I had my fifth PetScan yesterday since the beginning of the Stage 4 cancer journey and later this morning Dr. Showalter and I will talk about things. I expect it to be relatively clean just as the last three have been. I’ve come along way since the first scan which corresponded with my off the charts 1,212 PSA count.
These past two and a half years have been more than a journey, I’d say a reckoning, reset, and a redemption of sorts would be more accurate.
I feel blessed to just be here and have had the opportunity to grow spiritually while getting to know and love my two grandchildren…Robert and Aubrey.
I feel especially gratified God has given me this extra time and these opportunities to expand on being kinder, gentler, and more understanding of others.
We’re fortunate enough to get the opportunity to spend this Easter week in Seaside as a celebration of sorts.
I feel God allowed me to see the light when I was at my darkest moment and have faith in his omnipresent wisdom. And for that I am extremely thankful.
It was a beautiful day for me. I got up early and drove down to the family Alex land and fished for the first time this spring season. The pond looked perfect. Absolutely perfect. My Walden’s Pond.
The land has been my refuge since my teenage years whenever I needed to get away and clear my mind from my parents’ seemingly always tumultous marriage. It’s where I learned solititude sometimes is the best medicine for a weary, wore-down soul. A place to block out the bullshit from the mind and reset.
I caught five black bass, four bluegill, and about a seven pound channel cat all on light tackle. The channel cat was a huge surprise given I was using a shad-like spinner. That was a rush for certain. I never keep fish at this juncture in my life. It’s all catch and release. So I said good-bye to the big cat and wished him well on his way.
Then I drove home taking in all the country-side in a very relaxed state of being. I was the most casual driver on the two-lane highways going through Blanchard, then Lindsey, then tiny Cole, then to the thriving metroplex of Alex. I always stay to the right though so as not to impede the speed of others. I just wasn’t in a hurry on this day. MJ was smelling the roses.
My Denver Nuggets won their third straight game to finish the regular season on an uptick with a record of 50-32. Jokic’s team now is the No. 4 seed in the West and will have homecourt versus the surging LA Clippers who btw now have a Kawhi Leonard who looks the best I’ve seen from him in quite some time. Pray for Steve Ballmer…god bless his basketball heart.
Then…the final round of this unbelievable Masters golf tournament which in my golf soul ranks somewhere in my top four golf tournaments of all-time in my lifetime. Maybe second only behind Jack’s late in life win at National Augusta.
I will write this to Justin Rose…dude, this was one of those times in life you didn’t lose. You in my mind won a green jacket just like Rory did late on Sunday afternoon. Your fight and grit was remarkable. It’s one of those Thomas Vincent Lombardi moments when you emptied your tank, but the stars and planets were aligned for Rory to finally get his career Grand Slam.
So… of course I cried. This was better than Robert Redford’s The Legend of Booger Vance.
My father’s favorite golfer is Rory…so you know what I did? I called my cousin-brother Mark’s cell number on Saturday just to see by chance if it was still a working number…and it is. I was so taken back about this fact…I had to make a second call just to leave a voicemail message to Mark. I basically just said how much I miss him and how much he’s loved…and then told him to make sure Bobby sees the rest of this golf tournament.
So when Rory was crying after the ending so was I. And I’m pretty certain Mark and Bobby were as well.
My beautiful Sunday.
Have a miraculous Easter Week. I know I’m going to.
We have one game left in this NBA regular season and I’m ready to cast my MVP vote regardless of what happens tomorrow afternoon in Houston between the Denver Nuggets and the Houston Rockets.
Please keep this in mind, I’m not even really an OKC Thunder fan all that much anymore. I don’t hate the Thunder, but they fall in a group of five or six teams I watch with regularity. Those being Denver, Golden State, OKC, LA Lakers (Austin Reaves), and the Boston Celtics. And maybe to a slightly lesser degree the Minnesota Timberwolves.
In the West…the No. 4 thru No. 7 seeds are still in flux heading into this final week-end of the season. The Thunder however are going to finish 68-14 unless an earthquake or some other Black Swan event occurs between now and their scheduled final game against the feeble New Orleans Pelicans.
The Thunder are also going to have homecourt advantage all the way thru the NBA Finals if they emerge as the Western Conference Champion.
So… How would my ballot look for this NBA regular season MVP award?
With great thought and deliberation …I would go 1 Shai, 2 Jokic, 3 Anthony Edwards, and 4 Cade Cunningham. I would add I think all this angst over what the NBA will look like following LeBron, KD, and Steph’s collective exits are in a way overrated. All four of my finalists still have a great deal of NBA basketball in front of them.
