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NBA Mini Movie: 2012 Western Conference Finals – YouTube

Tough, dark, cold week in Oklahoma City. Our country came apart at the seams and we have a basketball team in rebuild mode. Call it whatever…tank, rebuild, transition season.

But this much is clear Oklahoma City needs to maximize their first round pick and the Houston first round pick. Then you take a deep breath… evaluate how far these young guys went this year and recalibrate your realistic goals for next season with what at that point would be the youngest team in the NBA.

But a team which should be exciting to watch evolve in the future.

This is the year to do this with no fans allowed in the arena and the economic model for a small market team like Oklahoma City in a redo template given the economic effects of Covid on the Thunder’s bottom line.

Enough with this nonsense they shouldn’t tank. They have to tank. Call it a mini-tank…but they have to do this at least this season. Call it a baby tank if you have to.

The best win of the four is arguably against an Orlando team which I would guess would be a Vegas pick to be a first round exit in the East at this early juncture in the season.

Winning is fun. We all love to win every game. I detest losing. But sometimes you have to gut it out for a year to have the potential to become more than just an 8-10 team in the West every year.

These young guys are playing hard for the most part. They’re not a stupid group now that Coach D has informed Poku he’s not Tony Kukoc just yet.

They’ve beaten Charlotte, Orlando, New Orleans, and the NY Knicks to date. Not exactly a gauntlet of championship contenders.

So I’m just going to watch these young guys get better….even Poku. Hope they don’t win too many games. Dream a bit about the future. And appreciate the incredible good fate we’ve had to date in Oklahoma City with our basketball club.

I’m always a dream big guy….just as long as we’re smart doing it.

A perfect time to kick back and watch the first round of the NFL playoffs. Nice to see the Buffalo Bills win a [playoff game for the first time in twenty-five years. Now there you see, Sheldon Diggs is a difference maker. That’s what I’m talking about in regards to team building.

Gloria – St. Louis Blues Edition – YouTube

So I come to find out Donald Trump Jr. and the First Family of White Trash were playing the iconic Laura Branigan song of ‘Gloria’ in their Insurrection Party tent just before the Trump Confederates entered the Capitol grounds. Kind of like a college football team would use their fight song heading down the ramp.

There’s a video of this if you choose to Google it. I refuse to put it on my blog. There’s a reason I don’t do Twitter and a reason I’ve never considered putting a messageboard on this little blog. I’m too old for that shit.

Laura Branigan passed away in 2004 and her family’s legal representative said they did not give permission for the FFOWT (First Family of White Trash) to use the song. They’re outraged.

Geez…I loved that St. Louis hockey team which beat my favorite team the Boston Bruins’ in an epic Game 7 road win. “Gloria’ was their song. This is one of my favorite hockey videos and they’ve ruined it for me.

It just seems at every turn I can’t get away from the parasitic FFOWT. It’s like a demonic curse I can’t escape. Like a bad dream I can’t wake up from. It’s like that South Korean movie “Parasite’ which won best picture last spring.

Anyway… I love the St. Louis Blues video of Gloria, but quite frankly I hope the Colorado Avs beat them this season in the glorious Stanley Cup Playoffs.

This is the way the hockey gods intended the song ‘Gloria’ to be aligned in my brain.

Boston Bruins might have some issues as they lost two of their better defensemen in free agency. But I trudge ahead undaunted.

I’m ready for hockey season.

In case you never heard the rest of the story on how the Blues changed their last place season into a Stanley Cup championship…here it is. I doubt that worthless pissant Donald Trump Jr. knows the story, but here it is.

NHL Now: Looking back at the Blues’ Gloria – inspired turnaround Jun 1, 2019 – YouTube

(1) Auld Lang Syne – OKC Thunder 2020 – YouTube

I’m in hope here this little run of winning will come back to the mean of losing once we get beyond the 10-15 game plateau.

The Thunder won their second straight game on this east coast road swing with a 101-89 win over the NY Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Friday night.

