Month: September 2020

I have to blog about this basketball game which was played last night. It was awesome as the defending NBA champion Toronto Raptors staved off elimination in Game 6 to push their Eastern Conference semi-finals with Boston to a Game 7.

Just awesome. I would even go as far to say it was the most I’ve enjoyed an NBA game since the reboot in the Bubble.

The game was so good for me as an NBA fan I lost sight of the fact they were playing in a bubble. I left the Islanders-Lightning hockey game for awhile. The way these two teams went after each other was like normal NBA playoff basketball.

I tell you what…Toronto may have lost Kawhi Leonard in free agency, but the guys who stayed have some genuine heart. They play hard and for the most part they played smart for coach Nick Nurse.

Nick Nurse gets it. The game has changed. You have to go small and at times stay small with five guys who can switch defensively and who can all shoot the basketball.

Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka left the game—and stayed out of the game. Why couldn’t Scott Brooks do that with Perk? Why couldn’t Billy Donovan do that with Steven? Why is this so difficult for Thunder coaches to come to grips with at crunch time.

In this moden game…there are times your big guy stays on the bench and watches.

If I had to pick the best coach in the league right now I’d pick Nick Nurse.

The Toronto Raptors have my respect. They bleed of TSN on my Toughness, Smarts, Nasty metric which I created to offset the frilly white millenials on the internet who have never played or coached sports.

You can have every metric in the world at your disposal, but if your ball club doesn’t play with Toughness, with Smarts, and with some Nasty…they aren’t going to win enough games to be champions.

I love their ball club. I’m not saying they’re going to win the whole thing, but I love the way they play. The way they’re put together and the manner in which Nick Nurse coaches them up.

I’m a big fan of Marcus Smart, so I was kind of torn coming down the stretch as to how this game should go in my heart.

Russell Westbrook should watch film of the Raptors. This is how the Rockets should play without Clint Capela. You can’t have one guy taking dumbass shots. You can’t have one guy not valuing possession of the ball and not making quick decisive switches on defense. It has to be five guys in unison playing small, but having enough physciality to rebound the ball.

Great ball game. I can’t wait for Game 7.

The winner gets Miami in the Eastern Confernce Finals. The Heat won’t be easy. I think we have two great conference fjnals on the horizon inside the Bubble.

Here’s Nick Nurse from last year after Game 6 versus the Mliwaukee Bucks. I refuse to post pressers with coaches wearing masks. It should be set up in the press room where the coach doesn’t need to wear a mask. Adam Silver needs to figure this out before the next round.

What is Nick Nurse talking about after this Game 6? He’s talking about Kawhi’s toughness in rebounding the ball. Toughness…he’s noting his team’s best player’s toughness to guys like Kyle Lowery, Siakam, Van Fleet, Norman Powell, AG, etc.

They obviously listened to the points their coach was making.

Mike Boynton is a tough-ass old school coach in a young body. Just sayin’. Maybe the next Thunder coach doesn’t have to be a friend of Sam Presti to be hired.

A part of me will always love Russell no matter what. Doesn’t matter if he’s leading the entire NBA in post season turnovers or lowest made three point percentage. There will always be a part of me that pulls for him.

He’s like this combination of Rickey Vaughn and Tin Cup. There’s just something there I can’t not love even if it is self-destructive.

His younger brother Ray signed in here on my little blog at one time. What a sweet kid. I feel like I’m one of the Westbrooks.

I used to play this for Russell and Ray back in the day.

What could it hurt with the Rockets down 1-2 and LeBron hitting the best groove we’ve seen from him in a while.

Russ… go ahead and hit the three wood over the water. Fuck the layup with the seven iron. Let her rip.

Okay. What should Sam Presti be looking for in his next head coach with a rebuild on the immediate horizon?

I’d be looking for a young hungry coach with proven basketball smarts and the abilty to take on whatever obstacles come his way. The fact Mike Boynton is black doesn’t sway me. The fact is I’ve observed Mike Boynton from the lense of an OU and Thunder fan and been immensely impressed on how he handles himself in turbulent waters.

How he handles people. His human skill set is impressive.

He was a point guard as a player. He’s tough and old school. When he speaks to a player he expects the player to listen. Given the Thunder are going to be rebuilding with a core of Shai, Dort, and Baze…I could easily visualize Mike Boynton and these guys melding seamlessly from Day 1.

The Second Rule of Coaching is you coach through your own unique human personality. I can tell you this as someone who played sports…I would have gone through fire for Mike Boynton. He’s fair. He’s a player’s coach, but you’re not not going to behave like a knucklehead in his program.

The Thunder to date have not have had a black head coach. I love Maurice Cheeks, but like Joe Biden he has a problem…he’s too old for this gig at this juncture.

Nick has never been a head coach. What if you hired Mike Boynton as head coach and brought Nick on staff as an assistant?

Recently the NCAA hammered O State over the Lamont Evans thing. I thought the sanctions were way overboard given the overall landscape of college basketball at the mens level.

