Author: Mike

I only moved yesterday to take the diva lab Pauli outside for her walk. Otherwise, I didn’t move except to infuse myself with some food and liquids to keep me going through the epic doubleheader. This may very well have been the best day of NFL football I’ve witnessed in my life. Maybe it has something to do with the voices which came to me at the end of the Thunder-Sixers game. Maybe my time is near and the Big Dipper is being especially nice to me.

For starters, I loved Jimmy Buffet singing the anthem. I have no take on the microphone drop, but I thought he sang the anthem
very nicely.

There were so many huge plays on this day, but the one which will linger for me the most is when Rams coach Sean McVeigh fake punted down 13-0 in the first half on his side of the field. I thought it was the biggest play of the day minus the blown interference call and then the coin toss in overtime of Game 2. The Rams looked ready to be knocked out before halftime, but instead fed off that play and in reality I thought played the best football on both sides of the ball for the remainder of the game. Fitting that the game ended with a game winning 57 yard field goal in overtime to put the Rams in the Super Bowl. As far as the blown call which allowed the Rams to have that last game tying field goal — obviously the refs blew it. It was clearly pass interference. The NFL needs some tweaking to their replay rule as well as their overtime format.

In the nightcap it even got better. It was epic. Brady versus Mahomes on Mahomes’ home field and in the end it will go down as one of the greatest games or at least second halves I’ve been blessed enough to see. Add to the fact…Tony Romo in the booth was incredible in giving the audience insights to play calling and pre-snap sets which you would think should make him the obvious choice to be Andy Reid’s next defensive coordinator. He knew exactly what the Pats were going to do on most of the plays excluding the one fourth down play where Burkhardt got stuffed on fourth and one.

What a game! But the overtime format has to be changed. We ‘needed’ to see Mahomes with a chance to answer in overtime. As much as we treasure Tom Brady as a national icon…I at least wanted to see Mahomes with the ball and Andy Reid I’m to assume going for two if the Chiefs had scored.

Great, great, great games!

So we now have the Rams vs. the Patriots in Atlanta for another New England Super Bowl. This doesn’t grate on me like watching the Warriors repeat year after year simply because the Pats have never stacked their teams. What they’ve done over the years is ride the massive shoulders of the greatest NFL quarterback of all-time to continue the longest dynasty in the collective bargaining era. Plus, Belichik manages his roster year in and year out with more smarts and nuance than anyone else ever has in the history of sport. It is breathtaking to observe. If only our government were run as well as the Patriots. Trump couldn’t even run a USFL team, business, or a government as he has showed, but seeing the Patriots running the government might be interesting. Belichik would be tough on Putin. Brady would be the Golden Child Vice President in await while Gronk would be a Secretary of Defense who’d really kick Isis’s ass. Given what the GOP gave us in 2016–tell me how that wouldn’t be an upgrade.

CBS has the call in Atlanta. Tony Romo will have an encore performance. My wife loves Tony Romo. This will be the first Super Bowl without the Dallas Cowboys she might actually watch. It will be hard for that game to measure up to what we witnessed yesterday. Young Jared Goff who played like a seasoned veteran himself in the second half versus Tom Brady and his Pats.

How can you pick against Tommy Brady?

My mother had never seen me like this before. She never in person had seen what Russell Westbrook does to me at the end of a basketball game. My father, my wife, and my son….yes, but never my mother. I had intentionally shielded her from this part of me.

I came so close to getting thru this game versus the Sixers in Philly to not losing my mind regardless of what Russell Westbrook did on the floor. It was as if that Big Basketball Dipper in the sky was testing me to see if I was ready to go to the next level of Westbrook Zen.

Fifteen seconds. I was within fifteen seconds of zen-like inner peace. It was surreal. I was there. It was like in Jonathon Livingston Seagull when the state of perfection in flight was at my finger tips. It was flight and it was beautiful.

Voices were beckoning me from above.

And then with fifteen seconds left and the Thunder leading the Sixers by three… Russell Livingston Gull for some reason fouled Joel Embiid shooting a three point shot and fouled out of the game as well. I was stunned…wanting to curse as if I were Todd Monken running an O State practice. But then the voice said, “Michael, he fouled out. You might actually have a chance to win with Russell on the bench.”

‘Yes,’ I thought to myself…’with Russell banished to the bench the Thunder might actually win this game’.

Donovan called a timeout after the first two made free throws by Imbiid in what one is to assume was an effort to freeze the mighty big man. But, of course, he made the third as well. Those who follow basketball then assumed Donovan would call his last timeout to move the ball up court and run a play for the last play of the game with the ball in Paul George’s hands.