What Adam Silver and the NBA in general needs to be focused on is how tanking and load management have weakened their game day product for the person either attending or watching NBA regular season games on television. You know…the television rankings have dipped even with LeBron, Steph, and KD still playing in their golden years. And in reality…only LeBron is on a team which made my Top Six NBA Teams This Season with a chance to win the O’Brien Trophy. Golden State with Steph and Jimmy Butler is No. 7 on my list and Jokic by himself is No. 8.
I still don’t know what I think about the Houson Rockets. I’ll put them No. 9 with the thought the way they offensive rebound the ball could be of a potential concern to the Thunder. No. 10 would be the Clippers or Indiana Pacers.
I will write this about Joikic before I love on Shai, statistically…Jokic should be winning his 4th MVP this season for what he just accomplished. At this point he is only the third player in NBA history to record a season average triple double. His numbers are daunting…29.8-12.8 rebs-10.3 ast. Plus, he had career bests in 3-point shots made and 3-point percentage. And for good measure he had his second best career year in rebounds.
BTW…the other two players are Oscar Robertson who in ’61-’62 did the triple double average. Of course, our own mecurial Russell Westbrook accomplished this feat four times in his never boring NBA career. Russ did it three times with OKC and once with Scott Brooks in Washington.
One last thing in regards to Jokic’s season. He did all this with Jamal Murray and Aaron Godon because of injury issues not even remotely pulling their chains on their team link. Jokic, in effect was playing without his second and third best players on the court with him at their peak level much of the season.
Shai’s numbers this regular season are 33ppg, 5rbs- and 6.2 asts, plus he usually adds a couple of steals and deflections every game. I have to give it up to Sam Presti on Shai and JDub in that the Thunder GM went yard and beyond with the trade acquisition of Shai from the Clippers and the drafting of JDub from Santa Clara.
Shai’s team never flinched when Chet H went down for the second regular season in his three year NBA career. Plus, Caruso missed a lot of games as well. Yeah, Hartenstein was a great addition, but it was Shai who carried this team to within two games of a historic 70-12 season.
But for me, as a discerning NBA fan…Shai means so much more. This young man exemplifies total class in both representing his franchise, the NBA in general, and Oklahoma City. Here is a young black man from Canada playing in a city which in all honesty is by far the most radical right city in the entire NBA. Shai showed everyone who watches the NBA there might be hope for Oklahoma to grow up at some point. The collective NBA fandom thought of OKC will now be of Shai’s dignity, grace, and class…. and not of angry white people still booing Kevin Durant for leaving Oklahoma.
Could the state of Oklahoma have a better ambassador of good faith?
What parent or grandparent out there wouldn’t want their son or grandson to show the total class Shai exudes every game in which he plays wearing an OKC Thunder jersey?
Shai Gligeous-Alexander, buddy…you’re my NBA Regular Season MVP and it wouldn’t upset me a bit if you win a ring to go along with your MVP season. Maybe…if you guys did win it all you could go to the White House and pull Commander Fuckwit aside and explain some things to him about life in general.
When Joe Biden left office the Dow was at boring 42,500 marker and things actually seemed somewhat boring and pedstrian as we were still the hope of democratic world. Russia and North Korea were our adversaries while Canada and Mexico were our bordering neighbors. Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam were in our orbit of global frienship and not leaning towards China. Greenland…really? Denmark was already our friends.
NATO and Europe still remember Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini…so, yeah, they understand that in rea;lity it is somewhat stupid to follow this geopolitical plan of Donald Trump who never served his country because he had some bunions on his feet and a daddy with a trust fund.
So much for that boring bullshit. We needed to throw all that in the dumpster fire and in a Hitleresqe or Calvin Coolidge/Herbert Hoover manner become the most hated isolationist country in the world and undo pretty much everything our grandparents accomplished by winning WWII eighty years ago.
But then again what the f–k did our grandparents know as they pretty much took us from the disastrous policies of Calvin Coollidge, Herbert Hoover, and the Smoot-Hauley Tariff Act and through their grit actually embraced policies which created the greatest middle class in the HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
What then again, f–k that state of mind. The entire globe, 8 billion plus should all fall in line with Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the concept of apartheid and make sure every white kid in America with a Sugar Daddy trust fund has everything set in his favor, while those of us who worked our asses off, played by the rules, and walked the walk of making sure our children had a shot at the American Dream should pretty much be treated with disdain and scorn.
The Dow opens at 39,500 today and will probably keep going in elevator mode as long as Trump in no way enunciates a clear message on WTF he is doing with his tarriff policies. Meanwhile, the the trading price of West Texas Crude has dropped from $70 a barrel to the high $50’s a barrel during all of this premeditated chaos.
