Welcome to OKCThunderGround!

You know, the Thunder host the Golden State Warriors tonight and I’m honestly not stoked all that much. I hope the OKC fans don’t evoke the Cupcake chant and have come to terms with things so to speak.

The reality of the Thunder is they’re just not that good. Consider this, this is a team which lost Andre Roberson for the season and yet somehow became an even worse team shooting free throws than they were last year.

Consider the enormity of the above paragraph and you have this Thunder season in a proverbial nutshell.

It might have been iconic OCU coach Abe Lemons who once uttered this basketball proverb, but regardless of the source, it is a golden platitude of post season basketball at any level.

It states: “Teams which can’t make free throws are like dogs who play in the street–neither last very long.”

So as we near the sentencing segment of the this Thunder basketball season those Abe Lemons words I will hold close to my basketball heart knowing this group of Thunder out patients aren’t long for this basketball world being they’re the 29th worst team in the NBA in making free throws.

I’m not even at this point interested in which seed the Thunder fall in as in I don’t think it matters because the Thunder are their own toughest team on the schedule every night.

Seriously, if you divided the Thunder into two teams and they played each other do you really think either team would be able to win four games in two weeks?

Hell, Barry Tramel would be inside Chesapeake waiting until August for that to happen.

Way back early in the season I compared this team to Little Miss Sunshine, but thinking at some point they would grow beyond their dysfunction and that Billy Donovan would earn his $6 million and somewhat display the presence of a coach in a charge.

I was wrong. None of that happened.

These people have worn me out even almost as much as the Trump people except for the fact Thunder fans can’t affect the U.S. Treasury or start wars.

Anyway, Golden State at OKC tonight, but Toronto is at Cleveland as well at the same time.

Know what I mean?

By pure accident, I once ran into Abe Lemons in his front yard of all places, with him wearing his white bath robe trying to fix the tiny hose on his windshield wipers which squirts out water. He asked me to help him fix the hose and I did. One hour later–I had experienced the funniest conversation of my lifetime with another human being.

I did actually have Villanova winning the national championship on my bracket sheet. Only thing is…I had them either playing Virginia or North Carolina in winning their third national championship.

Villanova was the one obvious pick and Jay Wright’s squad held true in routing Mo Wagner and Michigan by a 79-62 count on Monday night in San Antonio.

The Big 12 was a little bit better than I thought they were in getting four teams to the Sweet 16. I had three Big 12 teams getting there, but not K State. I had Kansas getting beat in the Elite 8 game versus Duke–so I thought it was a good tournament for the Big 12.

The PAC 12 was horrific. The ACC had a bad tournament with Virginia, North Carolina, and Duke all torching. The SEC wasn’t much. To me, the storylines were Villanova, Sister Jean, and the Big 12 showing itself as the most balanced conference in this year’s tournament.

But Villanova was the one constant and they won their third national championship in the modern era on Monday night with relative ease as Donte D stole the show over Mo Wagner with an epic 31 point performance.

It was Easter. The Thunder game in New Orleans was not one of my top priorities as family and personal reflection took center stage over the basketball game.

I’m not suffering anymore with this team. This is their team and their legacy as players. I’ll watch, but I won’t be venting and ranting anymore.

This isn’t life or death. These guys are pro basketball players and it’s not like they do meaningful things for society like teach, nurse, or protect society from harm. You would hope a collective pride would manifest itself, but I’m not holding my breath anymore.

Anyway… a relatively big win for the Thunder on Sunday afternoon on the road in New Orleans by a 109-104 count which snaps a three game losing streak.

The Thunder improve to 45-33 with four games remaining and are currently clinging to the No. 5 seed in the West. You would think these guys would do everything possible to avoid a first round matchup with either Houston or Portland.

Oddly, and this may sound crazy, but I actually think a first round series against a Warriors team without Steph Curry could possibly be interesting.

In this game Westbrook, George, Adams, and Melo combined for 84 points. Jerami Grant played well again, but the rest of the Thunder bench struggled.

Westbrook and Paul combined to go 14-17 from the free throw line which is something the Thunder will need from these two if they are to be competitive in the playoffs.

Four games left and if the Thunder split the four games they finish with an identical record of 47-35 just like last season.

Golden State visits on Tuesday night and who would really know what these Thunder will do against a Warriors team which is locked in as the No. 2 seed regardless of how they finish the regular season.

I think little about the Paul George situation anymore in that I assume he’s probably going to leave unless this Thunder team does something in post season which would be a deviation from the norm this basketball season.

But you never know. Maybe they’ll start making free throws and playing like they care…or maybe they won’t.

That’s a horrible thing for me to write about this team, but it’s just the way I feel about them. I don’t respect this team for their body of work this season. I detest their mental laziness.

But I trudge on with the death knell basketball season march.

