I’m not one of these guys who has to see a win every night. I look more for incremental improvement in a team as more of a sign of good coaching than immediate wins. I look for a well coached team to save its best ball for the goal achieving part of the season.
But one thing I do not tolerate from any sports team I watch play is lazy and stupid play on a repeated basis. Do not insult my intelligence.
Don’t float the usual company line about this and that. I don’t want to read Royce Young or hear Little Nick Gallo justify this bullshit any longer. Step up or I will not take you or the Thunder seriously. And trust me…I want to take the Thunder seriously because I am a very passionate guy about basketball and how it’s played.
Step up and play hard with some basketball intelligence attached. Don’t continue to make Charles Barkley look smart by describing the Thunder as ‘a pretty woman who’s too dumb.’
Quite frankly, I view the Thunder’s credibility on the line starting with today’s special matinee performance in Philadelphia. The Thunder stink right now on multiple levels. Since the win in Portland they have played like a collective group of punks. Any parent who saw their child play sports with this much indifference would strongly suggest to the child that perhaps competitive sports wasn’t meant to be for them. It’s one thing to spend a $146 million plus tax and still not be in Golden State’s class, it’s another thing to not be able to beat the Wizards, the Hawks, or the Lakers without LeBron and look bad in the process.
To look like a bunch of dimwits who should have Nick Young as their team captain.
Putting Charles Barkley aside, this team loafs and the head coach doesn’t seem to be fazed by it.
In Thursday night’s game Luke Walton undressed his team on the national TNT telecast for lack of effort against the Thunder as they played without LeBron. His team responded and came back from a 37-20 deficit to eventually win on the road against the overrated Thunder. Maybe the next time these two meets Luke Walton could challenge the Thunder as well and give Sam Presti a bit of pro bono help.
The problem here is simple, the Thunder don’t play hard or with any basketball moxie for significant portions of games. They loaf. They make stupid mistakes. The same ones. They appear to be either stupid as a team or indifferent to competition. Somebody told them they were special, but they’re not special. They’ll not only never be the Warriors—stop with the notion this group of guys could ever be thought of in that realm.
You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned Paul George in relation to MVP consideration any longer. You know why? Teams on which Nick Young could be captain don’t produce MVPs.
When someone calls you as a team both lazy and stupid and you don’t respond then there’s one conclusion which might be drawn. You could ACTUALLY be stupid and lazy and misguided in your arrogance as to how good you are as a basketball team. This where the Little Nick Gallo and Royce Young enabling comes in and the lack of a real market media minus Tramel comes into play. This is why you need at least one real sports journalist asking the tough questions when the others won’t. Erik Horne needs to step up as well. He should know better.
The Thunder are on the cusp of becoming a joke. They’re on the cusp of validating every thing Kevin Durant insinuated about them even before he became Cupcake.
Think back to those Durant Thunder years. It was very rare when the Thunder didn’t play hard. They might have had a stinker here and there, but it was very rare when you didn’t see effort on back to back games.
So when the Thunder take the court today in Philly for me their credibility is on the line. This has nothing to do with winning the game against a Philly team which one would think should be at the least be a Vegas seven point home favorite today. It has more to do with simply playing with some heart and some brains.
Sure their bench is having issues right now. Abrines for whatever reason is done and Noels had the nasty fall. But that’s when Billy Donovan as a coach has to be smart enough to: (A) shorten his rotations, and (B) be something special as a coach instead of appearing to be a Sam Presti friendship hire.
Enough already. Either step up or be quiet with this noise you’re still an elite franchise.
You were with Kevin Durant. You haven’t been close to elite without him.
Truth hurts—it always does.
And therein lies a very unpleasant truth to date about the Oklahoma City Thunder as a basketball team regardless of how many nice things MAPS has accomplished for Oklahoma City.
The Thunder versus Philly this afternoon. I’m making a point of watching the game with my mother so I won’t set some sort of North American record for dropping F bombs during a forty eight minute basketball game. I would never do that in front of my mother.
Nick Collison, phone home, buddy. Your city needs you.