Author: Mike

It was a premonition of Thunder fate that yesterday morning I saw a man in Edmond wearing a blue Thunder T shirt with the theme word History etched on the chest. As in the Thunder are history in the current tense.

On Thursday evening, Sam Presti did Russell Westbrook a favor. He didn’t send his star guard to Detroit, Minnesota or some shithole team like the New York Knicks. Nope.

Sam Presti did the right thing. He rewarded loyalty with human decency and sent Russell Westbrook to a contending team with his old co-pilot from the 2012 NBA Finals team.

If there is one person in this league who understands how to play alongside Russell Westbrook in the backcourt it might be James Harden.

Harden in reality was the Thunder point guard in those 2012 Western Conference Playoffs. He was the closer and then his role was reduced in the Finals against the Heat or you could say he just didn’t play as well.

But if anyone can come to terms with taking the ball out of Russell Westbrook’s off the chart high usage hands it’s James Harden.

Sam Presti in exchange got two more first round draft picks and two more draft swaps. And, oh, by the way, got one of the league’s worst contracts back for that of Chris Paul’s. The only thing which makes Paul’s contract not as bad as Westbrook’s or John Wall’s is that there’s one less year of it to pawn off on the next trade Sam Presti makes in what is going to be a glorious tank or mini tank or death march.

Or who knows, maybe Presti rolls with this lineup till the trade deadline and sees if Billy Donovan can do with this Thunder lineup what Doc Rivers did with Clippers last season.

The only problem with that is if Chris Paul and Gallanari get hurt and it diminishes the returns on their upcoming trades.

For those not keeping count, the Thunder now have fifteen first round draft picks to rebuild a team around SGA. He’s the one Presti’s keeping and possibly Steven Adams for one more year until his salary becomes an expiring contract.

I can’t remember how many first round picks Sam Hinkie from Claremore, Oklahoma accumulated during his death march Process in Philly, but I don’t think it ever reached fifteen because Hinkie had a fetish for second round picks.

If nothing else, Sam as in Presti is setting a new standard for first rounders.

Maybe he can get a first rounder and a second rounder from the Knicks for Rumble the Thunder mascot.

But putting all the tanking angles aside… Sam Presti did a really good thing by trading Westbrook to Houston.

He rewarded loyalty with human decency and did the best thing for Russell Westbrook at the age of 31.

How ironic, Presti finally put Russell on a team with a slew of guys who can shoot the ball.

Go figure.

I could see this happening if the Thunder and Miami make a deal at some point.

Tyler Herro was the 13th player taken in the draft and is a scorer…period. He doesn’t have great lateral movement defensively, but he can score the ball. Many scouts touted him as a potential 40-50-90 type of shooter at the next level.

Sam Presti is in rebuild. He’ll need a sixth man once Dennis Schroder is unloaded. Tyler Herro could be interesting in this role for the Thunder.

OKC needs shooters. They need a scorer off the bench much like Harden provided in 2012. Harden couldn’t defend a pylon when he came to OKC. We saw how that turned out. Let’s circle Tyler Herro for the time being as part of the rebuild discussion.

First off…I love Jerry West and on this very blog I’ve been writing for quite some time he would bring the Clippers full circle from being Donald Sterling’s joke franchise to a contender.

He is Mr. NBA. He is the logo of the league. He’s is the most successful executive in the league and right after he snookered Sam Presti back in 2016 in the Hamptons…I looked at my father and said, “Clay Bennett should hire Jerry West.”

And here we sit three years later a franchise on the verge of going into full tank mode because the Thunder were once again tooled by Jerry West.

Now some in this small college market will say Sam Presti won the trade with this truckload of draft choices who could very well turn out to be Cameron Payne, Mitch McGary, Josh Huestis, Cole Aldrich, Alex Abrines, Terrance Ferguson and now this person named Darius Bazley or whatever.

These same people claim Sam Presti is a NBA savant of sorts. Oh, really. Tell me of one village idiot you know who wouldn’t have drafted Kevin Durant after Portland took Greg Oden as the No. 1 pick. Tell me of one person you know who then wouldn’t have taken Durant.

These last two days I’ve sat back and read the local scribes in innocent college market Oklahoma City rationalize how this trade went down and how the fact that in a week the Thunder in reality have dumped their three best players and how Presti won this trade with this slew of picks who could be the next generation of Josh Huestis and Darius Bazley.