Golden State in OKC on Tuesday night.

How ironic it would be if these two teams somehow meet in the first round.

Amid a season where there’s been an FBI probe investigating the corrupt nature of big time college basketball–Sister Jean and Chicago Loyola have advanced to the Final Four as an 11th seed.

What a nice story.

I have no idea if they can beat Michigan today, but what a nice story.

Morphine. I need some morphine if I’m going to make it to the conclusion of this Thunder basketball season.

I can’t lie and I won’t. Never in my life has a team sucked the joy and passion like this from me. This isn’t a basketball season–it’s torture chamber.

This season has become like a death knell for me. Part of me says fuck it—you don’t have to watch this bullshit anymore. But the competitive part of me won’t allow that degree of quitting even though I’d like to be the one personally who doused this team in diesel and lit a match.

I wonder if it’s felony to catch an NBA team on fire in Oklahoma?

The diva lab Pauli keeps her eyes closed during the games and flaps her ears over in a cute way where she can’t hear me screaming. My wife makes sure before every tip there aren’t any objects near me I could shear the flat screen with. Some of my neighbors at this point must think I’ve killed some people over here, but must be afraid to call the police.

But thank god—there’s only five games left. And maybe, perhaps, with divine intervention–this group of basketball misfits Sam Presti saw fit to pay $134 million dollars will somehow miss the playoffs and allow me to focus on the Philadelphia 76’ers and Boston Bruins.

But I can’t quit at this point. This has become personal with me even after this loss to a blah Denver team. But here’s the thing, when you go 15-27 from the free throw line — it’s hard to win a basketball game even at the high school level.

But by the grace of God there are no more Thunder games in March. Only five games remain in April if Billy Donovan doesn’t change some things.

I can see in his eyes…he’s dying just like me with every game.

Like me—I think he wants to get this death knell march over and pretend it never happened.

The Thunder at New Orleans on Easter afternoon.

I can’t do this today. I need to take a break from writing about this basketball team for a day. I have no rants left inside of me. If I were their coach I would have been throwing chairs in the locker room and setting the North American records for F bombs dropped in a minute.

I’m empty right now.

At some point words are meaningless when the team you’re blogging about doesn’t have any character as a team. In no way am I including Steven Adams and Ray Felton in that statement.

Maybe they’ll play better tonight against Denver and I can compose myself.
The Thunder host the Denver Nuggets tonight at the Peake.

In no way would I blame Clay Bennett for not showing up and having to watch the game tonight.

Go Boston Bruins!

I’m in no way a Thunder homer. When I saw the roster OKC put together this summer I had the Thunder rated as the No. 2 team in the West with Houston almost dead even with them like say 2a and 2b. A healthy Golden State team was my easy pick to repeat as world champions.

But here we sit in the final days of March with the Thunder 17 games behind the Rockets and praying they can hold on to the No. 4 seed in the West and possibly win 48 regular season games.

I will admit the Carmelo deal made me nervous as in will this guy be able to come to terms with what his role should be for this team. I assumed or hoped that would happen and even back in the summer I openly said he should be the Sixth Man–which by the way is no disgrace at all. As I’ve written this week, Iguodala, Eric Gordon, and Manu Ginobli just to name three all currently man the Sixth Man position. And just so Carmelo Anthony’s brain is functioning as it should–he doesn’t possess the mobility of any of these three players or any of the rings of Iguodala or Ginobli.

Steve Kerr, Mike D’Antoni, and Greg Popovich can apparently all sit down with their players and make them understand the concept of team and role—whereas apparently this cannot happen with Billy Donovan and Carmelo Anthony in Oklahoma City. Or maybe I’m being unfair and it’s possible Sam Presti doesn’t give Billy Donovan this much latitude as his head coach. I have no idea. They appear to be a cute, content couple though.

So here we sit on the cusp of the playoffs and this Oklahoma City team with a $134 million payroll is praying it can hold on to the No. 4 seed in the West and win one more game than last season’s rookie scale contract laden team.

And here’s the thing, with the exception of a defensive role player in Andre Roberson this team has stayed relatively healthy while every other team in the West has lost significant games from their superstars. Anotherwords, the breaks of the game have gone OKC’s way for the most part.

So should the Thunder have been championship contenders this season?

I would say yes.

Time for another Power Poll and this time I’m going with three teams from the West which is somewhat outlandish, but not really when you really think about it. I’m going from having OKC at No. 4 to maybe somewhere in that No. 9 thru No. 11 range. But of course, I only pick eight teams. I no longer can hang on to the pipedream this Thunder team is a serious contender, although Golden State does have some injury issues.

1 Houston Rockets
2 Golden State Warriors
3 LeBron
4 Toronto Raptors
5 Portland Trail Blazers
6 Boston Celtics
7 Philadelphia 76’ers
8 Indiana Pacers

A great regular season for the Houston Rockets. They turned out to be everything the Thunder hoped to be back in 2012 when the Thunder made the Finals with James Harden.

