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Clay Bennett and his team won’t rank high. Tanking in a big way and for very long will not play in a place like Oklahoma.

The Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis tank which put Clay Bennett in a position to tank for the rights to Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden primarily took place while the franchise was still in Seattle in wait of being shipped to Oklahoma by the Thunder ownership group.

Only one season of tanking took place in Oklahoma and in that initial season in Oklahoma the Thunder went 23-59, but it was a fun mini-tank. Scott Brooks told the kids to run back faster and play harder. He screamed at them to play defense. Can anyone in their right mind a decade later imagine the expressions on the three faces of Durant, Westbrook and Harden now if a coach talked to them like Scott Brooks did back in the beginning?

They’d walk. Their agents would demand a trade. The hard core truth is Oklahoma isn’t much a place for an NBA star once they reach their third contract in the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement. The tenets of slavery per se are gone and a star is free to escape a place like Oklahoma which went almost seventy per cent for Donald Trump.

If I were a black star in the NBA would I play in Oklahoma if I didn’t have to?

Not a chance.

Truth hurts.

Can you imagine former Clay Bennett employee Berry Tramel or Little Nick Gallo or Low Energy Royce Young ever writing what I just wrote?

Not a chance.

But anyway, where will the Thunder rank if they go too far and too long into a tanking mode?

I’d say it would go something like this: 1 OU football, 2 O State football, 3 maybe the hoops program between OU and O State which emerges as the alpha dog this year after both have good recruiting classes in place, 4 the Cleveland Browns, and then maybe the Thunder if they tank beyond this one season.

Tanking will not play in Oklahoma. John Blake was not a tanking move, but rather just a horrific decision on a coaching hire. Travis Ford was not a tanking strategy either, but again it was just another bad coaching hire after Bill Self said ‘no thanks’.

OU didn’t stockpile draft picks during the John Blake Era in Norman. Rather it brought empty seats, apathy, and malaise.

This is just me thinking out loud, but if I were the Thunder ownership group I wouldn’t tank hard and I wouldn’t tank long.

Berry Tramel was on the Sports Animal this morning and he was hilarious. Of course much of the talk centered around his ‘Next Question’ routines with Russell Westbrook.

To Tramel’s credit he readily admitted no one really on the national NBA circuit knew of him all that much before because in essence he’s made his career covering college sports in Oklahoma. Tramel admits the opposite is now true because of his post game side shows with Russell Westbrook not answering questions while Little Nick Gallo guarded the face of the Thunder franchise.

So did Tramel just troll Westbrook to gain some attention and maybe get some hits for his newspaper?

I would say probably to a certain extent. I mean none of the questions Tramel ever asked really had anything attached of any real significance if you follow basketball at all. Not one question did I hear which in reality would be one I would have asked.

But still it was great comedic theatre in the age of the internet where let’s be frank anyone will do anything to get or attract hits.

Someone on the morning show asked Tramel if he planned on attending Westbrook’s first presser in Houston.

My response would be, ” Go for it.” Give your readers some entertainment because they’re not going to get all that much in the next eighty-two games where things stand now.

Take Little Nick Gallo along as the puppet prop he genuinely is and go full bore with it and see what happens with the numbers and the clicks.

Why not?

With the Oklahoma City Thunder pointing towards a tank the OU Sooners in quest of a third straight Final Four appearance becomes the primary storyline in Oklahoma heading into August.

Can Jalen Hurts be the third straight OU quarterback to win a Heisman?

Will the OU defense be able to be somewhat respectable?

And how will the kicking game without Austin Seibert be this season?

Some real questions for Lincoln Riley now in his third season at OU.

The Thunder will go back to being the second storyline in Oklahoma sports wise and possibly even the third depending how what O State redshirt freshman quarterback Spencer Sanders shows this season.

Should be an extremely fun college football season in Oklahoma.

Let’s do this even though I have a Lincoln Riley caption…let’s take a look at Spencer Sander’s senior high school season in Denton, Texas when he won the Texas high school player of the year.

If you’re an O State fan I would think you might be salivating thinking of what Spencer Sanders does this football season.

Oops. Wrong link.

Woke up today on Monday and I didn’t much think of Russell Westbrook or Clay Bennett’s tanking Oklahoma City Thunder. I have Klay Thompson and the Warriors in my fall back position so in reality why do I need to be sweating the Thunder tank and rebuild.

I’m not.

I won’t.

He didn’t even play defense.

It’s baseball season and the LA Dodgers are the best team in major league baseball and quite frankly I’ve moved on as long as Reggie Jackson somehow doesn’t end up back in Oklahoma City.