And for the most part I’ve bitten my tongue with these people.

In a way this is karma for Oklahoma City and what happened in Seattle. This is a rude introductory course on what it’s really like to be city with a major league sports franchise.

I’m guessing every person in Seattle is smiling right now.

Karma is a bitch. Especially when it happens twice.

Oklahoma City meet Jerry West. Your owner should have hired him.

This is the move I would make if I were Sam Presti. The NY Knicks are one of the worst run sports franchises in all of pro sports. They’ve missed the post season in twelve out of the past fifteen years. Their fans are angry they did nothing of consequence during this free agent derby while Brooklyn landed Durant and Kyrie.

They need something of entertainment relevance attached to their brand. The Thunder are in tank mode after squandering away the golden years of Durant, Westbrook, Harden , and Paul George. The OKC fanbase is in a word …spoiled.

In a weird way the Knicks and the Thunder need each other. And given they both have the distinction of being stupid enough to sign Carmelo Anthony it’s almost somewhat poetic this Westbrook for Barrett deal be made for both parties.

Westbrook is a peacock. He’s not winning anything in Miami, so if you’re not going to win anything then go ahead and play inside the mecca of basketball in Madison Square Garden and be close to your real passion….being a fashion upstart. Why not?

This won’t be like Mark Messier winning a Stanley Cup with the NY Rangers, but it should provide entertainment value for both franchises.

Presti needs to convince his fanbase he knows what he’s doing during this rebuild and if nothing else RJ Barrett teamed with SGA and all these draft picks gives hope the Thunder can once again be relevant in three years.

To me…this makes much more sense than trading Westbrook to Miami where he could dilute the Miami picks the Thunder just acquired from the Clippers.

This is what I would do, but who knows with Sam Presti.

Who really knows?

How sad. I mean…resetting is one thing, a full set tank is another. With the trade of Jerami Grant today for a first round pick from Denver, the Thunder are officially in tank mode for the first time since their first year in Oklahoma City when they went 23-59 with Russell Westbrook as a rookie guard who everyone said could never become an NBA point guard making his entry into the league.

Kind of puts a lump in my throat. Jerami is a player who I hoped would be able to stay with the team. But in the end cutting his salary gets the Thunder to within $2 million dollars of being out of the luxury tax if I read it correctly.

One would assume more moves are coming. Recently signed free agent Alec Burks opted out today and has joined the Warriors instead. Mike Muscala might stay. I have no idea if Nerlens Noel was offered the option of opting out given his recent signing as well.

The Thunder are in tank mode in that they have their own pick in 2020 and Denver’s first round pick as well.

But you would think the exit of Russell Westbrook is next and it is critical for Sam Presti to get something of real worth for Westbrook moving forward. RJ Barrett and Kevin Knox with the NY Knicks would be nice. Russell in New York with Spike Lee likely wouldn’t be dull. Tell me New York would not embrace that celeb partnership.

I thought I was led to believe the Thunder Doctrine of Sustainability did not include tanking, but here the Thunder are despite the repeated mantra that the Thunder would be more like RC Buford’s San Antonio Spurs than twenty-eight other teams in the NBA.

But here the Thunder sit after failing gloriously to chase Durant’s Warriors for three seasons. Maybe it was foolish pride which cause the Doctrine to be ignored by the Thunder leadership. Maybe heavy drinking was involved when they traded Oladipo and Sabonis for the chance to get even with Durant.

But we know this now…the Thunder are dealing with the aftermath and hope to be relevant in three years or four years after purging themselves of Durant envy.

Thou shall not covet Golden State, but even the Warriors are now on the outside looking in at the Staple Center occupants.

Hopefully…this isn’t a full fledged Sam Hinkie Process Tank and is only a Mini-Tank.

But we know now the Thunder are tanking and are not in reset.

The Art of Tanking by Sam Hinkie. I love Rachael. I wish Daily Thunder could trade Little Nick Gallo for Doris Burke and Rachael Nichols.

This trade was fairly simple. Jerry West won it in the sense that the Clippers are now the Vegas favorite to win their first ever title in the history of the sometimes laughable LA Clippers of Donald Sterling past.

