Author: Mike

For the fifth time this young basketball season, OKC’s Thunder blew a double digit lead in losing to the San Antonio Spurs by a 104-101 count. At one point in the second period the Thunder led 43-20, but you could see Gregg Popovich getting on both his players and the zebras and you knew in your heart the 23 point lead was Fool’s Gold.

As in previous blown lead losses, it was evident this lead wouldn’t hold and slowly but surely the Spurs even led by as many as six in the fourth period before OKC made a couple of late attempts to pull out a road win, but when Carmelo’s made basket with 5.6 seconds left was ruled a two instead of a three the loss was sealed.

Let’s be clear, OKC is in the midst of a tough stretch of basketball on the immediate horizon. It goes at New Orleans, then Golden State and Detroit at home the next week of play. This OKC team needs to start winning some games against teams other than bottom feeders. Fifteen games in and OKC’s best win to date was back on Halloween when they beat Milwaukee.

7-8 isn’t what most thought this Thunder team would be fifteen games in. I was thinking 9-6ish or maybe 10-5, but I didn’t think it would still be this awkward 15 games in. The role players seem okay, the stars not as much.

To me, the main problem in this game was Russell Westbrook and Paul George were a collective 11-38 shooting from the field. Westbrook was 5-22, Paul was 6-16. I don’t think you have to be John Wooden to realize that when your top two players go 11-38 from the field it’s going to be tough winning on the road against a playoff caliber team.

So for me…that’s the storyline here…Westbrook and Paul George stunk shooting the basketball.

Carmelo, Steven Adams, Jerami Grant, Abrines, Felton, and Patterson all had decent shooting nights, but when your two Biggest Dogs can’t get off the porch and don’t have any bite it’s hard to win.

To me, the game changed when Popovich went ape shit crazy and read his team the riot act for the way they were playing early. To date, I’ve never seen Billy Donovan do that once in public view as the Thunder coach. You can only argue with the refs so much at some point, at the other point you have too look your stars in the eye and tell them to step up.

The Thunder drop to 7-8 and are now 0-6 in close games, 2-6 on the road—and still the biggest disappointment in the league fifteen games in.

OKC hits the road Monday night to face a team familiar with underachievement as they visit the sometimes dysfunctional New Orleans Pelicans. With Golden State and Detroit sandwiched around Thanksgiving it would be wise for the Thunder to win in New Orleans.

Kevin Durant and Reggie Jackson both in a three day span. This could be interesting.

How much more would Popovich get out of Westbrook? Could they co-exist? I know this, they both agree on Caligula Trump. Wouldn’t it be interesting.

Granted, it’s only Week 5 and our Thunder have 68 games remaining on the regular season slate, but the storyline so far this season isn’t the Super Team assembled in Oklahoma City, rather it’s the Boston Celtics 14 game winning streak.

On Thursday night, the Celtics beat the Warriors by holding the Warriors to 88 points. They didn’t outscore the Warriors, they suffocated them by holding Curry, Thompson, and Durant to subpar nights.

So…the Celtics without Gordon Hayward now not only lead the East, but have the best record in all of the NBA and have this season’s top storyline to date.

Brad Stevens is on course to win Coach of the Year, Kyrie Irving is on the inside track to win MVP, and Jason Tatum is on track to contend for Rookie of the Year honors.

When Danny Ainge hired Brad Stevens with that long contract to lure Stevens from Butler you had the feeling it was only a matter of time. There are only a couple of what I would describe as acute difference makers as head coaches in the NBA currently. Popovich was one. Steve Kerr might be one, but the argument there could be made the Warriors won just as much with Luke Walton and Mike Brown. And now Brad Stevens has emerged as possibly the guy who at Boston should emerge as the next great coach in the NBA.

When Durant made his decision to leave Oklahoma City, I actually thought Boston had a very good chance of landing him because of Stevens. But in the end, Durant and his entourage took the easier path. As a basketball fan…I’m tired of seeing LeBron James in the NBA Finals. Hopefully, this Celtics team is the beginning of a new era in the Eastern Conference.

