Sam Presti knew he shouldn't do it, but he couldn't help himself.

The man in charge of Oklahoma City's basketball operations — the man widely considered the best executive in the league, one who built a young championship roster — said he knew Shai Gilgeous-Alexander would "kill me for talking about this" and then he proceeded to talk about the narrative around SGA's drawing free throws and the backlash to his playing style anyway. For almost seven minutes.

"He's playing against six people, he's got five defenders and the sixth defender is social media," Presti said (credit to Brandon Rahbar of the Daily Thunder for posting the video). "That's a reality, and he's not going to be the last player that the machine decides to target, but no one's going to handle it as gracefully, because when they turn it on somebody else, they're not going to step up there every night and not acknowledge it."

Thing is, it's not just fans on social media who complain about Gilgeous-Alexander's playing style — although there are plenty of those — it's coaches like the Knicks Mike Brown, the Warriors' Steve Kerr and the Pistons' J.B. Bickerstaff (among others). It's also players such as the Celtics' Jaylen Brown, or Victor Wembanyama's thinly veiled discussion of "ethical basketball."

Presti defended Gilgeous-Alexander against them, too.

"The postgame press conference has turned into the bully pulpit to create competitive advantage..." Presti said. "It used to be you get up there, you talk about your own team, now everyone gets up there and they talk about the officials and they discredit the other team."

Presti's rant was playing to his core audience — and that likely starts with Gilgeous-Alexander himself. As noted by Presti, SGA brushes questions about his foul-drawing aside during the season, but if the narrative about it really does bother SGA, then Presti went out, made the case that everyone inside the Thunder organization has made for years, and had his star's back. This also will play well with Thunder fans.

Presti continued to defend SGA for drawing fouls, saying all the greats do it, and his total fouls drawn last season were tied with Joel Embiid and comparable to those of Jaylen Brown and Jalen Brunson, guys who don't face the same criticism.

Presti also talked about all the things that Gilgeous-Alexander does right that he feels don't get enough attention.

"[People say] Players don't play defense, Shai is a two-end player," Presti said. "Now, he plays with four or five All-NBA defensive players, so sometimes his defensive ability gets undersold, but he plays two ends. Second, [fans say] all NBA players do is complain, b**** and moan... He's gotten three technical fouls this year, none for complaining, one for waving a towel in support of someone that hit a shot that doesn't play very often...

"The other thing is load management — nobody plays, they take all these games off. Shai plays every night... Next one is all you do is shoot threes. NBA players, all they do is shoot threes. Okay, well, he's brought the mid-range back to an art form."

All that is going to play well with the Thunder and their fans, and be mocked by most outside of OKC. Presti is smart, and he knew all of that before he went off on his rant in the first place.