If you didn’t know this was coming then you’re not very smart. This is the season the Thunder bite the bullet, miss the playoffs, finish below .500, and rebuild their team.
I won’t even put a specific number of wins as an important hurdle or goal per se. Sam Presti needs to find seven young guys this season who play smart, who have well rounded games, and who have a hatred of losing beyond this season.
You want to see who takes ownership of this from the young guys. The best teams coach themselves from within.
Seven guys this season… then you add maybe two more guys next season with a game changer from the draft like say possibly a Cade Cunningham just to name a college player off the top of my head.
This year is about team building. Team building with smart guys and a truckload of TSN. Stupid teams don’t win championships in any sport.
I’m actually very excited about the season and will enjoy watching young guys evolve their games during a season which will define the future of the Thunder in Oklahoma moving forward.
Hope you check out the blog now and again as I follow the Thunder season.
If you’re waiting for a concession don’t hold your breath. It won’t matter if Biden’s lead balloons to over ten million votes. This is Trump at his grifter punk human junk bond best. It’s the Roy Cohn/Fred Trump in him and it will be to the day he dies.
It doesn’t matter to Trump and it doesn’t matter to the seventy million or so who voted for him. It doesn’t matter to the fifty-three GOP senators either.
Trump’s motto has never changed in his life…’Never give a sucker a break and kick him when he’s down.’
Not exactly the mantra you want from a POTUS, but we live in an age with Quintan Tarantino-like characters occupying the White House.
The red states Trump won in this election constitute approximately 32-34% of GDP and about the same in tax revenues contributed to the U.S Treasury. The very sad irony in all of this is Trump voters aren’t even honest or informed enough to admit his coalition is primarilly a group of states which continue to exist from the ‘welfare’ subsidies provided by other states—most of which are blue.
Not exactly the Darwinian laissez-faire doctrine of free enterprise in its purest form.
I don’t even know where to start with all of this because I’m not one of those millenials over at Daily Thunder who live for days like yesterday.
So–I’ll go slowly… Chris Paul and Abdel Nadar are in Phoenix. OKC still has Kelly Oubre Jr. and the the two young bench players I won’t name until I see a roster. I think Rubio was traded somewhere yesterday, but I’ll need to recheck on Daily Thunder. This is when a guy like me needs some staff for a day. I’m covering the world and Biden’s transition…I had no idea Presti was going to go completely batfuck crazy.
I just caught myself…Rubio is now back in Minnesota.
Dennis Schroder came out the big winner in my view. He got what Chris Paul probably wanted–that being a spot with LeBron on the Lakers’ championship groomed roster. Good for Dennis and his agent.
Then I guess Danny Green who along with some draft picks came back to OKC in the deal.
Clearly…I’m not Woj and will never claim to be. But he won’t be me either and I doubt he has any idea who the four Chief of Staffs were in Donald Trump’s pathetic one term presidency.
Reince Pribus, John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney, and Mark Meadows. Laura Ingram actually was his first pick, but she’s making $10 million a year on Trump’s own state televison network….Fox-Politburo-Trump. She already had a better job.
The Philadelphia Sixers…my team as a kid growing up BTW– then became emeshed in all of this. The Sixers got Danny Green and Terrance Ferguson in exchange for what’s left on Big Al Horford’s existing contract. Since Billy Donovan has long been gone to the Chicago Bulls we know that wasn’t a factor in any of this. That was a little sarcasm on my part.
What I’m wondering at this point is if Sam Presti told Billy Donovan this was his Kevin Costner Draft Day plan moving forward. In my view …Billy Donovan is the second biggest winner only behind Dennis Schroeder yesterday.
So then …Sam Presti used two lower first round (a 25th and a 28th) to move up to the 17th spot in the first round. Presti used the pick to select a big white Serb named Aleksej Pokusevski who apparantly can dribble and shoot from beyond Steven Adams’ limited range.
We know this though about Poku… he’s white, could probably care less about Trump, and he looks like he could bench the same 85 lbs. Kevin Durant could bench press as an NBA rookie.
Project. Poku’s body is a project.
All of that wheeling and dealing to get a Serb who deeds some serious work in the weight room and a litany of protein drinks.
He’s white though. That must be what Presti’s thinking at this point. Presti must be thinking that if Poku turns into a real NBA player he’ll be okay with the Fox birther Thunder fans in the city who are still claiming Trump won the election he just lost by somewhere around seven million votes. Dude…give it up. Even Roy Cohn would give it up at this point… you lost.
