My NBA coverage will be different this season. It will depend when the Thunder unload Chris Paul and Danilo Gallinari as to how hard I follow the Thunder.
Golden State, Houston, and the Clippers will be a big part of what I watch this season NBA-wise.
The Warriors are clearly in reset, but it shouldn’t be awful once Klay Thompson returns from his ACL injury. Klay, Steph, and Draymond still form the nucleus of this Warriors team. Kevon Looney resigned. Willie Cauley-Stein was obtained. And unlike the Thunder, the Warriors got a quality player in exchange for Kevin Durant in hybrid guard D’Angelo Russell.
That’s six nice players to build a team around and add some special pieces here and there.
Once Klay returns the Warriors will still score the ball no doubt. The question will be on defense without the length of and flexibility of Durant and Iguodala. Call me crazy…but a player like Jerami Grant now at Denver would be a very nice fit for this team.
I’m not going to pout about the Thunder because the rest of the West will be fascinating to follow and Golden State will be a consistent part of my blog this NBA season.
This is the Trump base. They could care less about the Ukraine or Crimea or whatever. They could care less about impeachment. This won’t matter to them no matter what Donald Trump says or does. The polls will mean nothing. This is the America of which Donald Trump understands like no other politician. Forget the polls. Talk to people in the streets and you’ll understand.
So much history unraveling in front of us this week. But, of course, in Oklahoma where books aren’t read and Fox is a religion it won’t matter. I think I’ll call my good friend James Lankford on Monday and see where we stand on Putin/Pence 2020.
As I’ve crawled through traffic with my Putin-Trump sign there really hasn’t been that moment yet with a Ttump person. I’ve gotten some smiles from college educated suburban women, blacks, and Hispanics with a few cell numbers who want to join the Resistance Movement, but no fistfights. No one has even flipped me off. I feel a little deflated actually. I even have my Golden State Warriors ball cap on and…nothing.
Trump now joins the group of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton as going through the impeachment process.
My advice is to watch McConnell. That’s where the impeachment either will or won’t take place. Can he extract anymore from his idiot puppet Donald Trump? I mean…he got two Supreme Court justices. massive tax cuts, massive deregulation for the then two Koch Brothers… and a rollback of most everything Obama.
You would have to think McConnell and the other Never Trumpers should be somewhat satisfied with their haul to date.
It’s all about McConnell at this point. Can he get anything more from his reality television star?
I think I’ll wait a week or so before commenting on this. I found it sad. How can Presti really know where he’s going with this until he knows what he can get for Chris Paul?
I was in Stillwater that fateful night when Boone’s team kicked OU’s ass 44-10 to win the school’s only Big 12 football championship to date.
As I weave through this blog post it is a small world indeed. Back then, Boone demanded that AD Mike Holder’s coach Mike Gundy turn over his offense to a coordinator and quit calling plays himself. Boone wanted Gundy to seem more ‘head coachly’ on the sidelines. I’m telling you this was Dan Jenkins in Semi-Tough with oil tycoon Big Ed Bookman running the show for the TCU Horn Frogs back in the day. God… the things which have never been written.
So somehow Boone gets Gundy to hire Todd Monken as his offensive coordinator…. and it was magic.
Monken connected with QB Brandon Weeden. The offense soared. Weeden became a Heisman contender and Boone got his Big 12 championship over the hated Sooners. Other than Bob Stoops’ repunt to Tyreke Hill–this would be Boone’s lone win over the Sooners.
Fast forward. Todd Monken went on to head coach at Southern Miss. He then became the offensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Bucs and is now Baker Mayfield’s offensive coordinator in Cleveland where it isn’t going well three games in as it appears head coach Freddie Kitchens is reluctant to allow Monken to call the plays from the press box.
Let me say this, I love Todd Monken. He is a player’s coach. Especially if the player is a quarterback. I love listening to Monken talk offensive football like I love listening to Nick Collison talk basketball. I just love listening to the guy.
He could pass for a State Farm agent, but the guy is a quarterback whisperer. Trust me.
So…I’m saying this to myself…if Monken goes down in flames this season with the Cleveland Browns—then Boone in his now ethereal spirit form will make Gundy hire Todd Monken as Spencer Sanders’ offensive coordinator.
This is how my mind works.
So you read it here first on my modest rogue blog…Todd Monkon back to Oklahoma State in 2020 to whisper in Spencer Sanders’ ear.