My question to you Oklahomans at this point is…How has all of Trump’s buffoonish ‘Drill baby, drill’ bullshit touching your souls this Friday morning?
Good luck.
But you know what? I’ll be okay.And my focus is on just being a kinder, gentler person who takes the time to smell the roses and live the Golden Rule. A person who doesn’t brawl at a Thunder-Lakers game and catches that fluttering T-shirt in his right hand.
Have a nice weekend and enjoy the Masters golf tournament.
David Adelman, son of former Trailblazer head coach Rick Adelman, led the Denver Nuggets to a road win over the Sacramento Kings last night to break a four game losing streak for the Nuggets. The win keeps the Nuggets in the hunt for the No. 3 seed in the West, which of course is what they covet so as to avoid the OKC Thunder in a possible second round matchup.
The video above is after the Nuggets closed out the Lakers in the second round last April in a game in which I was fortunate enough to sit on the first row on the floor on the baseline opposite Jamal’s game winner.
A memory I will forever cherish with my son sitting next to me. And, of course, Jamal hit the game winner over Austin Reaves, who I have loved since his OU days.
I was sitting next to a couple of Wichita State fans the other night at Pay.Com and we started talking about Austin and how he ended up at OU. I did not know the reason Austin had to leave Wichita State was the fact he was dating head coach Greg Marshall’s daughter behind the coach’s back. Oops. Hellow…Coach Lon Kruger and Boomer Sooner, baby!.
Of course, the rest is history for the Lakers current third best player who amazingly went undrafted after being 1st team All-Big 12 his senior season in Norman. Sam Presti missed that one and instead took O State’s Lindy Waters who is now with his third NBA team sitting on a bench.
But back to Coach Malone…he leaves Denver as the only Denver Nugget coach to win an NBA Championship and he leaves with a string of eight straight winning seasons as well.
Coach Malone will have no problem securing a good NBA head coaching job if he wants one. He was the 4th longest tenured coach in the NBA prior to his dismal by Josh Kroenke. Coach Malone and GM Calvin Booth were both fired…which I thought was somewhat weak because Calvin Booth didn’t build the Nuggets into an NBA champiohsip team. That person was Tim Connelly, who is the current President of Operations for the Minnesota Timberwolves.
I will be somewhat surprised if Calvin Booth is anybody’s GM next season in the NBA. But we’ll see.
It would appear after the horrific double overtime loss to the very same Timberwolves…the situation with Coach Malone and Calvin Booth became untenable moving forward.
Coach Malone wanted to stick with the veteran Russell Westbrook, and Calvin Booth wanted to move forward with a heavier role for rookie Jalen Pickett.
The two mental errors by Russell at the end of the Minnesota game were indeed unacceptable, but Coach Malone is old school and sticks with his guys.
I actually like Jalen Pickett and we’ll see how that goes. But here’s the bottom line with the Nuggets, unless Jamal can stay healthy it’s not going to matter how many minutes Jalen plays or what role Russell has moving forward.
Because for the Nuggets to be a serious contender of any sort in the West, all three youngsters, those being Jalen, Peyton Watson, and Julian Strawther have to grow up in big time hurry and become solid No. 8, No. 9, and No. 10 players in interim coach David Adelman’s rotation.
I seriously doubt a coach like Mike Malone could ever coach for a GM like Sam Presti though. Coach Malone has a very strong, direct personality and I could never see a coach like Mike Malone fitting the Scott Brooks, Billy Donovan, Coach Mark template.
What a basketball day for me as I attended my first Thunder game of the season as the LA Lakers were in town for what in essence was a three day road stay for the Lakers and a quasi back to back. Just like NBA Playoff basketball.
But first let me write this…the NCAA Tournament Committee released their television ratings for the mens’ Final Four and the ratings were not surprisingly…stellar. 18.1 million viewers watched the Final Four and Championship Monday which makes 2025 the most watched Final Four since 2017.
What does this tell me? It tells me there is still a market for mens’ college basketball when a quality product is being televised. As many problems as the mens’ college game has doesn’t change the fact basketball fans at the NBA level are tired of the tanking and the load management bullshit. Fans want to see quality, meaningful games with the best players PLAYING.
Okay…to last night at the Incomporable Pay.Com Arena. MJ had a blast. We had seat great seats just left of mid-court behind the Thunder bench, ten rows up.
The atmosphere last night outside the arena before the game and inside the arena was a playoff feel like I used to love when the Thunder first starting making the NBA Playoffs. I love that feel. MJ lives for that feel. That feel of post season relevancy.
