The Oklahoma City Thunder threw a curveball to their fans this offseason with the addition of Vasilije Micic.
After years of teasing, Micic finally made the jump to the NBA when he signed a three-year deal with the Thunder. OKC acquired his draft rights in a 2020 trade with the Philadelphia 76ers headlined by Al Horford.
The former EuroLeague MVP established himself as one of the best international players since being drafted late in the second round in 2014. The 29-year-old is a highly decorated guard who has won the EuroLeague championship twice (2021, 2022).
When asked about why the move happened now instead of previous offseasons, Thunder general manager Sam Presti spoke about how the timing worked out this time around, which wasn’t always the case as Micic had other obligations and goals.
“This is one thing about personnel decisions in the NBA. You don’t get to choose when things happen. In another point in time, in a hypothetical situation, oh, we’d really like to have this type of player to complement the team. Like we don’t just get to go pick that player off the other team. Because if we really want them, the other team really wants them too and they have value. Just because you have a specific want at a given time and you might know there’s a player that fits, the other people have to participate.
In his case, he had a contract overseas. He had goals, I think, personal goals and team goals to try to achieve overseas. We always had pretty good communication, and there was one year where there was no out in the contract.
I just think it kind of lined up and made sense.
But there’s just all these different factors. Like I always say, everything is kind of always moving. Nothing stands still. To get a trade done or a signing done, so many things have to fall into place, and in this case, a lot of things kind of just fell into place and it made sense.
As far as his game goes, I think everybody knows the NBA is very, very favorable to skill players that know how to play, that are really good with the ball and can anticipate how to serve the game.
He has a lot of that.
Now, how will that translate? I can’t give you that answer. I certainly know that we’re not going to see him play in the first 10, 20 games and go, we have our answer. It’s going to be something that he has to learn, we have to learn him. There’s no fixed mindset on what exactly he can do or can’t do.
It’s also relative to who he’s on the floor with, too.
You can have elite skills in some area, but you’re never going to have complementary skills to your elite skills. That comes from other people.
Team are really good when they’re very complementary. It’s not just like an assembly of talent. At some level it has to find its sea level together, and we’ll see if he has some good combinations with us.”
Micic enters his rookie season as the biggest wild card on the Thunder roster. He could be the sixth man, completely out of the rotation or anywhere in between by the end of the season.
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