Welcome to OKCThunderGround!

Unlike the sissy boy Daily Thunder blog of which I ruled at one time with a Hemingwayesque iron fist…. I cover the world and write from the passion of my heart on my internationally acclaimed award winning blog. I write the truth. If Mike Gundy is a dumbass Mullet King–then I write the truth. How’d that work out for you… O State fans?

Michigan earlier today opted out of this week-end’s game against Ohio State. The Buckeyes are No. 3 on my okcthunderground.com current Power Poll. Ohio State has played five games to date while the schools in the SEC, ACC, and Big 12 have run the gauntlet and pretty much played a normal season in the midst of Trump’s COVID Pandemic Disaster….which will hit 300,000 deaths before Christmas.

For me this is a very easy answer. As in not only no, but f–k no. It is like answering a legal question in the form of a brief. This is not some rhetorical mythical question.

Who made the six game rule for the Big Ten schools after they had earlier opted out of playing football this season?

The answer is the fourteen presidents of the Big Ten institutions made this rule….and made it after the other three conferences had in good faith proceeded with their seasons. Anotherwords…the six game rule was the agreed condition which would be met by the eventual Big Ten Champion.

They made the rule purely for economical reasons and wanted to cover their collective asses.

THEY MADE THE AMENDED RULES AFTER THE OTHER THREE CONFERENCES HAD IN GOOD LEGAL FAITH TAKEN THE LEAD THEY WOULD PLAY THE SEASON….for purely economicl reasons as well. I write the truth on my blog. The three conferences in essence need this act of ‘good faith’ to allow the Big Ten champion in the field.

A rule is a rule is a rule…especially if the rule is one which was made as an amendment to specifically aid the Buckeyes.

I wouldn’t even allow the Buckeyes to play in the Big Ten Conference Championship Game if El Prez was running the Big Ten. If Ohio State can’t even comply with their own rules their own president made—then why on earth should they be allowed to advance to the national semi-finals to taint the legitimacy of the National Final Four.

This is not a legal conundrum…it is a simple application of the law.

Even in the midst of Trump’s seven million vote rout loss to Joe Biden…we still have laws. We follow the laws or what we would have is chaos and anarchy.

Ohio State should not play in the National Semi’s, but if Coastal Carolina goes undefeated I would put them in the field. I abosolutely loved the way they destroyed the Brigham Young quarterback twice on the interception return.. on the same play. It was like Ronnie Perkins scaring both Spencer Sanders and Mike Gundy on the same play. Same thing in reality. As in… game over….piss on the fire, call in the dogs, boys. That was TSN football to the max of the three letters…Toughness, Smarts, Nasty. Coastal Carolina has some John Marshall-Nasty to them. I have to admit I like their grit. I hope Joe C has their coach on his short list for when Lincoln opts out to coach in the NFL. I’m always thinking two steps down the road on my blog… as in Mike Gundy to Tulsa after Coach Montgomery lands a POWER 5 job this off season.

Should it have been a penalty? Of course it should have been. But they didn’t get caught. If the zebra doesn’t see it…then so be it. Even if Coastal Carolina gets mauled in th national semis…at least we still have the potential of an ice clearing brawl.

So in closing…I’m saying Ohio State out while Coastal Carolina joins Alabama, Clemson, and Notre Dame at the Big Dance while OU plays Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl. Florida can play Ohio State in the Peach Bowl in their sixth game of the season….as in SIXTH GAME of the season.

The end.(

(51) Beth Harmon’s Final Chess Game | The Queen’s Gambit – Full Scene – YouTube

My wife and I were in Denver for a three day week-end to spend some very quality time with our 14 month year old grandson Robert. I feel like I know him now. We looked in each other’s eyes and a silent understanding was reached by both of us. He’s already smarter and more mature than Donald Trump. Plus…he can dunk on his junior Dunkmaster at 14 months. Plus, he runs like Westbrook, but with the smarts of Chris Paul.

In about a week he will be joined by the birth of his little sister Audrey.

Just before the OU-Baylor game….my wife and I serendipitiously watched the first episode of a Netflix film staring Anya-Taylor Joy. named The Queen’s Gambit.

The film gripped both of us in the first episode. Miss Taylor-Joy was simply stunning playing the femme chess player Beth Harmon. Simply. Stunning. It you’re a guy it will grab you by the balls and literally take your breath away.

