Month: April 2017

If you would have told me before this season started the Thunder would go 47-35, Westbrook would average a triple double, break Oscar’s record, and Westbrook would be a major contender for the MVP… I would have taken it. And here’s the thing, even if OKC loses this first round series to Houston this season can still be deemed a major success, but with a caveat attached. I want to see some other OKC players step up in this series and show me there’s hope this roster has a chance to garner more from a team standpoint next season.

It would be unfair of me to say Victor Oladipo and Steven Adams were disappointments this season, but in all candor, I’m ready to see more from each of these two players in this series and beyond. I want to see Oladipo become Westbrook’s consistent twenty point backcourt scoring partner. I’d like to see the Steven Adams of last year’s San Antonio series. The energy, the toughness, the overall team catalyst. I thought Adams was the guy last season who was OKC’s MVP in the Spurs series… a sighting of that Steven Adams is a must if OKC is going to be seriously competitive in this series. These two guys genuinely need to step up their games as we begin the real season in the NBA.

To a lesser degree, same thing with Andre Roberson. He was wonderful last season against the Spurs cutting to the basket and getting out in transition. OKC needs this Andre Roberson if they want to compete with a Rocket’s team which averages a 115 points a game.

Next on my list is Billy Donovan. He needs to bring his AAA bench management game in this series. This isn’t a great matchup for the Thunder in that they struggle making threes at times and here they are in the first round playing a Houston team which goes on regular orgy-fests making trifectas. It can’t just be Westbrook trying to score with the Rockets. It has to be a team thing. Oladipo, Adams, Roberson, Kanter, Gibson, Abrines, McDermott, Sabonis, Christon, and Grant. But Billy Donovan as a coach can’t have bad spells where his mix and match lineups go dud for a couple of minutes while the Rockets are raining threes.

OKC has to make threes in this series–it’s just simple math. Think back to last season’s series with the Warriors and those last three agonizing losses. Look at those three box scores. Even if you’re a Trump supporter with math and science not being your thing, this math isn’t that complex, this isn’t like grappling with the nuance of climate change—OKC can’t give up a substantial negative differential from three point land every game in this series. Some guys not named Westbrook have to make some threes. Some guys not named Westbrook need to score the ball…period.

Do I think OKC is going to win this series? I would probably say not because the consistency from other players absent Westbrook just hasn’t been present this basketball season against the top three teams in the West. OKC went 0-4 versus the Warriors. They went a combined 2-9 against the Warriors, Spurs, and Rockets and did not win a road game against any of the three teams. It’s just very hard for me to ignore all of this even though I adore the Thunder. But one thing which gives me a sliver of hope is that this is not a great Houston team from a defensive standpoint. These guys are not the Warriors defensively.

So if I were forced to make a pick…I’d say the Rockets in either five or six games.

But as a Thunder fan looking ahead to next season, what I really want to see in this series are some young guys competing and growing up as a team. I don’t want to see Westbrook playing 1 on 5 basketball for 48 minutes.

I’m ready to see the OKC Thunder future starting tomorrow night in Houston.

Writers all over the world are trying to peel the layers back and expose the real Donald Trump. It’s not that complex. He’s not that deep. This is a massive overthink. He never in his wildest dreams thought some of you angry white people would elect him. Who would have thought 82% of white evangicals would vote for Caligula Lite? You Trump people left this person with no other option other than to pretend to be POTUS. This is who he is and who he will be at the end of the day. So my advice would be to drink heavily and somehow get through all of this without going completely fucking crazy while George is running the world.

It’s been a big week for Donald Trump. After getting virtually nothing done in his presidency to date, he made a wise political decision allowing his generals to start dropping bombs at various locales. First, he closed down a Syrian airfield for almost twenty-four hours, then followed that with the Mother of All Bombs somewhere near the Afghanistan – Pakistan border. Now, of course, the whole world watches as Trump and the fat kid from North Korea exchange twitter blows. If ever there was an illustration of how far American culture has dropped since the Cuban Missile Crisis this would be that learning moment.