It’s the Libra in me. I don’t stay down for long. Quite frankly…I think I’m the only one in my family who isn’t completely fucking crazy.

So…I’m good and moving forward.

I’m not exactly sure when and where Chris Paul and Danilo Gallanari will be traded, but they will and when they are the tank in Oklahoma City is official.

Michael Cage on the Fox telecasts along with Little Nick Gallo will tell us the Thunder are not tanking. But the Thunder at some point will be tanking because the Thunder own their own first round pick and if they hit bingo with a top four lottery pick the rebuild becomes much more certain in OKC for Sam Presti.

I assume Michael Cage is still on the telecast and the first Fox Telecast of the season will rank right there with Trump’s address to the Boy Scouts of America in West Virginia for pure unfiltered bullshit.

Anyway, providing some tanking music here and there might be fun.

It is what it is. You can’t dwell on the fact they had three MVP’s and didn’t win one championship. You move on. You deal with it. It was a tough week. The Jerami Grant trade was the toughest because that’s when you knew where this was going. Diana Krall always relaxes me. I’m going to drink some wine and fall asleep and hope Presti doesn’t make a trade which brings Reggie Jackson back to Oklahoma City. That would be Ground Zero… rock bottom.

Have a nice Sunday. Stiff upper lip.

Try to enjoy other things which you enjoy doing. Lots of concerts this Thunder basketball season…lots of concerts.

This made me cry, but they were tears of happiness. It was refreshing to see this week of turmoil in Oklahoma City reflected on in this manner by one Russell Westbrook.

As I heard it…it wasn’t basketball I was thinking about. What I was thinking about was Russell the person, the son, the brother, the husband, and the father. I never once really even thought that much about the basketball of the past eleven seasons in Oklahoma City.

This is the part of Russell Westbrook it’s impossible not to love. His story and his family.

Where it goes now is in Houston, but Russell Westbrook will at some point have a street in downtown Oklahoma City named for him… and rightfully so.

At the lowest point in Oklahoma City after the departure of Durant, the death of Aubrey McClendon, the plethora of earthquakes, and the cratering of oil prices…Russell Westbrook didn’t just have a steadying impact on the Thunder, he had a steadying influence on a state and how it felt about itself.

Russell gave Oklahomans something to cling onto and to help them feel good about themselves.

No, there won’t be a championship parade in Bricktown as the Russell Westbrook era has now ended in Oklahoma City. But there is a city which is still growing, still doing incredible things with MAPS, and still changing the manner in which it is perceived by the rest of the country.

Russell Westbrook should be extremely proud of what he did with his time in Oklahoma City. He wasn’t just the face of a franchise, but the face of a city.

This last season was bumpy to say the least. But bumps are just a part of the process.

Russell leaves for Houston, but unlike with Kevin Durant he departs as the favorite player in Oklahoma City even if it is with him playing in south Texas.

Russell Westbrook wasn’t born in Oklahoma, but in Los Angeles. He departs for Houston as our favorite son.

It was a premonition of Thunder fate that yesterday morning I saw a man in Edmond wearing a blue Thunder T shirt with the theme word History etched on the chest. As in the Thunder are history in the current tense.

On Thursday evening, Sam Presti did Russell Westbrook a favor. He didn’t send his star guard to Detroit, Minnesota or some shithole team like the New York Knicks. Nope.

Sam Presti did the right thing. He rewarded loyalty with human decency and sent Russell Westbrook to a contending team with his old co-pilot from the 2012 NBA Finals team.

If there is one person in this league who understands how to play alongside Russell Westbrook in the backcourt it might be James Harden.

Harden in reality was the Thunder point guard in those 2012 Western Conference Playoffs. He was the closer and then his role was reduced in the Finals against the Heat or you could say he just didn’t play as well.

But if anyone can come to terms with taking the ball out of Russell Westbrook’s off the chart high usage hands it’s James Harden.

Sam Presti in exchange got two more first round draft picks and two more draft swaps. And, oh, by the way, got one of the league’s worst contracts back for that of Chris Paul’s. The only thing which makes Paul’s contract not as bad as Westbrook’s or John Wall’s is that there’s one less year of it to pawn off on the next trade Sam Presti makes in what is going to be a glorious tank or mini tank or death march.

Or who knows, maybe Presti rolls with this lineup till the trade deadline and sees if Billy Donovan can do with this Thunder lineup what Doc Rivers did with Clippers last season.

The only problem with that is if Chris Paul and Gallanari get hurt and it diminishes the returns on their upcoming trades.

