Here we sit seventeen games into the NBA season and the Oklahoma City Thunder are 8-9 as the current No. 10 seed in the West.
Coach D has his team playing competitve basketball on most nights so far. There has clearly been optimsitic signs there is a talented youth base moving into the future.
Out of the next five games which are at home …four look to be winnable with four of the five coming against the Minnesota Timberwolves and another pair of games against the Houston Rockets. Only the 12-8 Brooklyn Nets have a winning record. There’s no way the Thunder even try to tank against Durant and Harden.
There has been nothing to date in Oklahoma City so far this season which indicates the Thunder are tanking.
There will be no tanking at the Peake tomorrow night.
The Thunder have a triangle of first round draft pick possibilities. 1 They have their own pick which they can control. 2 They have Houston’s pick which is protected (1-4). 3 They have Miami’s pick. The Thunder can only come out of this triangle with the two highest picks…given the conditions of the trade as I read it.
If you look at the overall league standings today…OKC’s own pick would have the least value with the Thunder at the No. 16 position in the draft. The Houston pick would be higher somewhere around the 13-14 range. Ironically, as we sit here today… the Miami Heat have the fourth worst winning percentage in the overall league. No one would have ever thought almost into February the defending Eastern Conference champs would be sitting as one the worst five teams in the league.
This is some amazing stuff. Houston is about where we thought they should be, but OKC and Miami are inverted as far as expectations heading into this season.
Let’s say OKC wins three of the next five home games and sits at 11-11 after the homestand. What does Sam Presti do?
Do you immediately pull the plug on Big Al Horford and George Hill? The trade dealine is all the way until March 25th this season I believe because of the delayed start to the regular season.
Based on what we saw last night in Phoenix the Thunder didn’t miss George Hill all that much as Theo Maledon started and played very much like he belonged as a future third guard in the Thunder’s starting rotation.
I would think you certainly don’t ever play Horford or Hill on back to back situations.
At what point in this season does Sam Presti pull the plug on his own team for the possibility of having a top five draft pick controlling his own destiny?
Where is the cutoff spot datewise…if there is one?
What happens if the THunder move all the way up to the No. 7 seed passing Memphis?
Jimmy Butler should be back with the Mimai Heat fairly soon and they should start climbing the ladder.
The Thunder have fifteen games in February, ten of which are at home. The February schedule certainly isn’t cupcake, but it’s not as tough as the January slot.
As far as Coach D…I love the way he’s worked the rotation with these guys. He goes ten or eleven deep on most nights and he’s been playing the guys I would play minute wise and role wise almost verbatim.
Another thing is as we should all recall…young players don’t get injured nearly as much for the most part. Young guys are playing for the second contract. I don’t see how this far in you start telling a young coach with young players to stop winning.
This could only happen in Oklahoma. From Operation Bongo to self-induced earthquakes to Mike Gundy to Joe Exotic to a Donald Trump rabid Birther voter base of those who evidently now support domestic terrorism….this could only happen in Oklahoma.
Antifa…it must all be Antifa. Sigh.
How could anyone make up this shit even if they were trying?
These next five games in Oklahoma City should be interesting to say the least. The Oklahoma City Thunder just moved back onto my relevance radar screen as far as my blog goes. We’ll see how Sam Presti handles all of this.