It was an impressive win considering both Darius Bazely and Lu Dort both had tough games shooting the ball and there was nothing exceptional from Big Al Horford or George Hill either.

But both Shai GA and Diallo had stellar nights. I thought it was the best game to date in Diallo’s NBA career. BTW…I only use the one name with Diallo…kind of like Nene. The one name should be his brand. His agent should steer him this way. Just saying.

Diallo’s line was 23 points, 11 boards, 2 assists, 1 steal, 1 block. Player of the game.

Shai went 25 points, 10 boards, 7 assists…this is what he needs to be doing on most nights so I’m not giving him any awards. This is what he should be doing if he wants to become the face of a consistent NBA playoff contender whether it be in Oklahoma City or some place else.

Even Poku looked like he might actually be an NBA player at some point. Much smarter decison making by our first round pick. He even made some threes. Much, much better. I’m not like Jim Traber–I’m a fair, open minded person. Just show what you’ve got.

The ten guys Coach D put out there competed. Now in tanking you don’t ever want to instill the culture of not competing, but this is season we need to lose.

Young Coach D has already proved to me he can bench manage a game. He’ll be fine. We need a top five pick with our pick and a 15 thru 10 pick with the Rockets’ pick.

As Jake Owens says in the Journey of Life sometimes you have to lose ‘some’ to become a winner. This is one of those times.

Based on what I’m seeing from Diallo, Theo, Mikey Muscala, Isiah Robey, Poku, and Kenrich… it might be time to start thinking about trading George Hill and Big Al Horford so as to not take the chance of winning too many games. Maybe trade George Hill first and give Theo more minutes.

I write this as a compliment to the other players because I respect the manner in which they’re competitng and representing our city. But they’re playing too good to go too much further.

Shai needs another young consistent scorer alongside him and the team needs a rim protector who can hit an occaisional three when it’s there to be made.

Next up…the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday to close out the eastern road swing.

The video above was once again provided by my friend TC over at the Daily Thunder. I have no idea why these aren’t featured on their cover page considering the usual passive pedestrian level of content over there, but I won’t go there. It is what it is. Anyway–thanx for sharing the video.

Great work as always. It lifted my spirits in a week in which we witnessed our country come apart at the seams. My soul needed this. The parts with Andre and Mo Cheeks put a lump in my throat. What I see down the road with these guys gives me hope with a few more players added to the mix.

dr el prez okcthunderground.com beat writer

So it turns out a forty-two year old police officer was killed in the midst of the American carnage which took place at our Nation’s capitol on Wednesday.

Where were Steve Bannon and Steven Miller when we really needed them? Kind of like Trump with the bone spurs it appears. Nowhere to be seen. Just send in the dumb uneducated clueless whites from the Trump base and allow them to take the heat for this.

This officer lost his life because these felons assaulted the sacred cathederal of our democracy. I would assume this officer had a wife, maybe children, maybe a brother or sister, an uncle or an aunt… perhaps parents still living.

Would their husband, their father, their sibling, their niece or nephew, and their son still be alive if not for the actions of Donald Trump?

This is what we must ask ourselves as if we are jurors sworn to follow the tenets of our laws.

We cannot live in a lawless society where this type of human carnage takes place in our streets let alone within the halls of our Nation’s most hallowed halls.

We’ve all seen Trump’s speech…as well as those by Guiliani and Junior. We’ve all seen these people in the Trump base then assault our Nation’s capitol. It’s all there on video, on Facebook, on Twitter. It’s a veritable plethora of evidence which goes beyond any realm of reasonable doubt.

It’s stunning. It’s basically treason, sedition, unlawful rioting and insurrection on federal property–and felony murder as it turns out. It’s everything any prosecutor worth a grain of salt would want at their disposal.

Our constitution is very simple unless you live in the boundaries of the Trump Confederacy. We are created equal in the eyes of the law. No one is above the law. This is why we have laws.

