decided to follow the lead of the nation’s governors and allow teams located in states that are relaxing coronavirus-related stay-at-home orders to reopen their training facilities. Along with the Atlanta Hawks, the Thunder are one such in-scope NBA team.

Aside from that news, on Thursday, Presti was asked to weigh in on the status of Donovan. He did.

 “I’ve been really proud of the fact that Billy’s been our coach — he’s been our coach now for five years — and I think he’s done an excellent job all five years. Once we get some clarity on whether this is the end of the season or we’re playing more or what have you, we’ll sit down and have those conversations like we always have. I would say I’m looking forward to it, I think he’s done a great job and I’m hopeful that those are productive when there’s an appropriate time to do it.”

Although one could argue that Presti and Donovan don’t have much better to do than determine his future, attempting to do so before the season is over would potentially open a can of worms at an inopportune time.

While every coach would value the security that would come with an extension, the Thunder have undoubtedly overachieved to this point of the season. If they managed to win a playoff round — assuming the playoffs are actually held — it would give Donovan the latitude to ask for more of a reward than if they lost in the first round.

Similarly, although Donovan has done a fine job, Presti may be of the opinion that he’s only a “first round” coach if he was unable to advance out of the first round. It should be noted that since Kevin Durant departed the team in 2016, they haven’t sniffed the second round.

At the end of the day, once could just as easily argue that Donovan deserves immense credit for guiding the Thunder to the Western Conference’s fifth seed in a year that many thought they’d be in the lottery, so the major takeaway is probably exactly what Presti says — there will come a time and place for the two to engage on a possible contract extension.

With the season yet to be resolved, we probably haven’t arrived at that place yet.