Month: December 2020

(51) Beth Harmon’s Final Chess Game | The Queen’s Gambit – Full Scene – YouTube

My wife and I were in Denver for a three day week-end to spend some very quality time with our 14 month year old grandson Robert. I feel like I know him now. We looked in each other’s eyes and a silent understanding was reached by both of us. He’s already smarter and more mature than Donald Trump. Plus…he can dunk on his junior Dunkmaster at 14 months. Plus, he runs like Westbrook, but with the smarts of Chris Paul.

In about a week he will be joined by the birth of his little sister Audrey.

Just before the OU-Baylor game….my wife and I serendipitiously watched the first episode of a Netflix film staring Anya-Taylor Joy. named The Queen’s Gambit.

The film gripped both of us in the first episode. Miss Taylor-Joy was simply stunning playing the femme chess player Beth Harmon. Simply. Stunning. It you’re a guy it will grab you by the balls and literally take your breath away.

I already have it on my Oscar watch list for multiple awards.

We binge watched the enire movie late on Saturday and Sunday nights while Robert was sleeping as he morphed a much more detailed/nuanced foreign policy than the Village Idiot ever contemplated.

A glorious week-end for certain as I took a break from the award winning okcthunderground.com. I feel rebooted.

Have a nice week.

I’m not sure if he did or not compared to his rookie season with the LA Clippers.

With both Chris Paul and Dennis Schroder on last year’s team it was hard to gauge if SGA is the point guard Sam Presti can build this team around.

When play resumed in the bubble it seemed to me Shai never really got going with any consistency. To me, it will be interesting to see where his game goes this season given there possibly won’t be much of any bona fide veteran finishers on the team for him to dish the ball to.

Neither Dort, Bazely, or Diallo have been in this role before either. We’ll just have to see what’s left standing of this roster on December 9th.

So he’ll go from last year where there were other primary ball handlers and finishers to this team of virtual depletion. I hope he gets as much help from his teammates as Cade has gotten so far from his team at O State at the Power 5 level of play.

Sam Presti made a point of talking about this in his presser, but where do the assists come from on a consistent basis. I wonder if Rondel Walker could moonlight some games for the Thunder… don’t laugh.

I’m getting ahead of myself until we specifically see what the roster looks like after the next tier of transactions.

But I will say this for the sake of hoops in Oklahoma this season…Cade and Rondel wear the masks and space with great care. We need something to watch hoops wise through the rough winter months ahead.

We need you guys to keep our atttention diverted from Sam Presti’s ‘transition’.

Shai rookie season with LA Clippers highlight mix.

(43) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Highlight Mix! (Vol. 1) – YouTube

Cade Cunningham’s one season of college basketball got its first real test on Tuesday night on the road against the Marquette Warriors. I still call Marquette the Warriors because before political correctness took over our world that’s what they were named in 1977 when Al McGuire’s team came to Oklahoma City and won a regional on their way to winning the NCAA Championship.

Granted…this isn’t Al McGuire’s Marquette program, but the program did make the tournament three years in a row heading into this season under Coach Woj.

This was a nice win for Mike Boynton’s ball club. There’s seven or eight teams in the rugged Big 12 this season who are probably better than Marquette, but this was still a solid win for the very young Cowboys.

15-6-3…those were Cade Cunningham’s very steady numbers in this game. He didn’t shoot the ball all that much…especially from beyond the arc. But what he did do was impact the game with his leadership and court smarts.

Back in 2007– I watched Kevin Durant, Michael Beasley, and Blake Griffin play Big 12 hoops. Now…we’re only three games in so I won’t go ga-ga this early because I want to see Cade play in all of the Big 12 games on the schedule…but I would say with some caution attached Cade has a chance to be better than all three of these guys as an NBA player.

Two of those guys won National Player of the Year honors, but Cade potentially has the whole package to be better than Kevin Durant.

While I’m on here today I want to shout out for the other freshman on Boynton’s club who’s quite a player himself…Rondel Walker from PC West. Rondel was probably the second best player in Oklahoma high school hoops last season and the best player in the Oklahoma City area.

Be sure and watch Rondel when he enters the games. He’s instant impact coming off Mike Boynton’s bench.

Boynton potentially has a nice little ball team on his hands if the COVID doesn’t disrupt the flow of the college season. Next up for O State are Oakland (Michigan), Oral Roberts, and Wichita State before Big 12 play gets going for the Cowboys.

I think once the Cowboys get into Big 12 play the question for them will be is if they have enough interior physicality to hang with Kansas and Baylor on the boards. But here’s the thing…Cade at 6’9″ rebounds like Russell Westbrook.