This is an incredibly dark period in our history. We clearly have two countries. We have 255 million who still live in the Union and I’m to assume 75 million who no longer believe in the constitution or in the basic doctrines of our democracy and have joined the New Confederacy of Donald Trump.

I mean, this wasn’t Donald Trump’s first rodeo in abusing the law of the land. He’s pretty much done it every day four years running.

So how does Joe Biden handle all of this within the notion these seventy-five million Trump Proud Boy Confederates can redeem their souls as Americans?

I think he has to be very careful. This is the Civil War flip-flopped in that it appears somewhere around maybe thirty million whites in this country shouldn’t be allowed to vote or hold office at the national level or even maybe perhaps at the state level as well.

In essence it’s kind of like a set of Jim Crow laws for whites which need to be put in place to prohibit these crazier Trump Confederates from taking place in the running of our country. Kind of like what Germany had to do with the remnants of the Nazi party in the aftermath of WWII.

These Trump ‘people’ are all over the place in Oklahoma and Alabama state governments. Biden at some point we may have to put federal appointees in place to run these rogue outliers of the Union. Maybe the entire SEC minus Georgia. We’d like to keep the college football, but at the same time get rid of the ‘people’ running these states as if the South never lost the Civil War.

So much nuance will be needed moving forward to keep these people in the Union without them being a detriment to the rest of us who abide by the laws stated in our Constitution.

If we had the prison capacity to incarcerate ten million or so of the dumbest involved in the Trump insurrection this would be easier. But we can’t put all these people in prison for committing treason and sedition all at once. We just can’t even if we should. Are we at this point ready to admit we can’t put Tommy Tuberville and Mike Gundy in prison at the same time? I’m big enough to admit that… besides as an OU fan I want Gundy on that O State sideline for the rest of my life so it’s an almost automatic win in Bedlam. I’m giving Gundy a pardon for this reason. You can wear the shirt—just stay on that sideline, dude.

I’m almost certain this will be Michael Smerconish’s national question of the week tomorrow. So..I’m beating Michael to press with his question and I’ll be back after I see the results of his national poll.

Have a nice day. The Union has held and our flag is still flying.

Here’s a bonus movie clip which might be somewhat applicable to our current legal question.

Entire Final Scene And Justice For All (1979) Pacino – YouTube

Robert F Kennedy Announcing The Death Of Martin Luther King – A Great Speech – YouTube

If one in public played this historic video of Bobby Kennedy’s speech announcing Martin Luther King’s death in public there’s probably a pretty good chance they’d be scorned in Oklahoma, Mississippi, or Alabama.

One can be black in these states and enjoy the sense of equality if one is a difference maker playing football, basketball, or baseball. Beyond that, I’m not really sure how much the tolerance level from whites for blacks has changed since my birth in 1957.

There was LBJ’s Civil Rights legislation passed in 1965, but in reality that only made the southern states come up with Jim Crow 2.0 and Nixon’s geopolitical evolution of the Solid South.

Then there was Barack Obama becoming a two term president, but that only led to Donald Trump’s racist Birther movement which was the cornerstone policy of his election in 2016. The whites felt they had to take their country back from a man who was born in Hawaii.

Then there was last night as not one hand was laid on a white rioter as they walked past the police and tried to halt the Electoral College procedure ackowleging Joe Biden as the winner the day after Georgia flipped the U.S. Senate blue.

It just doen’t seem that after 240 years white America can really come to terms with those who have darker skin.

I’ve come to realize in the last quarter of my life it’s not going to change.

How sad we spend all this time hating one another and dividing our country for no real reason other than the difference of our skin color.

What an absolutely shameful and surreal chapter of American history we witnessed yesterday at our country’s capitol.

I was born in ’57 and this clearly was the darkest day in our country’s history in my lifetime.

Worse than the act of foreign terrorism on 9/11. Even worse than Timothy McVeigh’s act of domestic terrorism at the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Why worse than both of those two acts of premeditated terror you might ask?