Sure, it’s early and the Chuckster says no way the Celtics beat LeBron four times in a two week span, but at least there’s hope on the horizon some change might be in store in the East.

The power of positive coaching with Brad Stevens.

With Steven Adams missing his third straight game with a calf contusion, the OKC Thunder went about taking care of business with a 92-79 win over a punchless Chicago Bull team. OKC came out fast hitting the Bulls in the mouth and when the period ended OKC led 27-7. Game pretty much over.

It was an ugly game to watch for the most part. Both teams shot poorly from the field, but OKC is simply the better team.

Paul George struggled shooting the ball on this night after two performances which were Durantesque to the core. Carmelo Anthony returned to the lineup and had a decent game. But on this night the two players who led the Thunder with their overall court energy were Russell Westbrook and Jerami Grant.

Westbrook was fantastic supplying energy with steals, dunks, and chest pumps. It was one of those Bad Little Dude nights when you just kind of sit back and realize what a unique athlete Russell Westbrook truly is. It’s what you expect from the reigning league MVP….leading by example and doing whatever it takes to get his team a win.

I thought Jerami Grant was superb as well. Jerami played 34 minutes and continued his excellent play this season. He does a multitude of things to help this team and his overall game is evolving every night right in front of our eyes. Moving forward—Jerami Grant will be a very big piece of this OKC Thunder team.

The bench played pretty well as Felton, Patterson, Huestis, and Abrines all chipped in with nice nights.

Josh Huestis has been a pleasant surprise for me. He does some nice things out there. You can see some things in his game coming together.

So the bottomline is OKC has righted the ship from 4-7 to get back to 7-7 with three straight wins over three teams under .500 themselves. Three straight wins since the loss at Denver and the subsequent discussion amongst the stars in the aftermath of the Nuggets loss.

You get the feeling the Thunder are feeling more comfortable with themselves and ready to start beating some playoff caliber teams.

The Thunder will have a chance to begin this trend of beating playoff caliber teams when they visit the Spurs on Friday night. On the road, the Thunder are 2-5 and overall against playoff level teams in the West…1-3 so far this young season.

It’s time for the Thunder to start winning some games against good teams.

I’ve seen two wrestling movies in my life and both were excellent. Mickey Rourke won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in The Wrestler and it was a film which was my favorite movie the year it was released.

Last week–I watched the ESPN 30/30 film Nature Boy and it floored me. I know nothing per se about pro wrestling, but the movie featured the life of Ric Flair whom many consider to be the pioneer of professional wrestling. The film is a wonderful biography of his life.

It’s a beautifully done film which gives the viewer an insight into the life of Ric Flair the Nature Boy.

There are parts of the film which are tough in regards to the death of Flair’s son Reid, but through it all Flair is a very interesting dude to listen to as he chronicles his life through the course of the film.

Like I said, I’m not a pro wrestling fan, but from the opening of this film, I found myself not being able to not like Ric Flair. I grew up in a family in a constant wave of dysfunction—so maybe that was a large part of it. But as the movie moved along, his story fascinated me and in the end touched me. And in the end, that’s what as a reader or a viewer you want a story to do to you internally.

So… I now understand the whole Ric Flair story and I find myself flexing and doing wrestling poses at the diva lab Pauli while shouting…”I’m Nature Boy and you don’t want any part of me…..Woooo!” Of course, Pauli looks at me and gives me this WTF sigh expression which says…’Please, Mike, this isn’t in our arrangement’.

But still, I can see why it was so fun being the Nature Boy.

If you get the chance, be sure and watch the film.

You know, here’s the thing, historically the Civil War never ended. The atrocities in some instances even worsened during Reconstruction and beyond in the South. Of course, you shouldn’t stereotype, but as I’ve stated ad nauseum on here there’s a swath of southern states which have never really moved beyond the Civil War culturally.