I already have it on my Oscar watch list for multiple awards.

We binge watched the enire movie late on Saturday and Sunday nights while Robert was sleeping as he morphed a much more detailed/nuanced foreign policy than the Village Idiot ever contemplated.

A glorious week-end for certain as I took a break from the award winning okcthunderground.com. I feel rebooted.

Have a nice week.

I’m not sure if he did or not compared to his rookie season with the LA Clippers.

With both Chris Paul and Dennis Schroder on last year’s team it was hard to gauge if SGA is the point guard Sam Presti can build this team around.

When play resumed in the bubble it seemed to me Shai never really got going with any consistency. To me, it will be interesting to see where his game goes this season given there possibly won’t be much of any bona fide veteran finishers on the team for him to dish the ball to.

Neither Dort, Bazely, or Diallo have been in this role before either. We’ll just have to see what’s left standing of this roster on December 9th.

So he’ll go from last year where there were other primary ball handlers and finishers to this team of virtual depletion. I hope he gets as much help from his teammates as Cade has gotten so far from his team at O State at the Power 5 level of play.

Sam Presti made a point of talking about this in his presser, but where do the assists come from on a consistent basis. I wonder if Rondel Walker could moonlight some games for the Thunder… don’t laugh.

I’m getting ahead of myself until we specifically see what the roster looks like after the next tier of transactions.

But I will say this for the sake of hoops in Oklahoma this season…Cade and Rondel wear the masks and space with great care. We need something to watch hoops wise through the rough winter months ahead.

We need you guys to keep our atttention diverted from Sam Presti’s ‘transition’.

Shai rookie season with LA Clippers highlight mix.

(43) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Highlight Mix! (Vol. 1) – YouTube

Cade Cunningham’s one season of college basketball got its first real test on Tuesday night on the road against the Marquette Warriors. I still call Marquette the Warriors because before political correctness took over our world that’s what they were named in 1977 when Al McGuire’s team came to Oklahoma City and won a regional on their way to winning the NCAA Championship.

Granted…this isn’t Al McGuire’s Marquette program, but the program did make the tournament three years in a row heading into this season under Coach Woj.

This was a nice win for Mike Boynton’s ball club. There’s seven or eight teams in the rugged Big 12 this season who are probably better than Marquette, but this was still a solid win for the very young Cowboys.

15-6-3…those were Cade Cunningham’s very steady numbers in this game. He didn’t shoot the ball all that much…especially from beyond the arc. But what he did do was impact the game with his leadership and court smarts.

Back in 2007– I watched Kevin Durant, Michael Beasley, and Blake Griffin play Big 12 hoops. Now…we’re only three games in so I won’t go ga-ga this early because I want to see Cade play in all of the Big 12 games on the schedule…but I would say with some caution attached Cade has a chance to be better than all three of these guys as an NBA player.

Two of those guys won National Player of the Year honors, but Cade potentially has the whole package to be better than Kevin Durant.

While I’m on here today I want to shout out for the other freshman on Boynton’s club who’s quite a player himself…Rondel Walker from PC West. Rondel was probably the second best player in Oklahoma high school hoops last season and the best player in the Oklahoma City area.

Be sure and watch Rondel when he enters the games. He’s instant impact coming off Mike Boynton’s bench.

Boynton potentially has a nice little ball team on his hands if the COVID doesn’t disrupt the flow of the college season. Next up for O State are Oakland (Michigan), Oral Roberts, and Wichita State before Big 12 play gets going for the Cowboys.

I think once the Cowboys get into Big 12 play the question for them will be is if they have enough interior physicality to hang with Kansas and Baylor on the boards. But here’s the thing…Cade at 6’9″ rebounds like Russell Westbrook.

I plan on watching every O State game this season just like Sam Presti is going to do and call it my Cade Cunningham Journal on my blog.

Cade Cunningham 15 PTS, 6 REB, 3 AST Full Highlights | Oklahoma St vs Marquette 12.1.20 – YouTube

Oklahoma State vs Texas Southern University! [Cade Cunningham is a PROBLEM] – YouTube

O State improved to 2-0 on Saturday night with a home win over Texas Southern. Cade Cunningham had his second straight twenty point game to go along with 4 rebounds and 4 assists.