Because this act was planned far in advance by the sitting president of the United States towards his own country and government. Again…from the Bob Jackson School of Law we refer to the legal Latin doctrine of mens rea. While other fathers were teaching their sons how to build a tree house…my dad taught me about mens rea and the motion of limine…and other such things. Blew me away when Joe Mixon’s lawyers used an Alford Plea in his defense. I might talk about Joe Mixon next week. Bob never used an Alford Plea best as I can recall.

Don’t get me started on voir dire or re-cross examination. Goddamn…Bob would be all over this with me right now. He was re-reading the Supreme Court decision on Gore vs. Bush the week before he passed. I miss those talks so much. Excuse the profanity.

Mens rea is the criminal premediated intent by one party to commit a crime against another party with complete willful premeditated intent. There’s mens rea all over this act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by Trump, Guliani, and Dipshit, Jr. which we all witnessed yesterday at our nation’s capitol.

Should be a slam dunk for any capable federal prosecutor.

Which brings me to Joe Biden’s selection of Merrick Garland to be the next U.S. Attorney General. Just so we’re clear Merrick Garland was one of the federal prosecutor who suceessfully prosecuted Tim McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing case. This makes me almost certain Joe Biden has already had enough of Donald Trump and at some point federal charges will be filed. Trump is going to need all $220 million or so in his legal war chest I would think for all his legal problems once his presidential immunity is gone in fourteen days.

It would be nice for the country if he were to spend the rest of his pathetic life in prison. Wonder how long Ivanka and Dipshit Jr. would visit him once the laundered cash has dried up?

If I were Merrick Garland I’d ask Doug Jones from Alabama or Hakeem Jeffries to come on board to prosecute this piece of shit. I can see it in their eyes. I loved Hakeem’s work in the impeachment trial. I like his game. Definitely a first round draft pick. Both of these guys hate Trump more than I do. It should be a relatively easy case to prosecute in front of a legitimate jury. Lock ’em up.

Here’s McVeigh before he was executed doing an interview with Ed Bradley on Sixty Minutes.

By the way all you Trump dumbasses…did you notice when Trump told you he was going to march to the capitol he would be marching as well. What happned…was it the bone spurs again at just the wrong time. You clueless dumb motherf—— need to smarten up in a hurry in a very significant way. Maybe some of you idiots should go back to the crime scene and leave your names, addresses, and social security numbers. Good lord…you knew there would be security cameras, right?

Michael Pence…you just became interim POTUS for the next two weeks, buddy. Don’t let him blow up the world. You should have walked away from this loser the first time you saw the Hollywood Access video. Handle the next two weeks and then walk away from politics and go back to doing talk radio. Just saying.

Be a kind American today if you can.

March 12, 2000: Timothy McVeigh speaks – YouTube

The end.

The gong show is done in Washington D.C. This freak reality television show called the Trump Presidency should exist no later than noon tomorrow.

Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, and Mike Pompeo should together meet with the Chief Grifter tonight and demand his resignation effective immediately. Maybe the three of them together can equal one Howard Baker telling Richard Nixon he has to vacate the White House.

This person does not have the mental compacity to finish these remaining two weeks in office.

Donald Trump has proved beyond any reasonable doubt he should have been impeached back in January 2020. It was an absolute disgrace as to what transpired in our nation’s capitol today. Just an asolute disgrace because the purported Commander in Chief in essence incited this act of domestic terrorism upon our own nation’s legislative branch.

What’s next…this collective group of losers taking over the United States Supreme Court and kidnapping Chief Justice John Roberts?

They should have been tear gassed and arrested in mass. If they had been black they would have been shot in the back or killed in some other manner.

Think about what George Floyd did in relative comparison to what these people did today as the House and Senate were trying to consumate the vote in the Electoral College. Tell every brown and black person in this country there isn’t an acute law enforcement double standard in the this country.

In my life what I witnessed today was the most pathetic act I’ve ever seen from a U.S. president in my lifetime.

Donald Trump has no soul. No conscious. Nothing.

Send him home and see if either Florida or New York want him there.