Parts of the South are idyllic. There is a regional ambience which is charming. I married an Auburn girl.My mother is as good a Southern cook as you’ll find. My favorite novelist is John Grisham, an Ole Miss grad. My favorite Anthony Bourdain episode was the one featuring Sean Beck in South Carolina. Melbourne, Florida may ultimately be where my wife and I hide from the world at some point.

But, I mean, Jesus fucking Christ…Alabama you have to be better than this. This is so mind numbingly stupid I thought long and hard before even entering it on my blog.

I mean, for those white men in Alabama who are defending Roy Moore, you have to at some point ask yourself why he was removed from the Alabama State Supreme Court…twice. Ask yourself why even Caligula Trump couldn’t even endorse Roy Moore. Ask yourself why our Groper in Chief endorsed Luther Strange in the runoff. Ask yourself why the POTUS who once said I just grab them by the pussy because I can isn’t on board with you on this one. You might want to ask yourself a few of these questions because quite frankly Alabama…you look incredibly fucking stupid right now. And, keep in mind, I live in Oklahoma, which isn’t ever going to be the mensa magnet of the world, but you guys really look stupid.

Without starters Carmelo Anthony and Steven Adams, the Thunder were missing two key clogs of their starting five inside Chesapeake Energy Arena on Sunday night. But it didn’t matter as Jerami Grant and Dakari Johnson started in place of them and did well enough for the Thunder to beat the dumpster fire Mavs easily by a count of 112-99.

It’s sad seeing presidential aspirant Mark Cuban’s Mavs this bad, but when you’ve lost by eight to the equally woeful Sacramento Kings earlier in the week—you need to take care of business and continue your team climb out of the darkness.

And climbing out of the darkness is exactly what OKC is doing here after falling to 4-7 to Denver in a loss so painful Paul George had to say something to his other two stars on this OKC mini Super Team. Depending on what you think Paul George did or didn’t say—I’m sticking with my original premise that he looked at Russell and said, “If I don’t ever touch the fucking ball…I can’t help you with any of these teams, let alone Cupcake.”

I’m fairly certain Tramel, Royce Young, and Bret Dawson won’t write it up like this with language as such, but then again they never played sports at John Marshall and don’t have NBA-DNA coursing in their veins like I do.

Since Russell apparently got the message that, yes… indeed Paul George was acquired this summer for Oladipo and Sabonis these Thunder are 2-0 and at 6-7 only one game removed from being .500 after a wobbly losing streak of four games.

Ever since Paul George let it be known he likes to get super star touches just like Cupcake did during his time here… PG has been brilliant in back to back games going for 42 and 37 points versus the Clippers and Cuban’s horrific Mavs.

Paul George has been brilliant in back to back games in filling the Durant role with a more blue collar version of what Durant used to provide for this Thunder franchise before Draymond Green convinced him sometime before Game 6 he should go ahead and become a Warrior for life.

So, here’s the thing, even when Carmelo rejoins the lineup from his sore back woes, it should be Paul George getting his twenty shots every night for two simple reasons…he’s younger and is a better basketball player still in his prime.

The Thunder host the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday night and the Bulls aren’t very good. If the Thunder can take of business and climb another couple of inches out of the darkness they will be 7-7 heading into a Friday night road game in San Antonio. But we’ve been here before with this Thunder team…so let’s see what they do with the Bulls first.

But for sure we do know this after Games No. 12 and 13….when Russell gets Paul George into the flow and keeps him in the flow—-it doesn’t look all that different from Westbrook and Durant.

It was easier than most of us thought it would be as OU dismantled No.6 TCU 38-20 with a haymaker of a first half which had the Sooners leading 38-14. I can’t imagine the Sooners playing a better half of football in every facet of the game.

Baker Mayfield was namely Baker Mayfield as he inched closer to being OU’s sixth Heisman Trophy winner. Running back Rodney Anderson scored four touchdowns while continuing his excellent run of football which started in the Texas game. From that Texas game and beyond both Rodney Anderson and wide receiver Marquise Brown have made this OU offense a different animal. This OU offense can do it all and may very well have the best offensive line in the country.

