Oklahoma City Thunder to hold training camps at a new practice facility: NBA Update
The National Basketball Association has notified all teams to open their facilities for players, so they can do their voluntary workouts, this Thursday onwards.
However, the players from the Oklahoma City Thunder will not be able to return their own facility. This is not because of some restriction, but due to the fact that the franchise has now shifted all its operations to a new facility.
At this occasion OKC’s jubilant General Manager Sam Presti said,
"We're in our new building. We are excited by that. It's a fantastic facility. We're very excited for our players to have their first experience with it. The thing about it that we're so excited about is that it's really driven to player development and the development of our guys. We think that's going to be critical for our organization and it's been a focus for us for a period of years now. We feel like the building has an opportunity to continue to help improve our players and it's a great place to work. We're very grateful that we have that in place now."
This new facility should have been completed last season, however, due to different reasons the construction work had to be pushed back on several occasions. The five months of lockout however gave enough time to the labour to eventually finish the facility at the right time.
Oklahoma City has spent nearly $14 million on their new facility that is located in the northeast side of the town. As far as the old practice facility is concerned, it will be turned into a community events centre, which will also be used for the team's youth basketball camps and for practices of the Thunder Girls dance team.
As compared to the other NBA teams, OKC are in a far better position at the moment. This is not just because they have a new facility, but also due to the fact that they don’t need to rush into the next free agency that will tip off from December 9. The simple reason behind this is that OKC still have 13 players under their contract and therefore don’t require any major moves in this free agency.
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