Today was a day when a living John McCain would have come in handy since apparently there isn’t a Republican in D.C. with a brain, a set of balls, or a soul.

Enough already.

Dave Chappelle Brilliantly Picks Apart Poor White People That Voted For Trump – YouTube

Sigh.

It appears members of the Trump base are charging our nation’s capitol after Caligula stoked them up with his standard Jerry Springer pep talk.

You’ll notice I don’t use the word ‘Deplorables’. I have family members and friends who voted for this dipshit twice. This is a slippery slope for me moving forward.

It’s a real conundrum of sorts for sure. I mean it’s not like I’m some angel or moral guardian type. But I do have certain bounds of personal untethered stupidity I’ve tried not to cross since my son was born in 1988.

I kind of grew up a little then and stopped acting like I was still in college. And that’s my whole problem with Trump…at the age of seventy-four he stills behaves like the fourth grade spoiled prick he was when he was nine years old.

Ted Cruz. As much as I hate Trump…I hate Lyin’ Ted Cruz even more. If you ever want to see visual evidence that a Harvard Law School degree isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…watch this idiot present an oral argument for more than two sentences. Bob Jackson would eviserate this mofo in a criminal case courtroom. Literally chew him up and spit him out on the floor in front of the judge.

The Georgia Bulldogs. They just became my favorite SEC team even though Kirby Smart always has some of the worst offenses in the country with five star talent. Stacy Abrams..I love you, girl. Could you come to Oklahoma and get rid of these two dumbasses we have as U.S. senators?

Moving forward…what do we do with around thirty million or so of these Trump base zombies?

Do we we create Jim Crow laws for these whites so as to keep them removed from the other three-hundred million of us who aren’t going to secede?

I don’t know. That’s a tough one. Maybe we should put them in cages and remove them from their families.

Anyway…we’re not calling anyone a Deplorable moving forward. Hillary should never have done that..

We’re all in this together until the first shot is fired at Fort Sumpter.

God bless, America and the Union.

I’m trying to avoid writing too much about Donald Trump and his base these days. When you live in an abyss of political/cultural stupidity like Oklahoma it is best to try and ignore the fact you live in a state which might very well make Mike Gundy its next United States senator if James Lankford ascends to the presidency in 2024.

But at least there’s always Alabama with their own dumb as a sack of rocks issue with Tommy Tuberville to give the appearance Oklahoma is only the second most ignorant state in what as of this morning is still the Union.

We’ll have to see what happens later today on the floor of the United States Senate as the twelve GOP senators take to the floor to pledge their eternal fealty to Donald Trump in exchange for his more dubious racist voters in future GOP primaries as presidential hopefuls in 2024.

This used to be the void the Jerry Springer Live show played in America’s effort to keep lower class uneducated whites occupied, but now it’s just called Trump’s Republican Party.

It’s hard to feel sorry for these lowlife racist creeps the morning after they lost control of the United States Senate because the ever lasting damage they’ve done to our constitution and democracy to what was once known as the United States of America will go far beyond my lifetime. Far beyond theirs to be factual.

During these past four years the fifty-three Republican senators maybe minus Mitt Romney from Utah and Ben Sasse from Nebraska not only enabled Donald Trump, but in the process destroyed the quaint duel notions of American exceptionalism and aspirationalism.

Instead what the Senate became is a place where Mitch McConnell could redo the federal judiciary at both the Supreme Court level and throughout the federal court system as well to ensure twenty years down the road America is the template for economic apartheid.

That’s what all this has been about these past four years in preparation of twenty years down the road when whites become a minority race in America.

This is what the Koch Brothers hired Mitch McConnell to accomplish and to his credit he pulled it off even if in the process they destroyed all the elements which made America the greatest experiment in democracy to date.

Mitch McConnell kissed the Pussy Grabber’s ring for the tax cuts and federal judiciary appointments and in the end was slayed by the man who replaced Jerry Springer as the titular face of extreme white dysfunction in America.

