Author: Mike

I have quite a few nice things to write about the Oklahoma City Thunder’s solid win over the Orlando Magic on Tuesday night in what used to be called the Chesapeake Energy Arena.

I’ll get to the Thunder and Chesapeake Energy itself maybe tomorrow, but given the shameful performances by Lindsey Graham of late this has to be on my blog right now….as in now.

Yes, Lindsey Graham is the biggest phony and the biggest pussy to perhaps ever have a seat in the history of the United States Senate. With all due deference to Little Marco Rubio, Lyin’ Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul—this isn’t even close.

Lindsey Graham—the long-term best bud of John McCain wins this award hands down. Lindsey Graham one of the original Three Amigos with McCain and Joe Lieberman in and of himself stands alone as the winner.

It must with Lindsey Graham be a masculinity thing. As in—such he possesses none—that he likes to attach himself to stronger men in the headlines like John McCain, Putin, Sean Hannity, and Donald Trump.

Lindsey Graham– the make believe Russia hawk national security phony hawk wins this award hands down. We now clearly know he isn’t this generation’s Howard Baker who went and told Richard Nixon he had to resign. We now know this with certainty…absolute certainty.

I think Michelle Obama would be okay with this. I could go much lower, as in on my knees like Lindsey Graham does every week with his stronger male evangelical friend Donald Trump every time they get together behind closed doors. But I won’t do that on here. I’m going high. Michelle Obama should be proud of me.

I feel like I’ve grown some today.

If you live in Oklahoma watch at your own risk they don’t talk like this on Fox.

I’m not concerned about OKC’s record because they’re tanking. I have the Thunder slated for something like a 30-52 record with Gallanari for sure being traded as soon as we reach December 15th or so and not quite sure how long it will take to find a taker of Chris Paul’s contract.

I don’t even know what the final score of this game was even though I watched parts of the second half in between play stoppages of the O State-TCU football game. If OU hadn’t been idle…I probably wouldn’t have watched what I did.

The Thunder are tanking. They need at some point point to rid themselves of the three salaries of Chris Paul, Steven Adams, and Andre Roberson which this season add up to just around $70 million for this season alone.

One is too old, one can’t shoot beyond six feet, and one tragically suffered an injury which is hard to come back from for an NBA player. I love all three of these players as guys, but this is a business.

I will actually start going to Thunder games once the resale value of tickets plummets even further for season ticket holders.

If I’m Sam Presti–I would follow the Lawrence Frank-Jerry West model with the Clippers the previous two seasons in honing my team for two seasons down the road.

This is what I want…I want to have three young stars as my core moving forward. All three need to be able to score the ball and be decent from outside the arc. No more big contracts for guys who can’t shoot the ball. SGA is a player. Sam Presti now needs to start using his assets and put two other young core players around SGA.

I then want hungry, tough role players making up the rest of my roster. No stars. I want guys like Pat Beverly and Nick Collison. I want guys with a chip on their shoulder who have something to prove. I want guys that want to prove they belong in this league and can be signed for contracts with some real value for the team.

As I see it the Thunder already have four of these in Diallo, Ferguson, Bazley, and Noel. Possibly—Nadar and Burton, but I would need to see more out of both of them as the talent level on the roster starts to rise again this late spring and into the NBA draft next summer. BTW…in case you didn’t notice Adams and Ferguson didn’t even play versus the Pels.

Centers in the NBA have become like running backs in the NFL. That being, you don’t need to pay a lot of money for a center to win a championship. Find a center who can run, rebound, play off the pick and roll…and be at the least a 68% free throw shooter. I love Steven Adams as a mate, but c’mon…. he’s to the Thunder as to what Todd Gurley is to the Rams…. too damn expensive for what he does. NBA centers are the running backs of the new style of play in the league…Jokic being an extreme exception.

And of course I’d probably part ways with Billy Donovan. You couldn’t find a nicer coach in the league. I don’t want a nice coach. I want a coach who can extract the maximum out of my roster and monetize the investment I’ve made in my team per wins and per high basketball IQ culture once they set foot on the floor.

This is the template I’d want if I were Sam Presti and Clay Bennett moving forward.

So at 2-4 and probably headed for the cellar in the Northwest Division along with the Timberwolves the Thunder are right where we thought they would be.

I’m actually much more upbeat than I was two months ago. Diallo is a high energy role player. Bazley appears to have much more upside than I thought he would have. Noel should have been played much more last season and we already knew that.

And here’s another thing..Jerami Grant is averaging 9 points a game shooting the three ball at 22% for Denver so far in his option year. Who’s to say last season at 38% Jerami Grant had an outlier high season shooting the three. Maybe Presti got lucky and sold higher than we thought he did originally.