I plan on watching every O State game this season just like Sam Presti is going to do and call it my Cade Cunningham Journal on my blog.

Cade Cunningham 15 PTS, 6 REB, 3 AST Full Highlights | Oklahoma St vs Marquette 12.1.20 – YouTube

Oklahoma State vs Texas Southern University! [Cade Cunningham is a PROBLEM] – YouTube

O State improved to 2-0 on Saturday night with a home win over Texas Southern. Cade Cunningham had his second straight twenty point game to go along with 4 rebounds and 4 assists.

At 6′ 8″ he’s a rare big who can play the point with a natural ease. He sees the court and is very unselfish with the ball. He very much allows the game to come to him. Plus…his body shape is ready to go maybe with another 10-15 lbs to absorb an NBA season.

O State is at 2-0 Marquette tonight. This will Cade’s first game versus a Power 5 opponent at either home or away. I would think all Thunder fans will be very intuned this college season watching the top prospects in the upcoming 2021 NBA summer draft….esepecially when one is playing an hour up the road in Stillwater.

Sam Presti never uses the word tank. He must figure it is anathema to the Oklahoma culture. He uses the word transition…which I guess is somewhat fair in a sense. Presti hopes when all this losing takes place this season he won’t have to tank much longer and he’ll have a Cade Cunningham type on his basketball team to move the transition to the next level.

Presti said the Thunder will start the season off without any fans in the arena…which is smart.

Presti didn’t say anything about the recent presdiential election and that was smart as well because I’d guess around 65-70% of his season ticketholders voted for the Christian evangelical grifter Donald Trump. But to Presti’s credit he didn’t say anything about Hugo Chavez rigging the election with sweat and hair dye pouring down his face either. You can read between those lines as you choose.

Presti did say he had some interesting veterans on his ‘current’ roster in Al Horford, Justin Jackson, George Hill, and Trevor Ariza, but made it clear he won’t be saying too much about those guys until the day after Dec. 8th.

Presti talked some about the young guys who will be the core moving forward. Those would be Shai, Lu Dort, Darius Bazely, Diallo, the Skinny Serb, and the second round rookie point guard Theo Maledon from France who could be the second coming of Tony Parker if things go really, really, really well.

He said the Skinny Serb will be playing NBA level minutes which is smart as well because this is a season of learning while transitioning for everyone involved with the Thunder. I’d get him every minute possible between the NBA and the G League and feed him six times a day.

So basically the word moving forward is transition, not tanking. Or like Jake Owens says in Journey of Life…sometimes you have to lose some to learn how to be a winner.

I’m gonna be playing a lot of Jake Owens during these 72 games because this is going to be a journey that much is certain regardless of Sam Presti semantics.

(43) Frank Sinatra – My Way (Live At Madison Square Garden, 1974) – YouTube

Thunder training camp starts tomorrow and amid Trump’s Corona Pandemic epic fail this will be a Thunder season like none before.

As I’ve written before on my blog…if Sam Presti was ever going to blow it up in one magnificent swoop…this is the time.

This is the time to lose and align the stars to draft a player like Cade Cunningham. This is the time to go 14-58 in a 72 game shortened season and align a core of Cade, SGA, Lu Dort, D-Baze and perhaps someone else Presti has in mind none of us are thinking of currently.

No one is going to attend the Thunder games in Oklahoma City. No one at this point should have any illusions what this season neeeds to be about.

As my buddy Barry Tramel wrote…”To not tank now would be fiduciary malpractice of the most grotesque nature.”

This is the way you get top elite black talent to a Trump racist market like Oklahoma City with the exception of Paul George and none of us in hindsight know what the the hell he was thinking.

SAM PRESTI HAS TO ACQUIRE ELITE TALENT TO OKLAHOMA CITY WITH LOTTERY PICKS BECAUSE OTHER THAN PAUL GEORGE WHAT OTHER ELITE BLACK FREE AGENT WOULD COME HERE IF THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO. And in essence…Paul George was more of a sign and trade…on a delayed basis albeit.

Team building in Oklahoma City cannot include elite free agents coming here for the most part…even when Durant and Westbrook were at their apex. Even Pau Gasol in his twilight years wouldn’t come here.

This is how Sam Presti has to do it in a place where 70% of the people in this state voted for Donald Trump twice by a plurality which I’m certain is the highest among cities in either the NBA or NFL.

It is what it is. If you can’t handle the truth don’t waste your time reading my blog. Read that mamby pamby millenial nonsense on Daily Thunder if you can’t handle the truth.

You read my blog and you’ll learn the truth and how to beat Vegas consistently on your NBA picks.

Just saying.