But no….the college coach from Florida instead opted to allow a play on situation and Dennis Schroder turned the ball over and Jimmy Butler turned the idiotic play which never should have even taken place to be turned into the go ahead basket for Philly with six seconds left.

The college coach then called time out ten seconds late.

I was ashen. My blood was boiling simultaneously livid at both Westbrook and Donovan for blowing the game which the rest of the team had worked so hard to win. Somewhere in all of this… Terrance Ferguson hit a clutch three which could have been the storyline albeit the normal dysfunction of the Thunder at the end of games.

I snapped. I ran out into the soggy backyard and screamed, “Fuck me running!!!”

Harold next door asked from behind the fence, “Mike, are you okay?”

I answered, ” Yeah, I’ll be okay. We’re a first round exit again this year, but I’ll be okay. It’s just a game. Jalen Hurts is coming at least.”

Then the Big Dipper whispered softly in my ear, “He’ll make it.”

So I go back in and pretend my mother didn’t hear me and sit in my chair waiting to see if the Thunder can run a play and make a shot.

Just before the ball was inbounded–the voice again whispered in my ear, “He’ll make it.”

Paul George caught the ball, squared himself from just beyond the top of the key, elevated…and swish. He made it.

The voice said, “You must believe, Michael. You must believe. There are things which we cannot control.”

I might never be the same again. My inner conflicts with Westbrook will seem petty compared to what I just experienced. This was a spiritual experience of sorts. I wonder if others in Oklahoma were beckoned by the voice or if it was just me. It’s a good thing not many people read this blog or they might think I’ve lost my mind. But I had to write this down somewhere just in case I don’t wake up tomorrow morning.

The Thunder at the NY Knicks on Martin Luther King Day.

This might be relevant for the MLK game since Muddiay plays for the NY Knicks.

I’m not one of these guys who has to see a win every night. I look more for incremental improvement in a team as more of a sign of good coaching than immediate wins. I look for a well coached team to save its best ball for the goal achieving part of the season.

But one thing I do not tolerate from any sports team I watch play is lazy and stupid play on a repeated basis. Do not insult my intelligence.

Don’t float the usual company line about this and that. I don’t want to read Royce Young or hear Little Nick Gallo justify this bullshit any longer. Step up or I will not take you or the Thunder seriously. And trust me…I want to take the Thunder seriously because I am a very passionate guy about basketball and how it’s played.

Step up and play hard with some basketball intelligence attached. Don’t continue to make Charles Barkley look smart by describing the Thunder as ‘a pretty woman who’s too dumb.’

Quite frankly, I view the Thunder’s credibility on the line starting with today’s special matinee performance in Philadelphia. The Thunder stink right now on multiple levels. Since the win in Portland they have played like a collective group of punks. Any parent who saw their child play sports with this much indifference would strongly suggest to the child that perhaps competitive sports wasn’t meant to be for them. It’s one thing to spend a $146 million plus tax and still not be in Golden State’s class, it’s another thing to not be able to beat the Wizards, the Hawks, or the Lakers without LeBron and look bad in the process.

To look like a bunch of dimwits who should have Nick Young as their team captain.

Putting Charles Barkley aside, this team loafs and the head coach doesn’t seem to be fazed by it.

In Thursday night’s game Luke Walton undressed his team on the national TNT telecast for lack of effort against the Thunder as they played without LeBron. His team responded and came back from a 37-20 deficit to eventually win on the road against the overrated Thunder. Maybe the next time these two meets Luke Walton could challenge the Thunder as well and give Sam Presti a bit of pro bono help.

The problem here is simple, the Thunder don’t play hard or with any basketball moxie for significant portions of games. They loaf. They make stupid mistakes. The same ones. They appear to be either stupid as a team or indifferent to competition. Somebody told them they were special, but they’re not special. They’ll not only never be the Warriors—stop with the notion this group of guys could ever be thought of in that realm.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned Paul George in relation to MVP consideration any longer. You know why? Teams on which Nick Young could be captain don’t produce MVPs.

When someone calls you as a team both lazy and stupid and you don’t respond then there’s one conclusion which might be drawn. You could ACTUALLY be stupid and lazy and misguided in your arrogance as to how good you are as a basketball team. This where the Little Nick Gallo and Royce Young enabling comes in and the lack of a real market media minus Tramel comes into play. This is why you need at least one real sports journalist asking the tough questions when the others won’t. Erik Horne needs to step up as well. He should know better.

The Thunder are on the cusp of becoming a joke. They’re on the cusp of validating every thing Kevin Durant insinuated about them even before he became Cupcake.

