My 2016 Daily Thunder Regular Season Seeding Bracket Sheet

Time for the DT regular season bracket sheet.

1 Golden State Warriors
2 San Antonio Spurs
3 LA Clippers
4 Oklahoma City Thunder
5 Portland Trailblazers
6 Houston Rockets
7 Memphis Grizzlies
8 Utah Jazz
9 Dallas Mavericks
10 New Orleans Pelicans
11 Minnesota Timberwolves
12 Denver Nuggets
13 Sacramento Kings
14 Phoenix Suns
15 LA Lakers

How Deadly Can the Westbrook-Adams Pick and Roll Tandem Become?

With all the talk of the Westbrook-Oladipo backcourt potential, we can’t lose sight of perhaps the league’s most potentially deadly pick and roll combo in Westbrook and Adams. How far Steven Adams can take his game offensively this season is a major Thunder storyline in itself. Maybe the biggest storyline of all.

Season to Start on Wednesday in Philly

The Thunder season starts on Wednesday night against my former favorite team the Sixers. I would say guarded optimism is my feel going into this first Thunder season ever without Kevin Durant. Here’s one thing which steps out immediately to me in regards to the West, other than Golden State and Utah–I’m not sure anyone else in the West improved themselves enough to make a significant difference from where they finished last season.

Golden State should be a prohibitive favorite to win the West, while the Lakers, Kings, and Suns should finish in the bottom three in the West.

Utah should be better. I’m not sure if that means they can climb to say a No. 6 seed or so, but I give them credit for making some moves to become a better team.

Minnesota with new head coach Tom Thibodeau and their stable of young talent should be an interesting team to keep an eye on as playing defense becomes part of the process in Minnesota.

But after you get past the Warriors it would appear there will be a great deal of parity between San Antonio, the Clippers, OKC, Portland, Utah, Memphis, Houston, Dallas, Minnesota, and perhaps New Orleans and Denver.

As far as our Thunder they should be an extremely watchable team with Russell Westbrook making a run at a regular season MVP if the Thunder can get into that 50-52 win range at regular season’s end. Steven Adams is evolving into one of the league’s better big men and there’s the question if Victor Oladipo can morph his game with Russell Westbrook to form one of the better backcourts in the NBA.

It feels like a very long time ago that the Thunder lost in Game 7 to the Warriors. The sting from Durant’s July 4th defection is gone. It’s over. I’m fairly certain he’ll be booed out of the Chesapeake Energy Arena in February, but for me it will be more of an indifferent silence.

I’m ready for the NBA season to begin. Ready to see what Billy Donovan can do with this extremely young roster. I’m still hoping Presti has another trade in mind somewhere during the season to take the roster a notch higher, but really even with Durant’s exit Oklahoma City should be a fun team to follow.

Perhaps, Zach Lowe will enter the Daily Thunder Western Conference Regular Season Seeding Contest to make it even more interesting for me. That would be cool. Nothing more from me on the election until Election Night. It’s time to get my game face on for the Thunder season.

I Refuse To Watch NBA Pre Season Games

For the most part, large cavities of the NBA regular season are at times unwatchable as teams loaf defensively. So—it’s always been a creed of mine to ignore NBA pre season games. When the season begins–I’ll start watching the games, but not now. These kids who get all worked up on various blogs watching NBA pre season games are adorable. These bloggers are churning you. Royce Young…churner. Zack Lowe…churner. The entire newsoksports staff …. churners.

The Sports Animal…churners. I don’t churn. I refuse to churn.

The Daily Thunder Western Conference Regular Season Seeding Contest

I guess as the defending champion I should start putting my picks together for this season. Probably over the course of the past four NBA seasons I’d have to guess my overall score average is No. 1. Yawn. I’ve beaten Justin four years running. Dismissed of Royce Young as if he were Jim Traber or Jenni Carlson. I have to admit…I’m having trouble getting myself jacked up mentally for this right now. I’m bored with it. I need a challenge. I need Zach Lowe in the field to get my competitive juices flowing. I need him there so as there’s no doubt as to the alpha chain and how it goes. I need Zach Lowe in the field.