But what made this game different was OU’s defense. For the first time since the Ohio State game, the Sooner defense played four quarters of quality football and it came against a high octane Big 12 offense. For the first time I can ever remember…OU played four freshmen in their secondary. You can see OU getting better every week since the unexpected Iowa Sate loss. This was the first game since that loss in which no drama was needed in the second half.

This game was basically over when Anderson scored his fourth touchdown of the first half with seconds remaining. OU ran clock the second half as TCU seemed content with the notion this game was over early as well.

Overall, an interesting week-end of college football. Auburn spanked No. 1 Georgia. Miami routed No. 3 Notre Dame. Mississippi State pushed Alabama to the limit. The poll will look markedly different on Tuesday. If there was any question as to whether or not OU controls their own College Football Playoff destiny—that question was dimmed this week-end.

It’s very simple for OU…win out and they’re going to college football’s Final Four for the second time in three years with Baker Mayfield.

Win, survive, advance. Get better every week. That’s been head coach Lincoln Riley’s mantra since the Iowa State loss. Riley was calm after the loss to the Cyclones. Said this wasn’t new ground for the Sooners having to play a sequence of elimination games leading into early December. Said he was familiar with this rodeo, so to speak. His poise didn’t seem ruffled or that of a normal thirty-three year old rookie head coach.

Three more games to be played and won by the Sooners if they want to be part of this season’s College Football Playoff. But for the first time since the Iowa State loss, the path to getting there is very clear for the Sooners. Take care of business, just take care of business against Kansas, West Virginia and the opponent in the Big 12 Championship Game and it doesn’t matter what the rest of the college football world does to itself these three remaining weeks.

With Paul George scoring a Thunder career best 42 points, the OKC Thunder won their first game of the season over a Western Conference team by beating the LA Clippers 120-111 inside Chesapeake Energy Arena. This is the Paul George… Thunder fans have been thirsting for ever since his airport arrival this summer brought him to Oklahoma City in exchange for Victor Oladipo and Domas Sabonis. This is the big dog every OKC fan wants to see wag his finger at Kevin Durant in eleven days (who’s counting) when the Warriors visit the Peake and say, “Not in my house, Cupcake. Not in my house.”

So maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of what we thought this could be for this Super Team of Dysfunction twelve games in. One would think or hope following the loss to Denver, that there was stone cold silence in that post game team meeting until Paul George stepped forward, then said to Russell Westbrook, ” I can’t help you unless I touch the fucking ball. Pass the ball.”

From what I’ve seen twelve games in, this is something Russell Westbrook is going to have overcome if this Thunder team truly wants to contend for a championship. Russell Westbrook is going to have to understand there’s a fine line balance between being the reigning MVP versus feeding the two new big dogs Sam Presti has put at his disposal.

I think it’s that simple because I think the role players on this team will figure out what they have to be every night. The question is if the guy I used to lovingly call Wild Thing or Bad Little Dude (BLD) can come to terms with the morphing of his game to a championship level or just be happy being the millennials’ version of Allen Iverson.

So the question for Russell Westbrook is how bad do you want to beat the Warriors and ascend to a championship? How much of your game are you willing to morph to feed the Big Dogs, yet remain assertive enough as you were in the first period of this win over the Clippers?

Clearly, this was Paul George’s game, but Westbrook set the tone early with his energy by getting to the rim and more importantly, the free throw line. This Westbrook looked much more like Mo Cheeks of the ’83 Sixers than anything yet I’ve seen from BLD this season.

Russell, please listen, I love you. I love what you’ve meant to this city. Truth is, this blog wouldn’t be here if you weren’t still here. But the dysfunction has to stop. Even Kobe knew when it was time for Big Shot Bob Horry (see millennials scratching heads…wtf Bob Horry) to have the ball in his hands. Do your thing when it’s there, when it’s not let the Big Dogs run. I repeat, make sure the Big Dogs run. That’s what your teammates, your coach, and your city knows you have to do in order to win a ring at some point in your career.