Think back to those Durant Thunder years. It was very rare when the Thunder didn’t play hard. They might have had a stinker here and there, but it was very rare when you didn’t see effort on back to back games.

So when the Thunder take the court today in Philly for me their credibility is on the line. This has nothing to do with winning the game against a Philly team which one would think should be at the least be a Vegas seven point home favorite today. It has more to do with simply playing with some heart and some brains.

Sure their bench is having issues right now. Abrines for whatever reason is done and Noels had the nasty fall. But that’s when Billy Donovan as a coach has to be smart enough to: (A) shorten his rotations, and (B) be something special as a coach instead of appearing to be a Sam Presti friendship hire.

Enough already. Either step up or be quiet with this noise you’re still an elite franchise.

You were with Kevin Durant. You haven’t been close to elite without him.

Truth hurts—it always does.

And therein lies a very unpleasant truth to date about the Oklahoma City Thunder as a basketball team regardless of how many nice things MAPS has accomplished for Oklahoma City.

The Thunder versus Philly this afternoon. I’m making a point of watching the game with my mother so I won’t set some sort of North American record for dropping F bombs during a forty eight minute basketball game. I would never do that in front of my mother.

Nick Collison, phone home, buddy. Your city needs you.

The people who wrote House of Cards are rolling their eyes. How could any of this be non-fiction? It’s somewhere between Reservoir Dogs and The Godfather II. What will really upset Trump is the knowledge he won’t be able to personally monetize the ratings from Cohen’s televised testimony.

This was before the game last night. Pretty cool to have your dad working with you before his NBA game. It made me think of my son the first time he was on skates with a hockey stick. My son is Russell’s age. I can’t stay mad at Russell. I do think however, Clay Bennett and his group should get rid of the luxury tax and put that money into a MAPS 6 dolphin park so as Noah can go see the dolphins after practicing with his dad. I don’t know how active dolphins are in January in Oklahoma, but I would have to guess they’d show more energy than the Thunder basketball team has of late. Who would have known the season would end in Portland with the best win since Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals against the Warriors.

I need to call David Holt next Monday with my thoughts on the dolphin park. To see if Trump’s shutdown would make this impossible.

One of the best books I ever read was ‘Fathers, Sons, and Hockey.’ If I can find it I’m going to give it to Russell Westbrook. I love giving books away. Maybe we can talk a bit about Michelle Obama’s book.

Again, I think Billy Donovan is about as swell of a human being as you could possibly find. I don’t write this as an internet smart ass. Because we live in a time when a premium should be put on people who conduct themselves like Billy Donovan.

But…….

How do I say this and not come across as a bad person?

There is a classic Barry Tramel line of all-time which I’m going to invoke at this point. It was written when John Blake’s tenure at OU was coming to a merciful end.

It goes like this…”Just because you worked at a Taco Bell doesn’t necessarily mean you should manage a Taco Bell.”

I think you get my point without me wasting an entire page.

I’m not on Clay Bennett’s ownership board and if I were I’d propose this Nick Collison idea or start working on the MAPS 6 dolphin park. Because what you’re doing right now is nothing more than pissing into the Oklahoma wind.

This loss against the Lakers at home on TNT doesn’t even deserve a recap.

How sad is it when on a Thursday on which the docile Thunder host the Lakers I really don’t give a shit. It’s not an interesting team. They only sporadically show up to play and give an honest effort. The coach says nothing. The GM talks some nonsense about communal sustainability after dropping $146 million plus luxury tax.

I’d almost rather have a MAPS 6 dolphin park.

But I love basketball when it’s played with passion. But then again I guess in the Era of Trump…$146 million plus tax doesn’t spend like it used to on the open market.

Oh… I could fake it like the Little Nick Gallos, the Erik Hornes, and the Royce Youngs of the world. But that’s not me. I’m a passion guy. I’m Pacino in that locker room with his team. It has to mean something for me other than…. corporate sustainability. This isn’t a hedge fund. It’s supposed to be a contending basketball team.

But they have no heart. They don’t seem to care. And if they take no pride whatsoever in their craft then why the fuck would anyone take the time to write about them. It’s pathetic. As a man….I’m embarrassed for them. It can’t just be about money.

There has to be a connection of pride attached to your own heart. That’s why it’s called competition.

Nobody should be spending money or wasting time watching this indifference.

Do the Thunder have a heart?

They should win tonight with LeBron out again. But will we see any heart from the Thunder?

I mean…I find it odd anyone without a heart would have the audacity to call another human with two faux rings Cupcake?