However…long term the Oklahoma City Thunder in this trade found their point guard of the future and new face of the franchise who will lead the reset in Oklahoma City moving forward.

I’m totally calm. I’m actually happy Sam Presti pulled the trigger even if means the Thunder miss the playoffs the next two seasons. The Russell Westbrook contract is the second worse in the NBA only behind John Wall’s and it has to be dealt with like our national debt should have been dealt with two decades ago.

Ask yourself this moving forward in regard to Russell Westbrook…he didn’t win a ring with Durant in a decade and he didn’t win a round in two seasons with Paul George…what possible move to you want Presti to make to remedy these facts with that contract choking the Thunder’s future. Maybe he can take Little Nick Gallo with him and it’s a Disney happy ending for all.

I certainly have no malice for Paul George at all. He’s from California and he’s at the point in his career the championship clock is ticking much like it was for Kevin Durant. I will remain a Paul George fan and wish him the best.

And in my heart, I feel the same for Russell Westbrook minus the ridiculous episodes we witnessed in the post game pressers this season with his pal Little Nick Gallo.

I hope Sam Presti gets some assets for Russell beyond just dumping the second worse contract in the NBA and I hope maybe he finds another young core piece for the Thunder moving forward.

For me—the Thunder core moving forward is SGA, Steven Adams, Jerami Grant and Terrance Ferguson. Most think Danilo Galanari is just a temporary asset piece, but I’m actually curious to see how the Big Gallo might fit with these guys given the Thunder’s need for three point shooting.

Then there’s the slew of draft picks and the swap options and the return of first round picks from Philly and Atlanta in the Jerami Grant and Carmelo Anthony trades which come back to the Thunder if they don’t reach the playoffs by certain timelines.

Russell Westbrook will be fine. He has four years remaining on his contract with $171 million still to be paid. This deal just didn’t work, much like the Mike Conley deal in Memphis didn’t work.

In the matter of another July 4th weekend, the face of the Thunder and the NBA changed dramatically as it did in 2016.

The Clippers and the Lakers are the Vegas favorites to win the West and the O’Brien Trophy. The Utah Jazz are the team Doris Burke has circled on her most improved list of teams. The Western Conference pecking order changed in a big way, but we in Oklahoma City already knew what Jerry West was capable of doing behind the scenes.

I’m actually good because while I don’t know if the window will reopen like it did in 2012 for the Oklahoma City Thunder…I do feel there will be quality NBA basketball moving into the next eight or nine years.

As more and more of the story comes out it blows my mind what actually occurred on Friday night.

The Thunder it seems tried to trade both Paul George and Russell Westbrook to the Toronto Raptors in a deal which centered around Paschal Siakam. But in the end it did not happen and we have this deal the Thunder leveraged with the Clippers instead.

Amazing story.

It just goes to show you how star status contracts in the NBA don’t really mean all that much in this age of superstars building their own teams.

And it turns out that the seemingly quiet Kawhi Leonard was the biggest wheeler dealer in the group as he set all this in motion earlier in the week.

But I am glad Kawhi did not end up with the Lakers with that collection of talent pooled together. That would have been terrible for the league.

As far as the Thunder, they had already showed it didn’t matter how much they spent. They were not going to be championship relevant so in essence once Sam Presti unloads the remaining $171 million owed to Russell Westbrook we can see exactly what the Thunder are going to be moving forward.

I’m not crying because even if you kept these two guys together they weren’t going to win anything or do anything of any team consequence down the road.

They were 3-8 in post season together. They had fallen behind the Utah Jazz, the Denver Nuggets, and the Portland Trailblazers in the pecking order of the Northwest Division. Forget about calibrating any path to an NBA title, Sam Presti didn’t have a plan in place to win his own division.

Presti didn’t move beyond Billy Donovan. He used his recent first round pick to evidently do another Josh Huestis stash or something of the like. He added a couple of vets in Muscala and Burk who in no way would have changed the narrative for the Thunder.

So…at some point why not at least get your fiscal house in order and see if there’s a path to putting a team on the floor which can at least be competitive and have a star who can answer a Berry Tramel question.

The Thunder are not a playoff team even with Westbrook still on this roster so it would seem a youth rebuild is in the offing once we know where Russell Westbrook lands. These Thunder not only will not make the playoffs, but they will not be in the NBA’s Christmas Day package of games.

