Sam Presti hilariously admits to old jazz-rap albums: 'It's a little embarrassing'

USA Today

8 hours ago

Rumors of the album's existence have floated on the internet for years. Pablo Torre unearthed it recently after his hands were dirtied with investigative skills that would make Sherlock Holmes blush.
Every year, Sam Presti drops some musical references in his bi-annual state of the Oklahoma City Thunder address. He's talked about how his love for playing the drums rivals his love for scouting talent at small schools and nearly-empty gyms. So it shouldn't be shocking to learn the general manager was once a self-made musician.
Presti's jazz-rap album "Milk Money" has recently resurfaced online. Torre was able to find a hard copy of the CD. While he didn't play the eight-song album, confirming its existence was enough to hear him address it in his 2024-25 end-of-season press conference.
"Yes, I can confirm that," Presti said with a smile. "This was a long, long time ago when I was in college. I certainly didn't expect it to become public, part of the public record. But yeah, we did a couple of those, and it was a great experience for me getting to be around so many people — the second one is the one — if we were going to unearth one, I was like, 'Maybe it'll only be the second one, it won't be the first one.'"
It's funny to hear Presti admit there's a second one. From my knowledge, that wasn't public information. Perhaps he admitted that to challenge people to find it. Or perhaps he's already scrubbed it offline and taunted those who were ambitious to attempt to find the second album like they were Indiana Jones.
"But you have to be able to laugh at yourself. You have to be able to have fun with it. We were all young at one time," Presti said. "I learned a lot from that experience, especially the second one. The second one was — I learned a lot from the first and then carried that to the second one."
That was quite a way to end Presti's press conference. Many looked forward to it as it was the first time he publicly spoke since the Thunder won the NBA championship. Fans entered with the hope of hearing him run a victory lap. Instead, they exited with him begrudgingly addressing his old music career.
"But yeah, as long as they don't unearth my break-dancing videos when I was eight then I'm going to consider myself ahead of the game, so I've already called my mom and said, 'You know where those are, right? They cannot see the light of day,'" Presti joked. "You have to laugh at yourself, have fun with it. We were all young. It was part of my life that I had no idea would see the light of day, and it's a little embarrassing, but it's all good. It's all good."