The other day, Joe Scarborough actually compared Trump to Reagan and FDR. I have to say, after almost passing out from laughter, again the thought struck me how dumb America has become. Donald Trump is not FDR, TR, Lincoln, Reagan or even James Polk. He’s George Constanza. The only difference is Trump’s father left him millions allowing Trump to make enough money to lease a new trophy wife every fifteen years or so and put his name on some buildings. And maybe the hair. George is bald, Trump wears the dead rat on his head. Otherwise– these guys are twins. Identical. From Queens and everything.

I make my case… President George Costanza.

A very nice ending to the Thunder’s regular season. It didn’t even matter the Thunder lost to Denver to close out the season 47-35. The game was anti-climatic.

We are now at Day 83 in Caligula Lite’s presidency. Nothing he talked about with his supporters has come to fruition so far except for Mitch McConnell nuking Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, while Generals Mattis and McMaster remind us gently they’re running this country, and the guy heading the Dept of Twitter is a bit of con artist and won’t be realigning Nato and creating his own New World Order.

Nothing Trump talked about with his aluminum eared-plated Trekkies has come to pass—and to that we can all say…Thank God except for maybe the infrastructure bill. Some infrastructure would be nice.

No wall. No Mexicans paying for it. No draconian trade treaties. No repeal of Obamacare. No tax reform overhaul favoring the rich. No massive deregulations except for Scott Pruitt ignoring climate change as the head of EPA (that’s pretty big actually). No new world order alliance with Putin. No infrastructure program like that of FDR’s WPA. No job explosion given only 98,000 jobs were created in March. No Muslim ban. And, hopefully no ground troops in Syria.

But I think the message is kind of clear. This Trumpster we now see is nothing like the deplorable rogue we saw leading chants of ‘Build the Wall’ and ‘Lock Her Up.’ This is not the same dude who brought Michael Flynn, Steven Bannon, and Kellyanne Conway to the White House.

Whoever this Trump is in relation to the rogue huckster we had been watching is for the time being gone. Which is a good thing if only this can sustain itself and Caligula Jr. doesn’t revert do his fourth grade level tweeting and Dennis the Menace antics.

McConnell is the domestic policy president, while Gen. Mattis is the foreign policy prez. Trump is the Entertainment Tonight president and it fits his wheelhouse.

So what is the Trump Doctrine so far for the historical types who dwell on shit like this? How does it differ from Clinton, W, and Obama?

To me…the Trump Doctrine appears to have morphed into a nuanced doing of the exact polar opposite of all those things he said he would do for his aluminum ear-plated Trekkies during the campaign rallies in places where angry white people lashed back at globalization because Trumpster was the anti-globalization cheerleader or liar depending on your semantics.

Some presidents morph into FDR, TR, or Lincoln. But not Donald Trump. He’s morphed into George Costanza—and the thing is given what he looked like with Bannon, Flynn, Manafort, Miller, Conway, and all that Mercer family money–I’m good with the Constanza Doctrine. I’m completely good with it given the alternative.

It took me 83 days to figure out who Donald Trump really is…he’s George Costanza is who he is.

With 6.3 seconds left in regulation, Victor Oladipo hit a jumper to give the Thunder a 100-98 win on the road in the next to last game of the regular season. OKC played this game without Westbrook, Gibson, Roberson, and McDermott as all were on a rest night getting ready for the playoffs.

It was an extremely upbeat night for the Thunder as their young players stepped up and competed hard on road. Billy Donovan has to be extremely pleased in what he saw from several of his young players, not only for what they could possibly do against Houston, but more perhaps looking down the road to next season.

Victor Oladipo and Domas Sabonis both showed flashes of what they will mean to this team as both of their roles expand next season.

Oladipo struggled with eight turnovers, but had a line of 20 points, 9 rebounds, and 6 assists. I’m hopeful now that Westbrook has his place in triple double history, his game becomes more conducive to making Oladipo’s comfort range expand within his game. Together they have to become a tandem, kind of a symbiotic relationship, if this team wants to take their game to a higher level.

Sabonis had some excellent moments as well. His game is there. It just needs time and some work in the weight room wouldn’t hurt. Sabonis had 19 points and 9 rebounds and is clearly going to be a nice stretch four for the Thunder once he matures as a player.