This is the second decade of NBA ball in Oklahoma City. The fans and the local writers need to grow up. It’s a business. It’s not all fuzzy warm with butterflies and rainbows at times.

Actually–in hedge parlance…I’m bullish on the Thunder moving forward and my guess is Sam Presti would like what I just wrote.

Thank god PBS was on hand to chronicle the return of world champion Washington Nationals at Dulles Airport. There will be no question of crowd size or some sort of deep state conspiracy by the Nationals to steal this championship from the oil and gas lobby favored Houston Astros.

With the exception of reliever Shawn Doolittle….. I believe most of the Nats are going to visit the most overtly corrupt POTUS in the history of our country regardless of politics.

Like myself and Michelle Obama—the team is going to go high and do their best to ignore the Corrupter in Chief and conduct themselves as role models for our youth throughout the country.

I’m pretty sure the Washington Caps visited the White House after their Stanley Cup championship and in reality this is the way it should be even with Trump in office.

I’m certain GM Mike Rizzo has instructed the players and coaches to smile politely when Trump says something completely off color and inappropriate. I mean…this franchise has to sell season tickets to Republicans as well as Democrats. You can’t just openly insult half of your season ticket holders at the apex moment of the franchise.

Hopefully, Trump can get through this without causing some sort of controversy or uproar.

I had no idea a Romney was the current chair for the rogue RNC. This must be my design by Trump to have the niece of his harshest GOP critic as the head of the RNC following the spineless tenure of Reince Priebus.

I can’t believe I never saw her before extolling the spiritual virtue of Donald Trump on television. She must have missed the parts where he throws a handful of Tic-Tacs in his mouth, grabs the next handful of pussy available, and then brags about it to Billy Bush on a bus.

How is it she and Mike Pence aren’t having an affair is my first thought?

I wonder if she and Sarah Huckabee-Sanders are Facebook buddies?

This is why I can’t watch Fox Television.

I learned something today.

Of course they had to vote yes, unless you don’t believe in our constitution or democracy….. how could they vote otherwise if they have children, grandchildren or a dog.

Not surprisingly not one Republican crossed partisan lines. I was embarrassed Tom Cole of Oklahoma took the floor as he did. For those not aware—Tom Cole used to be a Democrat until gerrymandering changed the Oklahoma congressional districts.

I was wrong in regards to Kendra Horn’s vote. She voted yes on moving the impeachment forward on our most overtly corrupt president in the history of America.

Good for Kendra Horn. I actually called her congressional office and told one of her aides I admired her political courage for voting in this manner. Too bad for democracy James Lankford and Jim Inhoffe don’t have her set of balls to cast their votes in the impending Senate trial of the most overtly corrupt POTUS ever.

I’m going to try and use restraint on my blog as this moves along. I want to be thoughtful, deliberate, and ‘somewhat’ restrained as the trial of our most overtly corrupt POTUS moves to the Senate trial stage.

Hopefully, Trump won’t read his own transcript at his trial in that it in plain print supports the claim he’s guilty of treason, obstruction of justice, and perjury.

Sigh.

Trump seems to forget it was the erased gaps in the tapes which finally led to senators from his own party walking over to Nixon’s office and demanding his resignation. Most don’t know Bush 41 was the chairman of the RNC at that time and wrote the letter stating the need for Nixon’s to resign. Of course there was Howard Baker and others, but in Jon Meacham’s biography of Bush 41 the letter he wrote to Nixon at that time is covered in the book.

I don’t even know who the chairman of the RNC is right now. Is it one of the flunkies from Trump’s Reservoir Dogs-like mini mafia operation? I need to google the current RNC chairman tonight. Is it Liz Cheney? I can’t believe I don’t know who it is. History will not be kind to previous GOP chairman Reince Preibus. He was a chief enabler to this bullshit when our country needed a mature patriot instead of party-line yes man.

Good for Kendra Horn though.

Like Ovechkin’s Caps these Nationals had the stench of being perennial post season underachievers. In most cases, the choking took place against either the Giants, the Cardinals, or the Dodgers.

But like Ovechkin’s championship hockey team of two seasons ago—this baseball team went on a magical almost surreal run to garner the first ever championship for these Nationals of D.C.

How fitting this Game Seven 6-2 road win occurred the night before the U.S. House voted to move forward with impeaching the most overtly corrupt POTUS in the history of our Republic.

I’m almost certain one of the two Dem votes against impeachment came from my own 5th Congressional District where I’m equally certain Kenrda Horn received conditional quid pro quo threats from the Trump faux Christians if she were to vote yes.

But enough of that…this is about the Washington Nationals and their improbable run to the apex of the baseball universe which no one really saw coming except possibly Mike Rizzo and Dave Martinez.