Steven Adams, Danillo Gallanari, and Big Al Horford are still members of the Thunder as of this writing…I think.
I will definitely reread and update what I just wrote, but I did my best on the fly.
But, again…if you’re going to tank then given what the U.S economy is going to struggle with adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic these next year and beyond… this would be the logical time to rebuild in Fox World–OKC.
Sam Presti traded Chris Paul and Abdel Nader to the Phoexnix Suns yesterday in exchange for Rickey Rubio, Kelly Oubre Jr., two young prospects, and a first round draft pick.
It’s the perfect time in Oklahoma City to rebuild or retool so why not do it now during a COVID-19 pandemic with another shortened regular season and at best half empty arenas on the horizon.
With the exception of LeBron’s Lakers the NBA as a whole is in a period of time when the financial sheets across all of pro sports are in flux as we wait to see how bad this winter is going to be in the United States as the tempertures grow colder with no leadership in place currently in Washington D.C.
Chris Paul gave Thunder fans a year to enjoy last season and it was time to move his contract. It’s time to be grownups and accept the reality of a rebuild in OKC.
Presti not only got another first round pick to add to his cache of picks, but he got a nice young role player in Kelly Oubre Jr. who could be a keeper to go along with SGA, Lu Dort, and Darius Bazely looking down the road.
Last week Presti made his G League coach Mark Daigneault his NBA coach and in essence this will be a developmental team in Oklahoma City the upcoming season. But look it it this way…the LA Dodgers house their top Triple AAA team in OKC—so that’s what we’re going to see this season with some promising young players trying to reshape the Thunder’s next decade of NBA basketball.
Maybe one or two these young players will turn into a Cody Bellinger, a Corey Seager , or a Chris Taylor. There won’t be any Mookie Betts-like free agent coming to Oklahoma City…but lots of youth and less payroll.
I enjoy seeing young players evolve so this will be kind of fun for me. Presti will need to get some luck with some of these draft picks, but if you were going to give any GM in the league this arsenal of picks you’d probably have Presti near the top of your list of GMs.
It is what it is. Young players on the horizon. A new young coach. With the hope Sam Presti can rebuild the Thunder into a contender two or three years from now in an NBA city which just voted for Donald Trump by a seventy per cent plurality margin even though Joe Biden won the White House with 306 Electoral College votes.
Sam Presti has a profound challenge in front of him in the NBA’s most challenging job heading into the 2020 season.
Pretending to be Dan Jenkins… I have to hurry up and get my three picks in to win this year’s Masters at Augusta National which is being played in November.
I’m going to pick Jon Rahm to win it with both Rory and Matthew Wolf making runs on the final round of play.
My dark…dark…dark horse is Jordan Speith who has fallen off the edge of the golfing earth in recent times. Who would have thought that three years ago?
This will be perfect for me as both OU and O State are idle this Saturday as they get healthy for next Saturday’s Bedlam game in Norman which should be a dandy in a battle of quarterbacks both named Spencer. Never in my life have I seen a football game where both QBs are named Spencer.
I need a break from the grifter Trump on here. He makes me feel dirty just writing about him. I feel dirty like a layer of Russian prostitutes’ urine has covered me these last nine days or so as I’ve covered the election on my blog. First thing Biden and his wife should go do is book a room in Trump’s hotel in D.C. and pee all over the beds. This is what Trump has done to me. This must be how Matt Taibi felt after the 2016 election covering it for Rolling Stone. It’s so disturbing 70 million peoeple voted for him. It’s depressing. We are lost as a nation.
Nero is fiddling…Nero is fiddling, baby. Just ask the Romans. Caligula, Cicero…Nero. Trump is Nero. Caligula was a sweetheart compared to this prick.
I love this song. Maybe this will cheer me up.
Actually…I liked the song better in Sleepless in Seattle than in Casablanca.
A classic either way.
A piano bar karaoke would be nice to close this out.
The transition of power shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Trump had to know his chances were slim. Biden is right…Trump’s fourth grade level pouting is not only an embarrassment to our democracy, but to his already very shaky presidential legacy which could be worse than that of James Buchanan.
Trump has no other gear than the petulant spoiled brat routine. His father should have sent him to Vietnam and done humanity a favor. Mayve we would have seen less pussy grabbing, no furniture store sport f–king stories with Billy Bush–and much more humility and maybe even a touch of human dignity.
Instead we’ve all seen how it went down. The world’s greatest democracy held hostage by Denace the Menace for four years. I can’t take my eyes off those hands. But unlike Little Marco Rubio … I went to John Marshall and can handle myself . He won’t bully me. Melania has given me courage to deal with internet bullies.