Shai gave a nice little speech to the Thunder crowd before tip giving his thanks to the OKC fans for their support. The national anthem was superb by a former Miss Oklahoma. And the best part of all was that while I was pretty close to Michael Cage and Little Nick Gallo…I couldn’t hear one single word of nonsensical horseshit either uttered during or after the game. Plus, I think I found myself a rickshaw driver for the playoffs.
The game itself was great until the refs diminished it with 7:40 left in the fourth period when they gave Luka his second technical of the night. Total bullshit. Again…fans pay to see the best players play…not to see some oversensitive zebra ruin what up to that point was a second round caliber playoff game. There was talking going on all night, and I mean all night. Don’t take the game away from the fans who are paying to see the best players PLAY.
But despite this bitching from me…Shai easily from my view clinched the MVP last night. What a great young man Shai is and how lucky the Thunder fans are to have him as their face of the city.
A drunken brawl between some Laker fans and Thunder fans erupted not long after the ejection just five or six rows behind me. I mean…fists were flying, ‘Fuck yous, and fuck this, and fuck whatevers’ were being yelled at the highest decibels. Finally…some ushers in green jackets got over there and removed all of the human rabble from the arena. I mean… threw ’em out of the arena with about six minutes still left to play.
And amazingly…this ‘new’ MJ never said a word during the brawl. Not one ‘Sit your stupid fucking asses down and shut the fuck ups,’ came out of my lips. So get this…while the human rabble behimd me were rioting…the Thunder cheerleaders starting throwing and shooting Thunder T-shirts into the stands. And as if a message from the Gods of basketball heaven came down to MJ’s soul…a wrapped Thunder T-shirt fluttered into my right hand. Swear to God. The first time ever I’ve ever caught a T-shirt at a Thunder game.
So like Bill Murray in Caddy Shack via Carl Spackler said, “So…you know, I have total consciousness going for me as well. So there’s that.”
What a great Thunder night for Mike J… and on the same day Michael Malone and Nugget GM Calvin Booth were both fired. I’ll blog about the Nugget situation tomorrow.
Coming into our national championship game, the Houston Cougars were 33-0 this basketball season in games in which they held their opponent under 70 points.
But to the credit of an incredibly resourceful Gator basketball team with a closer named Walter Clayton Jr., the Cougars are now 33-1 in that non-prescient category and national runner-ups for the third time in their heartbreak basketball history.
This was one for the ages.
A game even better than the two we witnessed on Saturday evening from San Antonio. This was a Final Four which for two nights made us who still love the game forget about the whoredom of mens’ college basketball with the Portal, NIL, and evaporating team rosters from season to season.
This Final Four was a basketball thing of beauty as Florida won the national championship by coming back from double digit deficits in four of their six games in the Tournament. This was a Florida group who beat defending champ UConn in a knife-fight, then beat street tough Texas Tech, and then overcame two No. 1 seeds in Auburn and Houston in the Final Four.
At the end of the day, here’s the simple truth…when it mattered most in the last 3:25 of this game…Florida out-toughed Houston. Florida not only won the game, they won the knife-fight against Kelvin Sampson’s gritty group.
Florida has now won their third basketball national championship and in the process crowned the SEC as the pre-eminent basketball conference in the land currently. The irony in all of this is the SEC in football this past season couldn’t advance a team to the national championship game. Nick Saban you’re sorely missed in Dixie, sir.
So with this third national championship it might be fair to say the Florida Gators are now a basketball blueblood, or at the very least right there at the door knocking loudly.
On a night when Walter Clayton Jr. didn’t make a field goal for the first thirty-two minutes of play… he was still the Gators’ MVP as he made every play his team needed in the final eight minutes to get them over the hump.
On the game’s final play, with Emmanuel Sharp and the Cougars needing a three to assume their place in college basketball history…. Walter Clayton Jr. donned his cape one last time and made certain Sharp’s shot never went airborne.
The very tragic truth is Kelvin and his group of street-fighters will have to live with for their of their lives…Florida only had the lead in this basketball game for 1:02 minutes of play. The Gators led briefly at 8-6, but never held the lead again until the final minute of play and will now hold it for the rest of their lives.
In the last 3:25 of play, Houston turned the ball over five times total with three of those gaffes coming in the game’s final minute of play.
So ironically, this Houston team now knows exactly how Duke felt on Saturday evening after their last minute collapse.
But collapse or not… Todd Golden and his Florida Gators out-toughed the Houston Cougars and are the rightful champions of the mens’ college basketball world.