These Nationals were in Al Pacino–On Any Given Sunday Hell at 19-31 in late May. There was chatter of Dave Martinez being fired. But Mike Rizzo held steady with his field manager. Dave Martinez likewise displayed biblical patience with his team which was known for having a penchant for choking when it mattered most. Rizzo stuck with Martinez. Martinez stuck with his players. The fans were skeptical.

Slowly it happened…these Nationals week by week… month by month transformed from a cocoon into a beautiful butterfly of a baseball team which had baseball’s best starting rotation and some clutch hitters who made every fan wonder why it took so long for the Nats to get rid of Bryce Harper.

In the post game series celebration to a man the Nats talked of all 25 rostered players pulling their link on the chain. Next man up. Do your job and the guy next to you will do his. The kind of cliché talk out of vogue at times in contemporary sports.

Dave Martinez talked of ‘Finishing the Fight’ in his old school manner somewhat in the same manner as Craig Berube urged his Blues to beat the Boston Bruins in Game 7 on the road in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Perhaps–I shouldn’t be weaving the Nationals, the Caps, and the St. Louis Blues into the same tapestry of champions, but I can’t help it . All three of these recent teams which won unlikely championships all had a history of choking—yet found a way to utter total redemption to climb atop the peak of their sport’s world in a magical way which inspired our hearts and reminds all of the inherit beauty of what it is to win a championship with a group of guys you love.

This Nationals team won five elimination games in this post season run. They won seven games on the road. They beat higher seeded teams in the Dodgers, the Cardinals, and the Astros. They shouldn’t have gotten past the Milwaukee Brewers in the wild card game, but they found a way. They fought, they grinded, and when it came down to a Game 7 date with Houston on the road they Finished the Fight and put themselves in elite rarified air as far as World Series champions go in the history of baseball.

Along with the ’69 New York Mets this Nationals championship team will rank atop my list of favorite World Series champions.

If Rendon leaves in free agency this summer–he leaves. This is the world of professional sport in the collective bargaining era. But it won’t matter–these Nationals are chokers no more.

Instead they now possess an epic pristine loft atop the mountain of baseball history.

I loved last night!!!! So much emotion…unlike what we get from the NBA developmental team in Oklahoma City with Billy Donovan.

Dave Martinez and Trea Turner went after the umpire on the botched play. There was caring and emotion. It was a big boy ball moment. I thought Martinez was going to be arrested for a second. It was like watching Traber chase that little pitcher in Japan all over the outfield.

And before that Bregman with his little carry the bat to first base bullshit.

No, no, no. Alex Bregman.

Not on Juan’s watch.

Juan Sota gets the last laugh by knocking the ball much than further than Bregman’s home run and then carries the bat with him as well.

If Sota homers tonight in a win…. I hope he carries the bat all the way to Bregman at third base, taps Bregman on the ass with the bat, and then drops it on the third base line on the road and flips the annoying little motherfucker off.

What an amazing World Series this has been. Both teams have been dominant on the road and not one game has been won by the home team.

After being blitzed 19-3 in the their three home losses, the amazing Washington Nationals won an iconic Game 6 by a 7-2 count over Justin Verlander and the Astros.

It has been a historic journey for these Nationals who were 19-31 in May and looked dead in the water.

Manager Dave Martinez didn’t flinch though. He knew he had some key injuries–namely one to shortstop Trea Turner. Once Turner returned to his lineup this team has been the best in baseball this season.

How ironic it is Trea Turner was the player involved in biggest play of this World Series when he was called out for runner interference in the seventh inning of what was then a 3-2 game in favor of the Nats.

It was a horrible call. It could have decided this World Series. But it didn’t. Martinez went berserk and fought for his player. He went to war for his player. He got ejected. But the message was clear: “I’ve got your back. You have mine.”

What happened next will forever go down in baseball history. Anthony Rendon who had struggled in this series went yard to left center for a two run homer. Rendon would bat again in the ninth and add a two run double for the final margin of 7-2. On the night—Rendon had three hits and four RBIs.

Normally, he would clearly be the star of the game. But on this historic night he shared honors with Steven Strasburg who made it to one out in the ninth inning before he gave the ball to Doolittle. Strasburg with the exception of giving up a first inning home to Bregman was as good as any starting pitcher could be in this era of the live ball.

He was dominant with his fastball, changeup, and curve. He made Jose Altuve look mortal. He made Altuve chase pitches out of the strike zone in clutch situations.

Juan Soto and Adam Eaton homered as well. Washington’s two, three, and four spots in the lineup all homered on this historic night.

They had the back of Dave Martinez. He had their back. He has had their backs this entire season and his ball club knows it.

Can you imagine Billy Donovan ever doing what Martinez did last night?