Shit…they might as well bring Brian Davis back. At least, in an Oklahoma regressed Hee Haw sort of way—he was entertaining. He at least seemed to care and get worked up.

I know this as an older guy, if you don’t have passion you won’t get it done.

When the Thunder went 23-59 that first year and played with their heart on their sleeve I loved every minute of it. Losing didn’t bother me because it was obvious they were all in.

What we’re seeing now is bullshit.

And it has nothing to do with their record, but everything to do with their collective lack of heart.

Heart matters.

What does it say when your market is more interested in the kid who transferred in from Alabama than the Thunder playing the Lakers on TNT telecast night?

It tells me people get bored when they see this type of lack of effort and a coach doing nothing to remedy the situation.

With all this Rocky stuff I have on here today, here’s one for the old timers who know what it was like when pride still mattered.

Here’s the thing though, we might have two stories of redemption for two quarterbacks who both did everything the right way off the field, in the classroom, and for their teams.

That’s what makes this story so appealing from multiple fronts at a time in America when a little human inspiration isn’t a bad thing.

In the big time big monied world of top tier college football we sometimes forget that way back when… college sports were ostensibly carried on to extend and build character in young people. To extend human opportunities. Don’t laugh. I know it’s hard not to, but don’t laugh.

I somewhat think of the Bobby Reid story at O State with the infamous Mike Gundy rant when I think of both Jalen Hurts and Austin Kendall. I think back to how everything went wrong for a kid like Bobby Reid who was supposed to be the next Vince Young coming out of high school. As Gundy himself said in his rant, ‘Here was a kid who did everything right and his biggest crime is that he didn’t turn out to meet the expectations.’

All of us lose sight at times of what this is supposed to be about.

It was first reported yesterday that OU was going to follow the rules and block Austin Kendall from playing for fellow Big 12 member West Virginia. I shook my head when I first heard it. I couldn’t believe that was how Lincoln Riley was going to handle this. Sure, that’s the rule, but each human situation is different. It should require nuance from the adults in the room.

The intent with college athletics isn’t to crater a young person’s dream, but to do everything to feed the fire of the dream.

I was relieved to hear OU changed course on this and has decided to give Austin Kendall his release to play for West Virginia.

This was a no brainer. The way it should have ended. As with Jalen Hurts, Austin Kendall has a story. He did everything right. He didn’t take any easy shortcuts or bail out on Lincoln Riley or OU. He did the right things and should be rewarded with the chance to play college football under the same rule which is giving Jalen Hurts one last at bat as well.

If you didn’t see this coming I don’t know what to think of you. This was so obvious it would have hurt me personally if Jalen Hurts hadn’t made this decision to play his senior season at Oklahoma.

You couldn’t script this any better even if you’re Sylvester Stallone and you need another Rocky story.

This has the potential to be that type of feel good story for all parties involved. Kyler Murray had his dream season and will be playing some pro sport next season. Jalen Hurts beat Georgia with a redemption scene which puts Shawshank to shame. Austin Kendall, every bit as good of young man as you’d want to see, will get to finish his college career in West Virginia. And Spencer Rattler will get to ease into college football as a true freshman learning how to be the ultimate team guy by being Jalen Hurts’ backup. This will be good for Spencer Rattler. It will.

And you know who else it’s really good for….the Big 12.

Because with Texas finally on the rise and Jalen Hurts already in the Vegas odds to finish in the top three of next season’s Heisman race what the Big 12 finally has is both of its iconic programs front and center in the national spotlight.

This is what the designers of the new Big 12 prayed would eventually happen. That being, having both OU and Texas simultaneously in the hunt for a Final Four berth.

And it’s made even better for Hollywood because both of these young men are what the college game should be about. As in young men hanging in there and doing things the right way. Seeing the big picture. Growing into adulthood with character instead of becoming a character.

As happy a day as it was in Norman today it was an even better day for the Big 12. And here’s another one for you…name the conference quarterback who a year ago won the Mr. Texas High School Player of the Year Award? Not Jalen, not Sam. That would be O State’s redshirt freshman Spencer Sanders. If you live in Big 12 country next football season could be one for the ages.

But beyond all of this what today reaffirms is that good things happen to good people when they don’t let go of their dream.

Mothers and fathers can still believe in the American Dream when they see how Jalen Hurts handled all this after being benched against Georgia at halftime.

Jalen Hurts didn’t quit. He hung in there and beyond just his football skills will bring a truckload of intangibles to Lincoln Riley’s program.

Name the current college quarterback who is a combined 2-1 as a starter vs. Clemson and 1-0 vs. Georgia as a reliever?

That would be Jalen Hurts and he knows in his heart he has one more chapter to write.