Coach Boynton signed two of the best players in the country in Cade Cunningham and Rondel Walker. Neither backed out of their committment to Mike Boynton. They’re both still coming to Stillwater even though the team will not be allowed to play in the NCAA Tournament.

They didn’t waiver. Cade Cunningham was the No. 1 player in this year’s high school class in the country. He had options, but he didn’t waiver. I find this impressive.

Sam Presti said in his virtual presser he’s in no hurry to hire the next coach. But if I were Sam Presti I’d check with the Mike Boynton camp and see if he’s interested in coaching a Thunder core of Shai, Dort, and Baze sometime in the near future.

I love the Mike Boynton creed..’Work wins.’

I’d interview Mike Boynton and be prepared for him to knock it out of the proverbial ball park.

Work wins when coupled with smarts and talent.

This can’t be a surprise to anyone after Chris Paul basically gave a farewell speech to Oklahoma City the other day. One would assume Danillo Gallinari will be gone as well as the rebuild in earnest in Oklahoma City will begin.

Donovan seems like a nice person and he and his agent are going to land him somewhere where winning next season won’t be as difficult as it will be in Oklahoma City.

Who’s to say if at the college level North Carolina, Duke, and Kansas could possibly be in play if one of those prestigous jobs open. Donovan might consider one of those plums, no?

Billy has a son who works for the Spurs…who’s to say it wouldn’t be an immense honor to follow Pop in San Antonio if that job was to open? There’s an unbelievable piano bar on the River Walk. Best I’ve ever been to.

Billy Donovan will have a nice job next season and I hope he does something special for Chris Paul as a gesture of thanks for the new job. Maybe they go somewhere together like Al Pacino and Jamie Fox in On Any Given Sunday. How cool would that be?

Without Kevin Durant, Billy Donovan never won a playoff series again during his tenure with the Thunder. From the point the Thunder were up 3-1 verus the Warriors the Thunder went a combined 7-18 in post season games played against the Rockets, the Jazz, the Trailblazers, and the Rockets again.

What I’m saying is that none of those four teams went on to make the NBA Finals. These were not four NBA squads of the ages like the 2016 Warriors.

Like I wrote last week … as someone who watches SEC basketball because of Bruce Pearl at Auburn–I’d have Billy D behind both Calipari and Coach Pearl in the SEC currently.

What Donovan did by backing out in Orlando in 2008 was smart from a career resume point of view. He would have failed then and there like so many other college coaches have done at the NBA level. John Calipari and Lon Kruger come to mind immediately.

I would look for Billy Donovan to land a pretty nice job fairly soon.

As far as the Thunder…I love Nick Collison. He’s the type of ex-player who usually becomes an excellent coach. You could put Nick with the core of SGA, Dort, Bazely, and all those draft picks and I think the Oklahoma City Thunder fanbase would be patient with the rebuild.

I’ve always liked Dave Joerger as a coach … but he might be too abrasive for Sam Presti. If you were going to hire a young black coach…. I love Mike Boynton at Oklahoma State. I love his coaching personality. I know for a fact he can interview like a stud hoss and comes across like a Chris Paul-Colin Powell combo.

Sam Presti give Mike Boynton a call and see if he’s interested in an interview. Why not?

I love the ending. It’s life is what it is. It’s fighting for those inches which separate living and dying. It’s competing. Al Pacino who’s about to be fired in Miami holds a presser, retires, then announces he’s just taken the head coaching job in Albequerque and just signed Willie B. as his quarterback in New Mexico.

It was fun having a Labor Day music-fest. I didn’t watch a minute of the Navy-BYU college football game. Back to the NBA grind.

Still going with the music-fest. I got sidetracked a bit by the Clippers-Nuggets Game 3 which was quite a game.

Love this song from the Honky Chateau album. Probably my favorite Elton John song.

Since I’m not ready for college football…I think I’ll do a musicfest today and up until midnight to celebrate the coming of autumn.

This song…whoa. I mean…whoa. To be able to play lead guitar at an elite world class level is my dream in the next life.

I didn’t really plan on putting this on my blog. But I played the song down below and it evoked some old feelings in me.

Now that I’ve written a country crossover song myself…’I Saw The Mullet King’–I know what goes into writing a song. It becomes part of you like your heart and lungs.

This is my favorite country crossover song of all-time. I saw this incredible video and decided this has to be front and center on my blog. The Lakers and Rockets can wait. We know how that will go..oh, Russell why won’t you listen to me. Good lord.

Hope you take the time to watch and listen.

End of summer. Labor Day week-end. Where did the summer go? Really didn’t seem like a summer with the pandemic, the economic collapse, the police murdering all these people….. but still–you’d like to end summer with a nice week-end, some great food, and some relaxing music.

Hope you have a fun Labor Day week-end. Probably the first time in my life it’s Labor Day and I have literally not given one single thought to the college football season except for the Mullet King running for the U.S. Senate at some point.

Be safe and have some fun.

Marshall Tucker Band…Running Like The Wind. I saw these guys play this song back around 1980 or so in Oklahoma City with a concert they did with Firefall. Epic. Just epic. Love this song. Google the lyrics. Great song. I always play this at the end of summer.