You could even say Pussy Grabber and McConnell slayed each other simultaneously. Imagine Fredo slaying Michael as he slid into the cold water.

There is a Godfather-like fairness to the way this went down in Georgia after the shit show Donald Trump phone call which was shared to all by the state’s secretary of state this week-end.

House of Cards never went this far.

So here the racist Bithers sit the morning after with Joe Biden as president, Nancy Pelosi as the House majority leader, and Chuck Schumer as the Senate majority leader.

Moral of the story?

This is what happens when the viewers of reality television find a Birther candidate to replace their Jerry Springer daily fix and embrace him to the bitter end.

Karma can be a cold hearted bitch.

I’m guessing Kamala Harris has an enormous grin on her face this January morning.

I wonder if Mike Pence will still feel after today’s freak show if his boss was this generation’s Teddy Roosevelt?

In closing…if you voted for Donald Trump twice you should ban yourself for life from participating in national elections.

Seriously.

Six games in and the Thunder are exactly where they want to be…No. 15 in the Western Conference standings and in the bottom five of the NBA overall. Clearly–the Thunder are on the path to selecting a top five player in this summer’s 2021 draft.

Don’t forget the Thunder have Houston’s first round pick which is only protected 1-4 if I have all of this right in my overworked sports mind. Lots of data up there working…lots of data. Houston could very well implode and have a pick somewhere in the 9-12 range in the draft.

I still have Cade Cunningham 1 and Evan Mobley 2, but I’m thinking at this point the Thunder’s strength in this youth nucleous is at the guard position with SGA, Dort, Maledon, and the stud athlete Diallo.

Bazely is what I would describe as a hybrid forward who can play either the 3 or the 4 … so what if Sam Presti brought another hybrid forward on board to give the Thunder an unthinkable scoring tandem at the forward position.

Bazely…BTW is getting better every time he takes the floor and has that Tyler Herro smirk which I just love…so he’s not going anywhere. He’s at the nexus of the Thunder core moving forward. Would Bazely at some point embrace the Lamar Odom sixth man role if Sam Presti drafted Congonesian Johnathan Kuminga as the starting five hybrid forward? Or vice versa?

Team building is the fun part of tanking and going something like 12-60 in a shortened 72 game schedule.

I read some nonsense after the Thunder won their second game that they could be a periphery playoff team this season. Excuse the language, but somebody needs to drug test that motherf—er.

This for the Thunder is about coming out of this summer’s draft with two more solid young core players to go along with Dort, Bazely, SGA, Maledon, Diallo, and perhaps in the minds of Donald Trump white supremist zombies in the Oklahoma City market… the Serbian project named Poku Pogo.

I would think Presti will at the minimum want to keep two rotational spots open for vets like Mikey Muscala and somebody like a George Hill type. Maybe Presti can find a rim protector who can shoot the ball with the Houston pick.

I would suggest not watching all the games if you’re one of these NBA newbies like most of the Thunder fans are in this market who can’t grasp the importance of the Thunder successfully carrying out this tank this season.

To again quote fellow sports sage scribe Berry Tramel, “It would be fiduciary malpractice of the highest degree for Sam Presti not to tank this NBA basketball season.”

If you can’t handle the truth then you should limit your NBA exposure this season to the Daily Thunder’s weekly crossword puzzle and leave the heavy lifting to the the people who’ve been passionately following the league for the last fifty-five years or so.

If you are one of these feckless Edmond white millenial types who do the Daily Thunder crossword puzzle then I would suggest you stick to the puzzle and drink lots of mimosas this season. Leave this to the NBA pros.

-dr el prez- contributing okcthunderground.com writer

We don’t do crossword puzzles on my blog. I cover the world and beat Vegas like a red-headed stepchild more than Donald Trump looks into a camera and lies his ass off.

Enjoy the Jonathan Kuminga video.

The #1 Ranked Junior In America Is a PROBLEM!! Jonathan Kuminga OFFICIAL MIXTAPE!! – YouTube