As the season creeps closer–I’m not sure what anyone should be writing other than this season provides the Thunder with a chance to land a high lottery pick of their own if they choose to go into full tank mode. A pick that would translate into being SGA’s running mate in the years to come.
I don’t see any point in predicting number of wins or where the Thunder will finish given that once Chris Paul is traded you would assume Gallanari will be gone soon after as well.
Fair or not—Billy Donovan will be in the final year of his Thunder contract and even he doesn’t know what his team will look like after Dec. 15th.
The Fox telecasts should be interesting to say the very least. I hope someone explains to Michael Cage the Thunder will be trying to lose games at some point. The Thunder bloggers will have their work cut out for them to keep their writing on the team interesting.
I’m going to be fair and patient in that I would have traded Russell Westbrook just as Sam Presti did for the simple reason it didn’t make any sense to spend that type of money for a forty something win level type of a team.
I’d also write the fans in OKC shouldn’t bitch because ownership in Oklahoma City did everything they could to keep the team relevant after Kevin Durant escaped from Oklahoma City.
You can’t say Sam Presti didn’t push some buttons. Oladipo, Sabonis, Carmelo, Alex Abrines, Ray Felton, Jerami Grant, and Paul George. It wasn’t like Sam Presti didn’t try everything to make Russell Westbrook work in OKC after Durant’s escape to Golden State.
I have no idea how the college market fans in Oklahoma City will handle this season. This won’t be like the Hurricane Katrina season or the 23-59 team that first year after the Sonics move here from Seattle.
This will have a different feel. This is when we find out about the staying power of the Thunder season ticket fanbase in the real world of major league sports.
How ironic Chris Paul won NBA Rookie of the Year back in that first Hurricane Katrina season and he now is back waiting for his agent to move him to a relevant team with a chance to contend. It’s the perfect exclamation point to the rise and fall of the Thunder as they attempt to reset the franchise.
Otherwise…the West in the NBA will be fascinating to witness for NBA junkies like myself. I’ll watch the Thunder games—but the real interest will be in watching the Clippers, Lakers, Warriors, Rockets and Jazz. And don’t discount some teams even beneath them as the West is loaded like never before.
On my little blog, I’ll still follow the Thunder, but it will clearly be in a different way than ever before.
The college football game I watched the closest this week-end was O State vs. Texas in Austin.
The reason?
Spencer Sanders. I wanted to see how the Gatorade Texas High School Player of the Year responded on the biggest stage with the lights the brightest.
He responded like I thought he would. Like a star about to be born. Like a version of Vince Young albeit with a better throwing motion than Vince Young ever had….even in the NFL.
Mike Gundy has a star. A quarterback in this era of spread offenses and dual threat QBs who can be special.
I thought Texas would win and they did by six points. Texas has better athletes and has a very nice quarterback of their own in Sam Ehlinger.
OU and Auburn are my two favorite college football teams to follow, but Spencer Sanders will ensure I don’t miss watching any O State games moving forward.
He’s worth the price of admission in person or the time invested if you’re watching on television.
Mike Gundy has never had a dual threat guy like this. Bobby Reid was a bust. Zac Robinson was okay. Brandon Weeden couldn’t even beat out Alex Cate when he first arrived in Stillwater. And Mason Rudolph like Landry Jones will make a nice backup for the Steelers.
But Spencer Sanders has a national star aura about him primarily because of what he can do with his legs.
First time I watched him on video he reminded me of Vince Young.
But Vince Young struggled his freshman and sophomore seasons. It wasn’t until the Horns beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl before his star began to meet the hype. The rest is college football history. The win over USC was one of the greatest college football games ever.
Can Spencer Sanders be this at O State? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know if Mike Gundy can be Mac Brown or Bob Stoops or even Lincoln Riley.
Gundy is a nice coach for sure, but I’m not sure he can take this to the next level with both OU and Texas as top ten programs at the same time. This won’t be the Texas after Colt McCoy departed or the OU of Bob Stoops who repunted the ball to Tyreke Hill.
This will be a Big 12 where O State is going to have to elevate its program to heights even higher than in 2011 when Boone won his only Big 12 championship.
But as a college football fan, I do know this—I won’t be missing any Spencer Sanders games.
Only one O State player has ever won the Heisman. His last name was Sanders as in Barry. This Sanders has the same electric feel about him.