On this past Friday night the the NBA universe changed in Oklahoma City. The reality of a league Howard Schultz sold himself out of came ‘thundering down’ upon the college market of Oklahoma City.

I’m okay with this because the way the Thunder played the past two seasons was literally unwatchable at times and it will be refreshing to see some young players trying to establish themselves in the NBA.

But let’s make this clear, the window in Oklahoma City didn’t close on Friday night and into early Saturday morning. That window closed on July 4th, 2016, but was only completely validated this week-end by Sam Presti himself.

This was two summers ago. Other than Kevin Durant you probably couldn’t have asked for a better replacement player to replace Durant on the Thunder roster.

It didn’t work and in two post seasons the Thunder were 3-8. Paul George had a marvelous second season as he was a final three nominee for the regular season MVP. But still—the Thunder were a quick first round exit against a Portland team they swept in the regular season.

Is it time to blow it up in Oklahoma City and rebuild the team?

Possibly. Or at the least rebuild it from the ground up. But that won’t be easy or painless or quick.

It’s hard to win a championship. Ask the Trailblazers, the Kings, the Pacers, the Timberwolves and the Utah Jazz. Small market championships in the NBA are a rarity.

This hurts for OKC in a huge operational way. Paul George was the first true free agent star to elect to stay in OKC of his own choosing other than Russell Westbrook.

This restokes the narrative that star free agents won’t consider the Thunder a career destination stopping point because of Oklahoma City itself..

One year ago almost to the day Paul George was smoking a cigar at a party in Oklahoma City which was held to dedicate his decision to stay with the Thunder.

But one year later after failing to attract Kevin Durant to come to the Clippers with him– Kawhi persuaded Paul George to be a Clipper with him instead.

And you know what? I don’t blame either one of them.

What’s next for Russell Westbrook I’m not sure. But I do hope he has the opportunity to play in a city which has a chance to be relevant in the pursuit of a championship.

For the second time in three summers Jerry West took advantage of Sam Presti and officially ended the run of playoff basketball in Oklahoma City. It’s stunning is what it is in that the Thunder for the second time in three years lost an MVP caliber forward to a team from California with Jerry West on their payroll.

Evidently–Paul George demanded the trade and I have no problem with him for doing so because he deserves a chance to win something beyond third place in the Northwest Division.

What this means for Russell Westbrook in Oklahoma City I have no idea. I have no idea what another team would give up to acquire that contract. I don’t know if this means a sequence of imminent moves are coming and the Thunder are going into full tank mode or exactly what Sam Presti has in mind in the coming weeks. I mean…what would another team give up to take on Westbrook’s contract?

I would think this puts the Clippers at the top of the West as the preseason pick to win the West and the Thunder now have to decide on what to do with Russell Westbrook’s contract.

As an NBA fan I’m glad it’s not the Lakers with a super team landing Kawhi. Think about what just happened…Jerry West and the Clippers went from the No. 8 seed in the West to the Vegas favorite to win the NBA title next season.

Sam Presti and Clay Bennett have some serious thinking to do in the coming days and how they structure the Oklahoma City Thunder for the future.

This is the answer to a great trivia question asked this morning on ESPN while the mods were discussing the possibility of Kawhi Leonard joining the Lakers.

The question was… Name the last NBA team to miss the playoffs six years in a row and then win the championship the next year?

I knew this one immediately because the 1977 Portland Trailblazers and the 1983 Philadelphia 76’ers are my two favorite NBA champions of all-time.

Dr. Jack Ramsey was the coach. Bill Walton had his dream season before his feet betrayed him. Maurice Lucas was arguably the best power forward in the league and a rookie guard by the name of Lionel Hollins out of Arizona State enjoyed a rookie season for the ages.

These Trailblazers are my favorite NBA team of all-time because of the way they played the game.

In case you didn’t know the LA Lakers have now missed the NBA Playoffs six years in a row. It’s no given whatsoever the Lakers would win the O’Brien Trophy if Kawhi joins them, but they would clearly be the Vegas prohibitive favorite.

So as we await Kawhi Leonard’s decision…keep this piece of NBA history in your mental vault as we see this summer unfold.