Thunder Take Backseat to Trae Young’s Sooners Tonight

It used to be a big deal when the upstart Thunder played the Lakers. We all used to chant, “Beat LA.” Now we just hope Paul George isn’t living in LA and playing there come mid February. So excuse me if I could care less about the Thunder in LA tonight. If Paul George wants to be a Laker, then so be it. But I’ll write this–if Sam Presti screws around and gets nothing in return for Paul George then it would be a very hard thing to take the Thunder seriously moving forward.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that if the Thunder weren’t careful they could become something less than the primary basketball story in Oklahoma this winter. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Trae Young and the Sooners are 11-1 and No. 7 in the AP poll heading into tonight’s Bedlam game in Norman. I don’t write this to be snarky, but the truth is, OU will be my focus tonight and the Thunder playing the Lakers in LA will be a secondary storyline for me. This will be the first time since the Thunder arrived in OKC I’ve had this feeling in my heart…like in–I don’t care about the game tonight and it’s the first Wednesday in January.

And consider, in this this span of time of the Thunder’s presence in OKC, OU had two other National Player of Year players with Blake Griffin in 2008 and Buddy Hield just two seasons ago when the Sooners made the Final Four. Clay Bennett and his fellow owners have gone deep into the luxury tax this season, but here’s the thing–fans want a team which plays hard with some sense of urgency and meaning attached to the season itself. The games need to have the appearance they actually mean something. That’s why fans pay money, they want to feel it means as much to the players as it does to them.

Here’s another thing to ponder, would this Thunder roster be better suited to Lon Kruger’s coaching style versus what we’ve seen to date from Billy Donovan. Maybe Clay could talk Lon Kruger into doing the the Scott Frost thing and coaching two teams simultaneously. Just kidding, kind of. I mean, seriously, I wonder if OU regent and Thunder owner Clay Bennett has given any thought to the possibility the best basketball coach in the state isn’t coaching the Thunder, but is coaching the Sooners in Norman. Close your eyes Brian Davis, Michael Cage, Nick Gallo, and Royce Young…pretend you didn’t read that and go back to gulping apple juice from your Thunder sippy cups.

Anyway, OU is 11-1 with three of their wins coming against ranked teams Wichita State, TCU, and USC. The Sooners haven’t lost since an early season loss to Arkansas in the prestigious early season Portland tournament. And OU hasn’t just won, it’s been more than that in that true freshman point guard Trae Young has emerged as a serious contender to win National Player of the Year honors.

The Big 12 is rugged with five teams currently ranked in the top eighteen in the AP Poll. Every game will be tough and hold meaning. Players will play hard, they may not win every time, but I can assure you they’ll play hard for forty minutes. Maybe Billy Donovan will take this sliver of salient fact to heart since he appears to have difficulty getting his team to commit to 48 minutes of attention to things like detail and effort. I wonder if the Sippy Cup Four have ever pondered that notion.

One of my buddies is a sportswriter, which means he almost knows as much about sports as I do. From time to time he rolls his eyes at me when I passionately talk about the Thunder. His eyes roll, he sighs, and then says something like, “Mike, they don’t play hard for 48 minutes. They coast. The league is bullshit.”

So tonight while the Thunder are playing the worst team in the West in LA–my attention will be on Bedlam with Lon Kruger’s Sooners hosting Mike Boynton’s O State Cowboys. If you want to see teams play hard, watch Boynton’s team play Kruger’s team tonight.

Note to OU regent and Thunder owner Clay Bennett: I don’t mind paying a hundred bucks a ticket to see an NBA game. But I seriously mind it when the team doesn’t play hard. Truth hurts.