At 6′ 8″ he’s a rare big who can play the point with a natural ease. He sees the court and is very unselfish with the ball. He very much allows the game to come to him. Plus…his body shape is ready to go maybe with another 10-15 lbs to absorb an NBA season.

O State is at 2-0 Marquette tonight. This will Cade’s first game versus a Power 5 opponent at either home or away. I would think all Thunder fans will be very intuned this college season watching the top prospects in the upcoming 2021 NBA summer draft….esepecially when one is playing an hour up the road in Stillwater.

Sam Presti never uses the word tank. He must figure it is anathema to the Oklahoma culture. He uses the word transition…which I guess is somewhat fair in a sense. Presti hopes when all this losing takes place this season he won’t have to tank much longer and he’ll have a Cade Cunningham type on his basketball team to move the transition to the next level.

Presti said the Thunder will start the season off without any fans in the arena…which is smart.

Presti didn’t say anything about the recent presdiential election and that was smart as well because I’d guess around 65-70% of his season ticketholders voted for the Christian evangelical grifter Donald Trump. But to Presti’s credit he didn’t say anything about Hugo Chavez rigging the election with sweat and hair dye pouring down his face either. You can read between those lines as you choose.

Presti did say he had some interesting veterans on his ‘current’ roster in Al Horford, Justin Jackson, George Hill, and Trevor Ariza, but made it clear he won’t be saying too much about those guys until the day after Dec. 8th.

Presti talked some about the young guys who will be the core moving forward. Those would be Shai, Lu Dort, Darius Bazely, Diallo, the Skinny Serb, and the second round rookie point guard Theo Maledon from France who could be the second coming of Tony Parker if things go really, really, really well.

He said the Skinny Serb will be playing NBA level minutes which is smart as well because this is a season of learning while transitioning for everyone involved with the Thunder. I’d get him every minute possible between the NBA and the G League and feed him six times a day.

So basically the word moving forward is transition, not tanking. Or like Jake Owens says in Journey of Life…sometimes you have to lose some to learn how to be a winner.

I’m gonna be playing a lot of Jake Owens during these 72 games because this is going to be a journey that much is certain regardless of Sam Presti semantics.

(43) Frank Sinatra – My Way (Live At Madison Square Garden, 1974) – YouTube

Thunder training camp starts tomorrow and amid Trump’s Corona Pandemic epic fail this will be a Thunder season like none before.

As I’ve written before on my blog…if Sam Presti was ever going to blow it up in one magnificent swoop…this is the time.

This is the time to lose and align the stars to draft a player like Cade Cunningham. This is the time to go 14-58 in a 72 game shortened season and align a core of Cade, SGA, Lu Dort, D-Baze and perhaps someone else Presti has in mind none of us are thinking of currently.

No one is going to attend the Thunder games in Oklahoma City. No one at this point should have any illusions what this season neeeds to be about.

As my buddy Barry Tramel wrote…”To not tank now would be fiduciary malpractice of the most grotesque nature.”

This is the way you get top elite black talent to a Trump racist market like Oklahoma City with the exception of Paul George and none of us in hindsight know what the the hell he was thinking.

SAM PRESTI HAS TO ACQUIRE ELITE TALENT TO OKLAHOMA CITY WITH LOTTERY PICKS BECAUSE OTHER THAN PAUL GEORGE WHAT OTHER ELITE BLACK FREE AGENT WOULD COME HERE IF THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO. And in essence…Paul George was more of a sign and trade…on a delayed basis albeit.

Team building in Oklahoma City cannot include elite free agents coming here for the most part…even when Durant and Westbrook were at their apex. Even Pau Gasol in his twilight years wouldn’t come here.

This is how Sam Presti has to do it in a place where 70% of the people in this state voted for Donald Trump twice by a plurality which I’m certain is the highest among cities in either the NBA or NFL.

It is what it is. If you can’t handle the truth don’t waste your time reading my blog. Read that mamby pamby millenial nonsense on Daily Thunder if you can’t handle the truth.

You read my blog and you’ll learn the truth and how to beat Vegas consistently on your NBA picks.

Just saying.

(41) Godspeed, Steven Adams – YouTube

I don’t know if TC over at Daily Thunder made this video herself, but she’s fully capable of this type of work so I’m assuming she produced this. She emailed it to me and I have to feature this on my blog because it made me cry and laugh simultaneously.

Just wonderful.

I’m hoping she does more stuff like this and sends it to me from time to time.

This video made my day.