Bush 43 had a tough eight years in the White House, but at least in the end he got this part right and put country ahead of himself.
The Thunder named a head coach today and quite frankly the choice does little for me as we watch our nation teeter on the brink of a potential constitutional crisis.
I’m not even sure the Thunder should be allowed to have an NBA franchise after I witnessed the manner in which these people voted in a historic election.
I’m not looking for Oklahoma anytime soon to pull out of last place in the smarts category. Maybe they’ll elect Mary Fallin to a third term.
It’s Veteran’s Day and John McCain is the first person I always think of on this special national holiday. I think of his story as a POW in Vietnam as he displayed a special courage as a man, an officer, and a patriot.
Politically…I’m probably what one might call a John McCain Republican. But since a Republican Party no longer exists I would currently decribe myself as an independent centrist who leans left on several social issues. In no way have I ever considered myself an ideologue either to the left or right.
In the twelve presidential elections I’ve been eligible to vote in…I’ve voted Republican six times, Democratic five times, and for an independent once. The independent was John Anderson in 1980.
I voted for Barack Obama twice, wrote in John McCain in 2016, and just voted for Joe Biden.
People on the far right would call me a squish or a RHINO for the manner of which I’ve veered left as I’ve grown older. I’d like to think with age and a more complete life experience….. I’ve learned from some of my mistakes and become a little smarter… and a little more empathetic to the big picture of life. I hope so.
We could genuinely use John McCain in the United States Senate right now. Our country could use someone from that side of the aisle who wouldn’t conduct his business in the senate chamber as a completely feckless coward with not a shread of courage to stand up to the never ending nonsense which has been enabled by the fifty-three GOP senators…Mitt Romney included.
Perhaps it was what John McCain learned as a Vietnam POW which made him so different from politicans who didn’t serve their country. Perhaps…if Donald Trump’s father had sent his son to Vietnam we would see a much more mature, sincere, genuine human being who held the highest office in the world and disgraced that office almost every day for four years. If you want to be a Twitter rock star…then be Charlie Sheen–not the leader of the free democratic world.
Maybe in four years…John McCainn could have had an impact on Donald Trump and made him a slightly better man. Probably not since Donald Trump never thinks or acts on behalf on anythig else but his own ego. But John McCain possibly could have had an impact on Donald Trump. But then again we’ve seen how Lindsey Graham turned out. Donald Trump evolving as a man probably wasn’t in any set of cards.
We do know this from this concession speech….Barack Obama made John McCain a better man and vice versa.
John McCain would have been on the phone with Joe Biden the day after this election offering help. That’s what a real hero and a patriot does.
Richard Nixon was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice-president for two terms. In the election of 1960… Nixon lost by a razor thin margin and went against the wishes of some in his party by not contesting the results in some Chicago voting precincts.
EVEN Richard Nixon the father of the Solid South and the Silent Majority understood that at some point the country comes first.
What a quaint adorable notion as we watch how Donald Trump and his supporters are dealing with the aftermath of last week’s election results.
As an older person who was once a Republican… I find it sad and stunning to witness how far the Republican Party has fallen off the edge of the earth in these four years of Donald Trump.
Good luck, Joe Biden. You’re going to need not only some luck but a miracle to change the level of discourse in America.
I haven’t officially declared Joe Biden the winner on my blog for the simple reason the legal war is about to begin from Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Rudy Guiliani and others.
My greatest fear for American democracy is what happens now in these next two months.
Donald Trump’s life is a history of never displaying any class or any decency whatsoever. I cannot imagine this is going to change at this point in his life. Once a rogue con artist always a grifter.
Other than Mitt Romney not one sitting United States senator has acknowledged Joe Biden as the winner in this election.
Not one.
The exact same set of dynamics which we witnessed at the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
So remembering how it went in 2000 in the United States Supreme Court…I’m going to hold off declaring Joe Biden as America’s officially elected 46th POTUS.
These are the times we live in. I watched this video of Gore’s concession speech and it seems like three lifetimes ago as to what America was and what it has become in these past four years. Gore seems so sweet and innocent as he discusses the value of America’s role as the world leader of democratic nations.
Plus, there’s the two United States senate runoff elections in Georgia which could sway the voting majority in the senate.
Nothing yet has changed. The Republican senators are still terrified of Donald Trump and minus Mitt Romney not one has displayed any political courage whatsoever.
It baffles me as to how John McCain ever embraced Lindsey Graham as a close friend.