All in all it was an excellent night for the Thunder as they improved their overall record to 47-34 with tonight’s home regular season finale against the Denver Nuggets closing what has been a very solid season in the first in Oklahoma City without Kevin Durant as a member of the team.

I’m glad it’s over. I’m drained, worn, and exhausted. But most of all I’m happy for Russell Westbrook, our city, and Russell’s family. I’m of the thought he should rest these next two games, but I’m not sure if that’s in Bad Little Dude’s DNA. He’s not the resting type.

I’ve pretty much seen every game Russell has played for the Thunder in his career. The journey of Westbrook from his rookie season to today has been tumultuous at times, but as a fan it’s been rewarding to see his evolution as both a player and a person.

He’s clearly this season’s MVP, James Harden is a very respectable runner-up. James Harden has teammates who can shoot every night. Russell Westbrook has teammates who lose their shots from time to time and on those nights Russell Westbrook has to be the whole package. I’m almost surprised he hasn’t devised a play where he can register an assist passing to himself. I’m not kidding here.

Yet, Westbrook has carried this team to 46 wins and the thought as a Thunder fan you can come to the Chesapeake Energy Arena and anything might be possible with Westbrook on the floor on any given night.

MVP means Most Valuable Player. Russell Westbrook is the most valuable player in the NBA this basketball season. The player who never got anything easy in his basketball career. The player who’s high school coach had to do some talking to get him into that Atlanta camp. The player who almost didn’t get a scholarship to UCLA. The player who had to be Kevin Durant’s second fiddle his entire pro career until this season.

This was Russell Westbrook’s basketball season when he turned into Michael Jordan right before our eyes. When Durant was still here, we thought Westbrook was Scottie Pippen, we were wrong. Russell Westbrook is the closest thing to MJ this league currently has and I’m fairly certain Michael would echo what I just wrote.

But here’s the thing, the real Michael Jordan did indeed have his Scottie Pippen. Russell Westbrook needs one Victor Oladipo to take a big gulp of air and become Russell’s Scottie—if that makes any sense.

We’ll see if Victor has it in him as the days play out this post season and beyond.

But for now, I’m just happy. Russell Westbrook gave me this journey to blog about this basketball season when back on July 4th… I wasn’t so sure there would be all that much to write about Thunder basketball wise.

I feel blessed to have watched it unfold.

It was quite something.

In a season which has had some truly glorious moments with Russell Westbrook chasing Oscar Robertson, Friday night in Phoenix was genuinely a train wreck as the Thunder no-showed their way to a disgraceful 120-99 loss to the tanking Phoenix Suns. Keep in mind, this is a Phoenix team which grounded their vets already this season and came into last night on a thirteen game losing streak and an eight game home losing streak.

This is a team basically trying to lose and on this night the Thunder were so bad the Suns couldn’t get the loss despite their fans showing up to root Russell Westbrook on for his 42nd triple double.

It was a disgraceful performance by the Thunder, there’s no other way you can say it. From top to bottom, no one showed up on a night which could have been a showcase for Westbrook, the team, and the league.

Russell Westbrook wasn’t the best player in the league last night, he wasn’t even the best player on the floor. That would have been Trevor Booker who torched the Thunder whenever he wanted to on this night in the desert.

If there was a silver lining on this night it was Westbrook’s eight assists which locked his seasonal triple double making him the second player in history to average a triple double in an entire season.

But let’s not kid ourselves here, this was a putrid performance by the Thunder on every level imaginable. This isn’t the type of showing which in any way would sway an undecided voter to cast their MVP vote for the guy not named James Harden.

Having written all that, Russell Westbrook has truly been incredible this season and I hope he and his teammates show up on Sunday in Denver and give the league the type of performance which makes everyone know how truly incredible Russell Westbrook has been this basketball season.

In closing, there shouldn’t be all that much angst from Thunder fans who’ve watched all seventy-nine games so far this season because this is what the Thunder are currently, that being, a team which on some nights can look like a promising young team being anchored by a generational superstar, but on other nights a team which can look worse than a team which was suppose to lose its fourteenth straight game of the season.

It must truly suck to be a Phoenix fan this season because even when you’re suppose to lose–you can’t.

The Thunder are in Denver on Sunday afternoon.