For those not keeping count, the Thunder now have fifteen first round draft picks to rebuild a team around SGA. He’s the one Presti’s keeping and possibly Steven Adams for one more year until his salary becomes an expiring contract.

I can’t remember how many first round picks Sam Hinkie from Claremore, Oklahoma accumulated during his death march Process in Philly, but I don’t think it ever reached fifteen because Hinkie had a fetish for second round picks.

If nothing else, Sam as in Presti is setting a new standard for first rounders.

Maybe he can get a first rounder and a second rounder from the Knicks for Rumble the Thunder mascot.

But putting all the tanking angles aside… Sam Presti did a really good thing by trading Westbrook to Houston.

He rewarded loyalty with human decency and did the best thing for Russell Westbrook at the age of 31.

How ironic, Presti finally put Russell on a team with a slew of guys who can shoot the ball.

Go figure.

I could see this happening if the Thunder and Miami make a deal at some point.

Tyler Herro was the 13th player taken in the draft and is a scorer…period. He doesn’t have great lateral movement defensively, but he can score the ball. Many scouts touted him as a potential 40-50-90 type of shooter at the next level.

Sam Presti is in rebuild. He’ll need a sixth man once Dennis Schroder is unloaded. Tyler Herro could be interesting in this role for the Thunder.

OKC needs shooters. They need a scorer off the bench much like Harden provided in 2012. Harden couldn’t defend a pylon when he came to OKC. We saw how that turned out. Let’s circle Tyler Herro for the time being as part of the rebuild discussion.

First off…I love Jerry West and on this very blog I’ve been writing for quite some time he would bring the Clippers full circle from being Donald Sterling’s joke franchise to a contender.

He is Mr. NBA. He is the logo of the league. He’s is the most successful executive in the league and right after he snookered Sam Presti back in 2016 in the Hamptons…I looked at my father and said, “Clay Bennett should hire Jerry West.”

And here we sit three years later a franchise on the verge of going into full tank mode because the Thunder were once again tooled by Jerry West.

Now some in this small college market will say Sam Presti won the trade with this truckload of draft choices who could very well turn out to be Cameron Payne, Mitch McGary, Josh Huestis, Cole Aldrich, Alex Abrines, Terrance Ferguson and now this person named Darius Bazley or whatever.

These same people claim Sam Presti is a NBA savant of sorts. Oh, really. Tell me of one village idiot you know who wouldn’t have drafted Kevin Durant after Portland took Greg Oden as the No. 1 pick. Tell me of one person you know who then wouldn’t have taken Durant.

These last two days I’ve sat back and read the local scribes in innocent college market Oklahoma City rationalize how this trade went down and how the fact that in a week the Thunder in reality have dumped their three best players and how Presti won this trade with this slew of picks who could be the next generation of Josh Huestis and Darius Bazley.

And for the most part I’ve bitten my tongue with these people.

In a way this is karma for Oklahoma City and what happened in Seattle. This is a rude introductory course on what it’s really like to be city with a major league sports franchise.

I’m guessing every person in Seattle is smiling right now.

Karma is a bitch. Especially when it happens twice.

Oklahoma City meet Jerry West. Your owner should have hired him.

This is the move I would make if I were Sam Presti. The NY Knicks are one of the worst run sports franchises in all of pro sports. They’ve missed the post season in twelve out of the past fifteen years. Their fans are angry they did nothing of consequence during this free agent derby while Brooklyn landed Durant and Kyrie.

They need something of entertainment relevance attached to their brand. The Thunder are in tank mode after squandering away the golden years of Durant, Westbrook, Harden , and Paul George. The OKC fanbase is in a word …spoiled.

In a weird way the Knicks and the Thunder need each other. And given they both have the distinction of being stupid enough to sign Carmelo Anthony it’s almost somewhat poetic this Westbrook for Barrett deal be made for both parties.

Westbrook is a peacock. He’s not winning anything in Miami, so if you’re not going to win anything then go ahead and play inside the mecca of basketball in Madison Square Garden and be close to your real passion….being a fashion upstart. Why not?

This won’t be like Mark Messier winning a Stanley Cup with the NY Rangers, but it should provide entertainment value for both franchises.

Presti needs to convince his fanbase he knows what he’s doing during this rebuild and if nothing else RJ Barrett teamed with SGA and all these draft picks gives hope the Thunder can once again be relevant in three years.

To me…this makes much more sense than trading Westbrook to Miami where he could dilute the Miami picks the Thunder just acquired from the Clippers.

This is what I would do, but who knows with Sam Presti.

Who really knows?