A mens’ national semifinal round for the ages. Literally the best two game set I can ever remember. Tonight.. we get Houston vs. Florida and we will see if Kelvin Sampson can go all Norman Dale (Gene Hackman) and complete his incredible journey back to the pinnacle of his sport.
Kelvin never would have lasted as an NBA head coach. He’s the kind of dude who should be coaching college basketball. The kind of coach who tries to make a difference in the lives of his players.
I am genuinely somewhat conflicted about tonight. I love what I’ve seen from Walter Clayton Jr. this season, but Kelvin is a part of my OU basketball heart. Sorry…Walter–Kelvin and Milos have my heart tonight.
Then yesterday there was UConn’s Paige Hueckers leading the Huskies to a blowout win for Coach Geno Auriemma’s 12th national championship. Paige got plenty of help from Azzi and Sarah Strong, but this was Paige’s championship. Nobody, and I mean nobody, saw this game being the blowout it was.
And then there was Alex Ovechkin passing the Great One with his 895th goal yesterday. If you love the game of ice hockey…you cried. Damn…it seems like I cried every day this past week. MJ needs to tap down on all this crying of happiness.
By the way…one of my favorite foreckecking physical wingers in the league, Tommy Wilson, got the primary assist on No. 895. Nice moment for a role player and a banger.
Anyway—congrats to Alex Ovechkin…and who knows maybe the Washington Caps could make a little run of their own in the upcoming Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The only downer was the Thunder getting their asses kicked at home by the hot shooting Lakers. I’m going to attend tomorrow night’s game…so I’ll do a two for one on these two Thunder-Laker games later.
I’m already amped about tonight’s game in San Antonio.
I want to be fair. This isn’t just about the six trillion dollar exit from U.S. equity markets this past week.
You people already knew he bankrupted Trump Airline. You already knew he bankrupted Trump University. You already knew he sold a $500 million dollar casino/hotel for $350 million and then witnessed Party B sell the same property to a Party C for $600 million dollars. You already knew he rolled up in upwards of another 8 trillion to our federal debt during his first term.
You knew exactly what he was as a human…and yet. You knew he posessed the maturity of a 7th grader with this nuance of Mr. Pillow…and yet.
You knew or should have known he’s the last human on earth who would or could bring fiscal responsibility to this country…and yet.
YOU KNEW…AND YET.
Unless you’re dumber than a rock….YOU KNEW what he did on Jan. 6th.
YOU 78 MILLION PEOPLE KNEW>
Other than Donald Trump causing self inflicted chaos in this country every single day since the first day of his second inauguration… and other than the fact he did get the border numbers back to what they were under Obama….what has he done which wouldn’t have been corrected eighteen months ago with James Lankford’s immigration bill?
WHAT has this Time Magazine Person of the Year done other than get the Obama numbers back as far as the Southern border?
Well…he’s made every other country in the world hate America. And he’s without any nuance whatsoever failed to explain to even his dumbest followers how any of this is going to in any way make their lives better as American citizens who’ve played by the rules.
And what’s really pitiful is that in the only debate in which he would show up and debate Kamala Harris…is the fact she kicked his ass all over that stage that night as if if he were in fact a senile old man and only one year younger than Joe Biden
And let me clear on here…I was not in anyway enthralled with having had to vote for Kamala Harris. But given the other option….as a husband, as a father, as a son, as a grandfather, and as an American who believes in the Rule of Law–I felt obligeed to vote for Kamala Harris given the option.
So I guess you 78 million don’t have any qualms whatsoever about any of this so far.
I am so happy for Kelvin, LJ Cryer, Milos, and all the Cougars…. basketball words are not adequate.
Kelvin said, “Sometimes you lose, but if you’ve given everything you do not lose. You stay the course with your inner faith, your belief in your own dogged soul, your family, and your real inner core friends.”
MJ would add it doesn’t hurt either if you take on the inner soul of a sled dog/wolf named Buck. It’s nice to have the soul of a dog on your heart on the journey. Trust me on that one.
So we get Kelvin’s Never Quit Cougars and Walter Clayton’s Never Say Die Gators on Championship Monday Night.
The problem is I might have two Shining Moment Champions on the same evening if you follow my drift.
On Friday afternoon after leaving the Red Cup Cafe, I headed over to the OKC Wellness Center and got on the terrain bike to see where my cellualr recovery was after the most recent chemo infusion. The room wasn’t as crowrded as normal as the cold, wet weather had already drifted into western Oklahoma City.
I then shattered my best previuos three mile time by a full minute. I cried. But it was a beautiful, joyous, cleansing cry.
One of my friends nearby asked, “Mike…are you okay?”