I can’t because Billy Donovan is the Ward Cleaver of the NBA. It’s not in his DNA as a coach. He’s too nice. Sam Presti can only hire nice coaches. OKC is the nicest franchise in all of pro sports. They develop their players who can shoot and then either trade them or don’t sign them. Little did David Stern know Oklahoma City would be the premier AAA level affiliate for the NBA with their pleasant coach and Trump faux Christians in the stands.

Tonight is Game 7. This won’t be about Martinez as much as it will about Max Scherzer and teammates. Scherzer, Ryan Zimmerman, and Howie Kendrick are the vets who know this may be their last chance at a world championship.

It may not be Rendon or Soto tonight. It might be someone at the bottom of the lineup, but all season long in this remarkable journey of redemption a player has stepped up for Martinez.

I won’t be watching the Thunder game live. The Thunder are anecdotal in this season of trading and tanking.

I’ll be glued to the flat screen to see if these Washington Nationals can complete their journey with a fourth win on the road in Houston.

It doesn’t get any better than this as a baseball fan.

I refuse to put Donald Trump’s video on the killing of Baghdadi on my blog. I congratulate the true heroes who are responsible for this feat. I winced when I heard the predictably stupid and immature comments come out of our president’s mouth in his announcement of the death of Baghdadi.

Only our village idiot prez could take an accomplishment such as this and make our country look bad in the process. Only this president, who of course, did everything possible to avoid serving his country get in front of television cameras and talk this level of fourth grade bullshit to the world.

What an absolute embarrassment this man is to our country. The fans at Game 5 of the World Series booed him and then chanted…”Lock Him Up”.

I thought long and hard about putting a Lock Him Up video on my blog, but thought better of it remembering the sagacious words of Barack and Michelle Obama:

‘When they go low, we go high.’

God bless President Obama, God bless Michelle, and God bless America.

Donald Trump and his base don’t know any better. It’s their DNA. They think it would be appropriate to read an excerpt from Hustler magazine during the presser for such an event as this. It’s who they are. Give them a couple of tax breaks and two Supreme Court justices and they could care less. Trump could rape daughter Ivanka and then kill her on television and they’d be okay with this as long as they still have his marginal rates in place.

Again….God bless President Obama

I hate all of this intentional losing and my competitive heart is not into tanking. But here’s the thing, the Thunder have to tank because outside of drafting in the top five spots of the lottery Sam Presti hasn’t been anything special with the exception of drafting Serge Ibaka late in a first round.

The college market writers here in Trumpland would never write this, but it’s true and last night’s box score bears out what I write this morning.

In last night’s game the five leading scorers for the Thunder were all acquired via the trade route. SGA had 22 points, Big Gallo had 17 points, Dennis Schroder scored 22 points, CP3 had fifteen points, and Nerlen on an outlier night notched 15 points.

Let’s look at what Sam Presti drafted players did last night scoring the ball. Steven Adams had 6 points, Diallo had 9 points, Darius Bazley scored 3 points, and for the third time in four games Terrance Ferguson did not score a single point. Andre Roberson was a DNP and as we all know he struggles scoring the ball as well.

I know the college market bloggers are enamored with what Presti did this summer in acquiring fifteen first round draft picks, but the hard core truth is Sam Presti needs a top five pick based on his history in Oklahoma City unless you think Reggie Jackson and Serge Ibaka were franchise game changers.

Alex Abrines was a bust. Mitch McGary was an even bigger bust. Josh Huestis was an experiment to show the rest of the league the Thunder don’t believe in shooting and I ‘think’ Cameron Payne is currently on an NBA roster as I blog this morning.

The Thunder don’t need massive amounts of late first round draft picks. They need four or five players around Shai Gilgeous-Alexander who can actually play basketball and shoot the ball.

Visualize in your own mind how ugly this would be right now without Big Gallo, CP3, and Dennis Schroder. Who amongst a current Sam Presti draftee on the Thunder roster would you wager could score in double figures two games in a row?

There isn’t one.

So for me as much as I hate the concept of losing by design, I don’t really see any other way out of this for the Thunder except to lose and to lose in a big way as this season moves along. I have no idea whatsoever WTF the Minnesota Timberwolves and Phoenix Suns are thinking right now, but at 1-3 the Thunder are winning and winning in the only way possible to pull themselves out of the roster hole they find themselves in currently.

Portland comes to town on Thursday night and the Thunder need to win the right way.

• Correction—Portland is in town tomorrow night. The previous entry I had the location of the game in the wrong city. Tanking does not bring out the best in me. If Presti had kept Jerami Grant I’d be okay and see light at the end of the tunnel with this process. If Jerami Grant isn’t a perfect match to be a third core piece with SGA I’m not sure who would be. I wonder if Jerami’s agent just said his player like Paul George wanted out of Trumpland and away from the white angry evangelicals.