Month: December 2018

This was great. Tell me how much that Thunder brand just went upwards when Westbrook does something like this on national television. I’m guessing Nikki Gallo fainted then passed out watching this from behind stage.

Like the super sleuth Columbo…I stalk the shadows of Wild Thing. Trying to calibrate this new metric I’ve created which is so far fucking superior to anything Nick Gallo or Royce Young ever talk about it’s literally laughable.

Literally laughable.

Jenni Carlson doesn’t even remotely know what I’m trying to communicate. Tramel gets it. He understands my brilliance. He smiles to himself knowingly. He envies me.

It’s my new metric…the Wild Thing Factor or to be brief….the WTF metric.

It’s how I calibrate various factors which to my trained eye tell me if Russell Westbrook will go all werewolf, start growing fur under his Thunder jersey, have his fingernails expand six inches… and start playing basketball like an out of control U10 player at your local YMCA.

Nick Gallo in his wettest dream only wishes he could write something like this just once. He can’t. He’d be fired before the words finished leaving his mouth.

Royce Young knows his millennials couldn’t connect the dots. They struggle with the abstract.

Like tornado forecasters… how do we predict a Wild Thing occurrence? I love the weather. Like Gary England in Boom Town…it fascinates me. I could have very well been one of these guys who chases tornados. I would love doing that for a living. I really would.

The Thunder play the Nets tonight in Brooklyn. Bad team, middle of the week, not much hype for the game, the Thunder are on a roll, everything is going well. Does the Wild thing appear from a dark cloud bank?

I study my charts. I glaze intently into the screen on my Wild Thing Dopler Radar. I recheck and triple check the Wild Thing Jetstream flow. I see no reason for a Wild Thing storm tonight. Not even a 20% chance. I’ve studied Westbrook. If he were smart he’d pick me to be the one who writes the NY Times bestselling nonfiction book on his basketball life. I’m not sure he’s this smart. We’ll see.

It was eerily surprising on Monday night in Detroit as to how easily the lengthy Thunder dispatched of the Pistons. This was supposed to be a test for Clay Bennett’s $145 million dollar basketball team. But there was no test on this night as the Thunder rolled over the Pistons by a count of 110-83.

Six different Thunder players scored in double figures. The Thunder are 6-0 when this happens. The Thunder pounded the Pistons on the boards. There was suffocating defense as well as the Thunder limited the Pistons to 33% from the field and 18% from beyond the arc. If ever there was a game which showed it is a myth Andre Roberson is the only player who can make the Thunder click defensively it was this game. The Thunder were a defensive monster with fangs. They looked every bit like a team which could be something in April other than just another first round exit.

Wild Thing never really materialized. Instead we saw in Russell Westbrook in the second half a point guard who made some basketball sense. A point guard who punished the wispy and annoying Reggie Jackson with his physicality. We saw a Westbrook who was actually exerting effort on the defensive end of the floor like he cared. A point guard on a mission for at least the third straight game after the meltdown against the Nuggets.

This is the Russell Westbrook who Sam Presti can’t trade. This is that player. The question is how does Billy Donovan control Wild Thing when the basketball calendar turns to mid April?

The thing though is that right now Paul George is the best player on the team night in and night out and there’s an argument to be made Steven Adams could be the second best player on the team. This is what a good point guard does….he makes his other options better players.

I have no idea if Russell Westbrook can control his Wild Thing inner demons for prolonged periods of times. We’ve seen these periods of repentance before in WT, but then he reverts and does things which you don’t see in a U10 youth game at the YMCA.

How will we ever know if and when Wild Thing has crossed the bridge?

We won’t.

It’s like being a werewolf. Certain moons turn Russell Westbrook into a point guard for the ages, then other lunar moons turn him into Wild Thing. I have no idea what Maurice Cheeks whispers into Russell’s ear on the Thunder bench. No idea whatsoever. I don’t want to know. Billy Donovan doesn’t want to know. Just roll with it and hope you can mitigate it as best as possible must be the private Thunder mantra. Even Wild Thing sweetheart Nick Gallo prolly isn’t privy to the Wild Thing code.

So here the Thunder sit at 15-7 in the topsy turvy West. What should we think? What are realistic expectations? You want to believe. You really do.

But in the end I can’t.

I’ve seen this shit before.

But on this night in Detroit the Thunder looked like a team which could maybe do a thing or two this season.

I think they did.

Some will say Georgia is clearly one of the best four teams in the nation. They very well might be, but they lost by three touchdowns to an offensively pedestrian LSU team and then choked at a home site arena against Alabama in a game where it was clear from the start Tua Tugavailoa was never healthy. When it mattered, Georgia basically cratered to Alabama with Jalen Hurts closing the game at quarterback.

So tell me why does Georgia deserve special treatment? Does Georgia deserve special treatment just because they had a banner recruiting year attracting five stars?

Yeah, on paper, Georgia is right there with Alabama and Clemson. No doubt. But winning does kind of matter or at least it should.

