Mark Pope picked up a thing or two from staff trip to visit OKC Thunder

Earlier this month, as part of his preparation for the upcoming 2025-26 season, Kentucky men’s basketball head coach Mark Pope took most of his staff on a trip to meet with the defending NBA champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Not only was it a chance for Pope and the Kentucky’s assistants to meet up with a couple of former Wildcats in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (the league’s reigning MVP) and Cason Wallace, but it also provided an opportunity to pick the brains of one of the smartest organizations in all of American professional sports. Thunder GM Sam Presti has been lauded for his excellent team-building skills, which have put OKC in a position to keep on winning. Presti crafted a roster by drafting and trading well, collecting seemingly unlimited assets, and finding hidden gems within the margins.

Presti also brought in a bright young coach who has proven to be among the best in the league, Mark Daigneault. Pope and his staff were able to spend their time in Oklahoma picking up pointers from Daigneault and his staff. Alabama’s Nate Oats was another head coach in the building at the same time.

“They were incredibly generous,” Pope said Thursday when asked about the trip. “Mark was awesome. He let us sit down in the film room with some other coaches — it wasn’t exclusive to us. And we probably sat there for 90 minutes and went over some film, went over some concepts and ideas. And we had a long follow-up phone call late that night.”

It was a look behind the curtain at how a championship-level franchise runs the show — a tier that Pope wants to put Kentucky back in as soon as the upcoming season, which unofficially begins Friday night against top-ranked Purdue in an exhibition. It was obvious to him why the rest of the NBA is playing catch-up with the Thunder.

“Just the way OKC is running their organization, clearly, it’s an NBA championship organization,” Pope continued. “And the way they run it is really special. They’re really sharing, really engaging, really trying to do things the right way, really trying to make it about team, really trying to expand the reach of the game, really trying to share knowledge and experience, and also very curious. Wanting to know best practices from other organizations. So it was a gift.”

Pope made sure not to leave OKC empty-handed, either. Opportunities to meet and learn from the defending champs don’t come around all that often. Pope made sure he and his staff took full advantage of it.

“We actually have incorporated some verbiage and terminology from our trip there,” Pope said. “Any time we have a chance to go be around a program like that, that’s really built their success over the last two decades almost, it seems like, it’s pretty great.”

Now let’s see if that championship smell rubbed off on Kentucky.

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