Barry Sanders had Mike Gundy as his quarterback. Spencer Sanders has Mike Gundy as his head coach.
Mike Gundy needs to bring his big boy game as a coach because like Barry this Sanders has a chance to be very special. Mike Gundy needs to be special as well.
Labor has been induced in Denver. My daughter-in-law Elaine will soon be bringing Little Dr. El Prez Jr into the world. My son was concerned he would miss the Broncos-Packers game at noon, but that’s just the way it goes. The Packers are my favorite team and I expect them to beat the Broncos on the very day our grandson enters the world.
In 1988, when my son was born—I snuck over to LNC the next day as the Sooners hosted the No. 1 Arizona Wildcats in that magical season for OU when they made it to the national championship game. I can still name the five starters in ten seconds….Mookie Blalock, Harvey Grant (Jerami’s dad), Stacy King, Dave Sieger, and Ricky “Amazing’ Grace. My favorite basketball team of all-time.
I wanted to name our son Mookie, but my wife would have none of that and we settled on Christopher. I once told Abe Lemons I tried to name my son Mookie and he just shook his head with that smile of his.
I cant wait to be a grandfather.
Since the Thunder will be tanking hard once they unload Chris Paul it will be the grandson and football consuming me for awhile here on the blog. Plus, of course the village idiot Trump here and there.
It was a great day of college football yesterday. OU was idle. Texas made Vegas look smart beating Mike Gundy’s confused team by six points. Auburn jumped into the title hunt by getting a road win at A&M. Just so we’re clear…Auburn now has a neutral field win over Oregon and a road win over A&M and will climb my poll accordingly. LSU isn’t your mother’s LSU…they can score the football in a big way.
Georgia and Notre Dame have nice teams, but I don’t see championship QBs. To me…the championship QB are Lawrence, Tua, and Hurts. Fields, Fromm, and Nix are on a lower level. I need to see more from Burrows.
This is my first college football poll of the season.It goes:
Big, big, big game this evening in the Big 12. The winner should emerge as the team to challenge OU for the Big 12 championship both in the regular season and conference championship game.
An enormous challenge for redshirt freshman Spencer Sanders to take on Sam Ehlinger’s Horns in Austin in his first real road start against a ranked Power 5 team.
Texas simply cannot lose another game if they aspire to make college football’s Final Four. The Horns will have to run the table if they want to make college football’s playoff for the first time.
The field to make the Final Four will be tough to crack. Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, LSU and Ohio State just to name six. We should have an eight team playoff, but it is what it is.
In the Boone Pickens/Mike Gundy era O State is 7-2 versus the Horns this decade. That’s a stunning stat. The Cowboys have won five straight in Austin. The Cowboys have owned the Horns there’s no question of it.
Neither of these teams have shown much defense in their first three games. Both defenses are typical Big 12 defenses. One would think this will be a shootout….48-42 or so.
Vegas has Texas floating around as a five to six point favorite.
A great test to see where Spencer Sanders is with his passing game in his fourth game as college player.
It’s a good slate of games this week-end….Notre Dame at Georgia, Michigan at Wisconsin, Auburn at Texas A&M. USC knocked Utah from the ranks of the unbeaten last night at the Coliseum.
It’s hard for me to even take the time to think about the Oklahoma City Thunder right now. But I will at some point. It might be December 15th, but I’ll get there. There’s no hurry. This is going to require patience.
I saved this interview for today. I like Mike Gundy actually. I think he’s a very solid offensive coach. His offenses over the years clearly speak for themselves. I’ve by chance talked to him a time or two. I like him. He has a sense of humor.
So while I clearly call this the Boone Pickens Era at O State it’s not meant as a diss towards Gundy. If my kid was an offensive player heading off to play DI ball he would be a guy I’d want my son to play for.
If Les Miles had stayed at O State to kick off the Boone Picken’s era I’m not so sure he would have done any better than Mike Gundy. Maybe. You have to figure his defenses would have been better, but would Miles have been able to score with the ping pong offenses of the Big 12 conference?
Miles was 2-2 versus OU and those wins came against OU in 2001 and 2002 when the Sooners were coming off a national championship and the Sooners had NFL caliber players on the defensive side of the ball.
But in the end, Boone would have been very demanding with any head coach he had leading his college football franchise….including Les Miles or Larry Fedora or Todd Monken.
A very big game for both teams tonight in Austin from a Big 12 Championship Game standpoint.