Both Oklahoma and Ohio State should have been above Georgia in the final ranking. If Ohio State would have been ranked above OU it wouldn’t be a big deal to me. I could live with that. The Buckeyes only lost one game. They won their conference. They pummeled Michigan when they had to win. They beat Penn State on the road in an early season game which I thought was one of the better games of the college football season. If any fanbase should be pissed…it’s Buckeye Nation.

The OU-Alabama matchup will give the nation a chance to see a historic offense with a Heisman finalist trying to derail another Crimson Tide national championship. It’s a compelling matchup.

Kyler Murray versus Tua Tugavailoa.

Is Georgia better than OU on paper on both sides of the football? They probably are better defensively, yet this Georgia team to me isn’t as talented as the Georgia team OU should have beaten last season in the Rose Bowl. It’s not like this Georgia team deserves any special consideration. They played three virtual tomato cans in U Mass, Austin Peay, and Middle Tennessee in non-conference games. In crossover games against the SEC West they went 1-2 with the only win over a bad Auburn team which might be firing Gus Malzahn as its head coach later this month.

I mean, we all know the Golden State Warriors have the best roster in basketball. But they still have to win twelve playoff games to reach the NBA Finals. They have to win games. Even the Golden State Warriors have to win games.

Throw out the loss to Alabama. Circle Georgia’s three touchdown loss to LSU and you should have your answer as to why the committee didn’t get it wrong by omitting Georgia from the college football playoff.

In hindsight, if Georgia fans want to vent, they should be venting at their head coach Kirby Smart for the dumbest coaching decision on a punt since Bob Stoops repunted to Tyreke Hill.

So none of this is clearly perfect, especially if you’re a Ohio State fan this morning, but at least the committee did the right thing in not giving Georgia a bye to the national semis and instead have given college football fans the Kyler Murray vs. Alabama matchup.

For Georgia, it should be simple. You should be like the rest of the college football world. If you beat Alabama then you either advance or win a big trophy in the final game of the season.

The very easy part of OKC’s schedule concluded on Friday night with the Thunder coasting to an easy 124-109 win over the rebuilding Atlanta Hawks. It was a game which was supposed to be a big deal in that it marked the return of Trae Young.

No big deal was evident though as Trae Young to me looks like a player who a generation ago before ‘one and dones’ should still be in college learning how to play basketball and developing his body. It is what it is. This is the basketball universe we live in.

This was one of those outlier shooting games for the Thunder in that they went 19-41 shooting threes against an atrocious Atlanta team which pretty much has a nerve charging its fans full ticket price to watch this piece of junk team. I’d put this Atlanta team right there with Phoenix and Cleveland as the worst the NBA has to offer in 2018.

Frilly Alex Abrines went 7-11 shooting threes with easy open looks whenever he wanted them and I guess was the player of the game if you really want to designate such a thing in a game which was boring from start to finish from a competitive standpoint.

To me, the most compelling moment of the night was when Russell Westbrook got into a shouting match with Hall of Famer Vince Carter near the Hawk bench and double techs were issued by the zebras.

Patrick Patterson finally made a shot after going 0-19 shooting threes in a string of recent games.

On a positive note, Hamidou Diallo was cleared to play but was a healthy DNP-Coach’s decision. On a sad note, Andre Roberson has had a six week setback on his return. On an even sadder note, Bush 41 passed away which leaves me even sadder because it reminds me how far we’ve fallen culturally in the past two years as a nation.

Russell Westbrook went 2-4 shooting threes which means in the last two games he’s a collective 4-9 shooting threes after going into a 1-12 full Wild Thing mode in the home loss to the Nuggets. I have no idea whatsoever what this means as far as calibrating my Wild Thing metric meter on the always mercurial Russell Westbrook. I have no idea how this happens two games in a row and then all the sudden there will be a Wild Thing relapse come back out of the blue. Don’t ask me why, but I think a Wild Thing spotting could be in the offing on Monday night in Detroit. But, hey, 4-9 from Russell shooting threes in two games is what you’ll take every time. Of course the problem is you don’t play teams like Cleveland and Atlanta in the Western Conference Playoffs.

The Thunder improve to 14-7 and now start the part of their schedule where they will start playing better basketball teams on a night to night basis.

Steph Curry is slated to return for the Warriors in the next couple of days and one would think the Warriors will get back on track as the best team in the league. I found it kind of refreshing to see the league without Durant and Curry paired together as the league is basically one with parity when those two aren’t paired with Klay Thompson.

The Thunder play at the Detroit Pistons on Monday night in a game which should be more to fun watch than what we’ve been seeing with the games against Phoenix, Cleveland, and Atlanta of late.

If you ever get a chance you might want to read the book ’41’ which is 43’s account of his father’s life. In a time when you might need a positive historical read, it fills the bill as a son explains his love for his father.

My favorite 41 memory. I loved his sense of humor. A president has to have a sense of humor and be able to laugh at himself.