Steven Adams was a scratch in this game and Dakari Johnson got the start… he played well against Deandre Jordan. He’s another nice piece at Billy Donovan’s disposal on nights when Steven can’t go or the opponent isn’t playing small. He has a nice court presence and is a surprisingly good passer with a feel for the game.

Other than that-I’m ready to move on to Game 13.

So…twelve games in and this aspirant Super Team stands 5-7 after beating the Clippers in a game they had to have or else the wheels would have become even more wobbly. Evidently, Paul George looked into Russell Westbrook’s eyes and his eyes told Westbrook he’d go that mile with him if only he could touch the ball more than once in the fourth period.

I know, it’s only one game and bad habits die hard, just ask Nature Boy Ric Flair, but on this November night in Oklahoma City, the Thunder as a team worked their way thru the darkness and saw a sliver of light emanating inside Chesapeake Energy Arena. On this night, Russell Westbrook saw the light and his team followed. Funny how that works.

Dallas Mavs inside the Peake for a Sunday night game.

In case you missed the ESPN 30/30 film Nature Boy, you should make sure and see it. I don’t follow pro wrestling, but this film was incredible. Had me from start to finish. Watch this for one second and look at me with a straight face and tell me Donald Trump didn’t in part create his own politician-wrestler character with more than a touch of Ric Flair attached.

LET’S GO THUNDER! Wooo!

Amazing how things went south so fast in basically the span of seven days. It was last Friday night at home against the Celtics when the Thunder rolled out a pristine first half performance against Boston in rolling up an 18 point lead. But ever since that second half collapse, this Thunder team has gone from that seasonal pinnacle moment to being the biggest disappointment in the NBA so far this season.

The Thunder have now lost four straight since they beat the Milwaukee Bucks to improve to 4-3. None of the losses have been blowout losses. In every game the Thunder have started well, but as the games wear on, for a variety of reasons this team doesn’t match their opponents with smarts, poise, discipline, and just basic execution during the last six minutes of close basketball games.

This game followed the same pattern as OKC opened an 11 point lead early, but by halftime Denver only trailed 53-51. The game was tied 75-75 entering the fourth period, but has been the case during this swoon the Nuggets won the fourth period 27-19 as the Thunder still stand alone as the only Western Conference team without a conference win.

But even worse is the fact this Thunder team have run the table in NW Division play going a collective 0-5 versus the Wolves, Blazers, Nuggets, and Jazz. Stunning, put aside for the moment the ludicrous notion this team could beat the Warriors, Rockets, or Spurs four times in a post season fortnight, but right now any win over any Western Conference team would feel like a breakthrough moment.

Russell Westbrook wasn’t good on Thursday night as he went 6-22 in the game and basically melted down in the fourth period as the Thunder from the point the score was 93-90 couldn’t execute much of anything offensively or defensively.

The bench was awful for the second straight game. Paul George played 42 minutes, but never got into any offensive flow whatsoever and had one shot in the final period. The lone bright spot was a nice offensive night from Carmelo Anthony, who scored 28 points fueled by a 6-10 night from beyond the arc.

As per Newsok, the Thunder didn’t make their players available post game to the press for thirty minutes as it was stated by Paul George the team had a meeting airing out their individual concerns about how bad they’re playing as a team.

Fairly huge game for the Thunder tonight in OKC as they host the Clippers in what appears to be a very big game considering it’s only Game 12 of an 82 game marathon.

This team needs a win in the very worst way. It’s a team in need of some type of positive reinforcement that they can work through this and emerge as a playoff caliber basketball team in the West.

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say tonight versus the Clippers the Thunder need to toughen up mentally and find a way to win an NBA basketball game.

It’s a cliché, but it’s gotta be ten or eleven guys pulling their link on that collective chain. It’s gotta be those guys scratching, clawing, and bleeding for that inch which separates winning and losing. It’s gotta be doing the little things, the battles which don’t always show up on a box score. In a word, this team needs to locate their collective heart tonight or this could turn into a very long season in a hurry.

If ever there was a time for this, it would be now. I might be wearing this out before Thanksgiving if these guys don’t get it together.