Thanks, TC

Best post of the year on Daily Thunder in 2020…not even close except for the Bob Dylan Mr. Tamborine Man video posted by Ash.. OKC Jim’s Shallow video was pretty awesome as well… but this Steven Adams video is sublime. I would love to get a Steven-Serge cooking video if any of the adorable Daily Thunder ‘writers’ has one of those.

Not yet he doesn’t. But if he goes to Georgia, campaigns for the two Dem senate candidates, and they win…he’ll have a mandate.

Where Joe Biden is right now is where Jimmy Carter was in 1976 when he defeated Gerald Ford. Carter’s win was more of a reflection of the nation’s distaste of the Nixon pardon than it was an endorsment of Carter.

Same thing in 2020. Joe Biden is the paragon of Democratic centrism. This wasn’t a vote for Bernie Sanders or Eliabeth Warren. In fact–it was a check of Sanders and Warren while getting rid of the orange grifter punk POTUS.

The election we just had was a reflection of what the country thinks about Donald Trump, not necessarily what the middle centrist lane of America thinks about Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham who both easily won their Senate seats for another six years.

If the GOP wins both senate seats in Georgia then in essence Mitch McConnell is POTUS for another four years while Joe Biden at some point will be battered by both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for the duration of his presidency. Much like the dynamic which evolved between Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy during Carter’s one term presidency.

McConnell, plus the remaining Koch brother, the Heritage Foundation, and the GOP in general didn’t need Donald Trump any more. They got their tax cuts and deregulation. They got their three Supreme Court appointments right off the Federalists Society wish list, and they actually won back some seats in the House from the mid-term Trump enduced losses.

Don’t think for a second the people who own both Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham aren’t ready to get rid of the Fox village idiot Donald Trump.

Let’s put it this way…Mitch McConnell has a current net worth of $440 million dollars while Bernie Sanders has a net worth of three million dollars. Tell me where the true lobbying power is going to come from in Georgia.

This is all about Georgia right now. It’s about Georgia, power, and money.

This is the real presidential election….Joe Biden vs. Mitch McConnell and the remaining Koch brother’s vision of Milton Friedman’s Darwinian laissez-faire free market doctrines.. The blathering orange fool Trump with his sidekick Rudy G will continue to be Fox Network’s rating stars as evidenced by the disgraceful performance both Trump and Maria Baritiromo gave this Sunday morning.

But as far as Joe Biden having a clear mandate…we don’t know yet. We know this though…in all Senate matters which will really matter….Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski will be with Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham for the most part.

So if I were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren I’d focus on winning Georgia and not be too consumed with the construction of Joe Biden’s cabinet.

Kind of a dark dank Saturday afternoon in Deer Creek. Even more depressing listening to the O State vs. Texas Tech game on my headphones as I continue to burn the never ending piles of limbs from the epic icestorm of a month ago.

I couldn’t play for Gundy. I feel for the O State kids. Spencer Sanders meet Bobby Reid. This shouldn’t have happened to you, buddy. Dude…you should have gone to TCU or Texas Tech.

I’ve made significant progress on the limbs, but so much bulk came down and still remains to be cut up and burned. I trudge ahead undaunted. I may start a minor little fire on my neighnor’s property line just to shake him a bit. He’s a big Trump supporter….I may put the 2020 PUTIN-trump yardsign out by the fire. It would break an HOA covenant…but we’re both OU fans. He wouldn’t hold a grudge.

Today’s Smerconish Question was…Should churches be allowed to remain open under the guise of being an essential service?

Very good question and I was mildly surprised with almost 30,000 voters casting votes they voted to keep the churches closed. It was by a significant margin of votes as well.

In Oklahoma…I not only would keep the white churches closed…I’d strip the white evangelical churches of their tax exempt status and make these white Trump ‘Christians’ attend black, Hispanic, Muslim, Jewish, and gay places of worhip at the minimum for a probationary period of twelve months.

Perhaps, this would allow the Trump Christians to reaccquaint themselves with the New Testament, the Golden Rule, the parable of the Good Samaritan…and in the process cleanse themselves from the doctrines they have adopted from the most ammoral grifter POTUS to ever be urninated on in a Moscow hotel room by mutiple Russian prostitutes pretending to be Michelle Obama.

Good question, but I wish Michael would allow me to go air with him so as to lend a little more divirsity to the show.