Trump Should Have Followed His Intial Thought

This whole Trump candidacy is just ridiculous as all these women are coming forward basically saying what Trump said in the Access Hollywood video and in this interview with Chris Matthews are true. He shouldn’t even be running. He should buy Hustler magazine, open some strip bars in Atlantic City, and do the alt right racist cable television network with Bannon. Know your wheelhouse, Donald Trump, know your wheelhouse, buddy.

Here’s Trump with Chris Matthews pretty much saying what I just wrote.

Mark Cuban, Bill Maher, James Carvelle Discuss Furniture Shopping Sex Caper

Thank God for Bill Maher during all this bullshit. I’ve never in my fifty-eight years been this saddened and depressed about our country. Another banner day for Canidate Trump as he lashed out at both Paul Ryan and John McCain for assorted reasons.

The Nixon years were depressing, but even those weren’t close to what we’re observing right now. If I were twenty I’d probably just say enough and move to Mexico. How did this country become this blatantly stupid? Even in 1996 with Bill Clinton facing impeachment I never felt this doomed, this saddened for the country.

But at least there’s Bill Maher to make me laugh.

Trump on Face the Nation — June 5, 2016

Interesting day on the campaign trail. A Wall Street Journal poll was released which shows Hillary Clinton leading by somewhere around 12% of registered voters polled. Paul Ryan somewhat distanced himself from Trump stating he’ll no longer defend any of Trump’s future actions. John McCain finally stated publicly he in no way can endorse Trump and said he’ll vote for Lindsey Graham. Mr. Kahn did another interview where he basically said Donald Trump is clueless and devoid of any character whatsoever.

And perhaps even more telling Trump revealed there is more tape out there similar to what we just heard where at the age of fifty-nine and just married to Melania he took a married Nancy O’Dell furniture shopping in the hope he could be a ‘bitch’ and ‘f–k’ her following the shopping spree. Or that his general principle in life is he’s a reality television star who can kiss any woman when he wants or do a ‘p—y grab’.

On the Trump trail today several Deplorables and Trumpettes were seen wearing newly made T-shirts which read ‘Better to Grab Some P—y Than Become One’.

Are we making America Great Again yet?

Here’s Trump on Face the Nation — June 5th. Sigh.

Second Presidential Debate Goes Rogue

What do you even say about what transpired last night in St. Louis? Probably the lowest point in American presidential campaign history. Hard to be optimistic about the future of the country after watching it. As far as who won and who lost I’d have to say Trump did better than he did in the first debate, but at what cost?

I’d either call it a draw or give Trump a slight edge because Hillary Clinton was just rope a doping trying not to make a huge mistake given her lead. She took the punches and rode it out. The pre-debate press conference with the four women was unlike anything ever seen before in presidential campaigns. Trump even threw Mike Pence under the bus at one point in answering a question on his policy in Syria. You have to wonder how either of these canidates would be able to govern the country given the depth of hatred displayed last night. The only people happy about last night are the alt right who Trump, Conway, and Bannon pandered to from start to finish on Sunday night.

Donald Trump went even more rogue than he did in the GOP primary debates. It will probably resonate with his core followers, but beyond those people, I can’t imagine any other people in the country were impressed by the display. To win the White House in this day and age, it’s almost impossible to do so just pandering to angry white Americans who haven’t come to terms with globalization and the fact it’s not the 1950’s anymore. Perhaps if Trump hadn’t already torched both John McCain and Mitt Romney he could talk to them about the presidential demographics now in place. The world has changed as has America’s role as the leader of the free world.

To me—it re-inforces how far our culture has fallen in the forty-six years since Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. But how could any of us be surprised? Trump basically followed this script when he systematically eliminated each of his sixteen GOP competitors during the primary process. No one was spared and why would Hillary Clinton be treated any differently. If you’re going to go rogue with George W Bush in the South Carolina primary debate why would it be different in the general election with Hillary and Bill Clinton.

To me, the intrigue isn’t in how the Clinton campaign will respond, but rather what happens to the Republican Party during these last thirty days of the campaign. One would hope it can’t drop to a lower rogue level than last night. To me it would hinge on how will the Trump campaign reach out to moderate independents, suburban Republican women, and both college educated men and women given the torched earth show displayed in St. Louis last night.