Harden is easily my regular season MVP.

Daryl Morey is easily my NBA Executive of the Year.

Clint Capella is my Most Improved Player of the Year, but I have Steven Adams on my list in the top four.

Mike D’Antoni is third on my NBA Coach of the Year ballot with me going 1 Terry Stotts of Portland and 2 Dwayne Casey of the Toronto Raptors.

Meanwhile, the Thunder with a team that at the beginning of the season was thought to be a legit challenger in the West is currently 17 games behind the Houston Rockets as I write.

Now, one of two things can or should perhaps be written at this point, but there’s still some basketball to be played so I’ll just keep my thoughts to myself for the time being.

June 29, 2017 after the Chris Paul trade:

This is just really sad when an athlete can’t come to terms with the final segment of their career. I loved Kobe, but he basically wrecked the LA Lakers franchise to the point where just next year they should return to relevance once again. Carmelo Anthony isn’t Kobe Bryant. No where close.

Carmelo not only hasn’t won a ring at the NBA level, he’s never been to an NBA Finals. His teams in New York where massive underachievers and never did anything.

I assumed when he came to Oklahoma City he was intent on the opportunity of being on a relevant team. This OKC team could be relevant if aligned properly.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a player becoming the Sixth Man at the latter stages of his career. In fact, it’s smart from both the individual and team standpoint as far as minutes played and extending careers in pursuit of team goals.

Iguodala is a better all around player than Carmelo Anthony yet he’s come off the bench at this point in his career and won two rings with the Warriors.

This is ridiculous. Carmelo Anthony needs to go tell Billy Donovan he’ll come off the bench to help the team if that’s what it takes to get this Thunder team to the next level. Does Carmelo Anthony think he’s currently a better player than Houston’s Eric Gordon? I don’t think so.

In 2013, Ray Allen, who already had a ring from his days with the Celtics, came off the bench to help LeBron win his second ring at the time. Allen averaged 25 minutes a game that season and of course hit the iconic shot which is etched in all of those who are passionate NBA fans.

This is not complex.

Yo, Carmelo quit being selfish….come off the bench.

Yeah, I do and I’ve thought this from very early on in this season seeing Carmelo on a nightly basis. I think he’s kind of selfish in his steadfast view of himself as a player who at this point in his career is a star caliber player even though he’s obviously not a top tier player anymore.

Now–this doesn’t mean he couldn’t be a valuable piece for the Thunder becoming the Sixth Man and playing alongside Raymond Felton coming off the bench. Obviously—Sam Presti is grotesquely overpaying Carmelo Anthony, but you have to take a pragmatic overview of where he’s at currently in his career.

This is stupid. Jerami Grant is young and on the rise and can easily handle 28-30 minutes a game whereas Carmelo cannot. Their minutes should be inverted and if Carmelo were truly a team guy he’d be the one making the suggestion to Billy Donovan.

I’d say 20-22 minutes a game for Carmelo would be about right. If he’s making shots on a particular night—then you feed him some more minutes on those nights. This is part of coaching. You at times have to make tough decisions. I’m sorry, but Billy Donovan is going to have to grow as an NBA coach if the Thunder are to be taken seriously without Kevin Durant.

I love the fact he views himself as a player’s coach who has his players’ back, but there’s a line between that and delusion.

Truth be known, I’d even start Patterson in front of Carmelo if Donovan wants Jerami Grant staying paired with Raymond Felton.

These are the type of decisions championship coaches and GMs have to be able to navigate in the NBA if you want to win a championship.

There are precedents for this with Hall of Fame players. Bill Walton embraced this role in the latter years of his career with the Boston Celtics. Bill Walton won one of the greatest NBA championships in history with the ’76-’77 Portland team. Then his career became injury laden until the Celtics took a chance on him in 1985. You what happened–Bill Walton eagerly accepted the role of coming off the bench and played 19.1 minutes a game on that loaded championship Celtic team. That Celtic team became regarded as one of the best teams of all-time and Bill Walton with a new role became a valuable piece coming off the bench.

Same thing happened with Ray Allen when he joined LeBron in Miami assuming a reduced role coming off the bench.

So… what would LeBron say to Carmelo right now in Cleveland? My guess is — he’d say in private, “Carmelo—come off the bench.” What would Carmelo’s buddy in Houston–Chris Paul say to Carmelo Anthony? I’m guessing he’d say, “Dude—you need to come off the bench and contribute.”

I guess what I’m saying here is that Sam Presti, Billy Donovan, and Russell Westbrook need to decide if they’re content being a sixth place level type of team or if they aspire to be taken seriously at this point with Kevin Durant no longer here.