I’m not sure I have any thoughts left on this team. To be talking about effort and commitment while the Thunder are in the playoffs is something odd and foreign to me.
If ever a group of three stars in Westbrook, George, and Anthony should be playing with a competitive chip on their shoulder it should be this group of players.
These three stars went a collective 1-8 in the playoffs last season and you just figured these three players had something they would want to prove to the rest of the league peer-wise.
Very odd and it leaves you feeling this season which never really started has continued along the same theme in post season.
It’s tough to watch.
It’s as if in the ten year era of Thunder basketball in Oklahoma City the program has gone full circle from youthful NBA innocence to what we’re seeing currently.
This is when you have to be very careful being an underground blogger. You don’t want to knee jerk or overreact. Which of course is easy for me since I proclaimed this a season which never was before Game No. 80 in Houston.
But still, there’s the human part inside all of us and we hope our sports teams can find some heart inside of themselves from time to time and do semi-miraculous things.
Then again, there are those other times you have to look reality square in the eye and hold truth to power.
The truth being here is that the Thunder have no idea what they’re doing in this series against a very well coached Utah Jazz team which in reality doesn’t have as much talent on paper as the Thunder do.
It matters not who guards Donovan Mitchell in this series. I was wrong on that count. It’s not that simple.
How do you say this and not sound cruel?
I’ll try. Russell Westbrook was absolutely brutal on Saturday night in this pivotal Game 3. Just absolutely brutal. There–I said it.
Oklahoma City got nothing on either side of the ball from Russell Westbrook in this basketball game. And truth to power be known, for the second straight game the Thunder got little of nothing from Steven Adams as well.
Carmelo was actually not horrible. Paul George struggled a bit with his shot, but kept the Thunder in the game somewhat. Ray Felton was still a bulldog and Pat Patterson had some decent minutes.
But here’s what you can’t duck or pretend didn’t happen– that being, Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams didn’t show up for the Thunder on Saturday night in Salt Lake.
Now–John Stockton did because I saw him on the ESPN shot without his spirit T-shirt on I might add…cheering for the Jazz. That was cool.
But nowhere to be seen were two parties previously known as Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams. Bad Little Dude and the Big Mate were nowhere to be seen on the season’s most important night.
Go figure.
And here’s another thing..it wasn’t three point shooting which torpedoed the Thunder as they went 14-28 from beyond the arc. Nor was it free throw shooting which derailed the Thunder as the Jazz themselves were awful from the line going 18-27 (67%).
And I don’t think it’s fair on this one to blame Billy Donovan for coaching nuance because there wasn’t anything for him to coach in that Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams were evidently not in the building on Saturday night.
Rickey Rubio had a career night of sorts triple doubling the master or regular season triple doubling…Russell Westbrook.
You could also point out Joe Engles came alive scoring 21 points or that Donovan Mitchell slogged thru a pedestrian night with 22 points of his own.
But this night belonged to Rickey Rubio, Quin Snyder, and the memory of John Stockton.
In sports and in life…heart is a simple thing. It really is when you pause and give it thought.
The inches we fight for every day in our lives. Those inches matter. They really do.
But you have to fight for those inches and Billy Donovan has a basketball team which on more nights than not–doesn’t fight for those inches.
So…I’m reading Bret Dawson this morning on newsoksports an he’s quoting Billy Donovan talking about the inches we fight for in sports on every play. My jaw dropped. Because if ever there was a basketball team which doesn’t consistently fight for those inches…it’s this bunch he coaches in Oklahoma City.
By my count this team ranks near the bottom of the NBA in my category of ‘inch fighting’.
But I was somewhat heartened to at least see that Billy Donovan knows his team needs to be better in fighting for those inches a mere six inches in front of our faces every day.
My thought would be…the guys who finally showed to play defense in Game No. 80 in Houston need to find those inches tonight in Salt Lake or else they’re going to be down 2-1 in this series at around midnight.
In the NBA, teams which win Game 3 in a series tied 1-1 go on to win the series 73% of the time.
I’m thinking if were coaching this team…Paul George would be defending Donovan Mitchell and let Corey Brewer take Joe Engles. Just a thought from a casual fan.
For those of us who are non-millennials or Gen ex’ers the rebirth of the Utah Jazz is kind of cool. It reminds me of those great Utah Jazz teams coached by Jerry Sloan which featured John Stockton, Karl Malone, and Jeff Hornacek.
It was an era for Utah Jazz basketball when Michael Jordan was around and the Lakers were viable. It was a time when the small market Jazz were one of the league’s best run franchises.
Stockton ended up being the NBA career leader in both assists and steals. He played his entire career in Utah. On one of his contracts late in his career, he took less money to enable his front office to make the team more competitive. But he did attach one stipulation, he wanted free ice time at the Jazz arena for his son’s ice hockey team to practice on. Trust me, as someone who was a hockey coach/father you have no idea the value of ice time. How do I not love John Stockton.
Stockton never won a ring, but Utah did get to one NBA Finals where of course they lost to Michael Jordan and the Bulls.
Upon his retirement–Stockton has been involved in coaching youth teams and even became an assistant coach for his daughter’s team at Montana State. Stockton was interviewed for the Jazz head coaching job after the firing of Ty Corbin, but Quin Snyder got the job.
Stockton played his college ball at Gonzaga and was the 16th player taken in his draft class. He played on two U.S. Olympic teams and was on the Dream Team.
As we watch rookie sensation Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert take this Utah Jazz to renewed heights this isn’t unprecedented in the history of the Utah Jazz.
I hate to admit this being a Thunder fan, but part of me wants them to advance because I so much more respect their approach and mental toughness than that of this Thunder team.
I know that earlier in the week I made the generalization that NBA head coaches and robots who drive for Uber are pretty much one and the same. Of course, that’s a little absurd in that there are a few NBA coaches who can actually coach their ass off besides Greg Popovich and Rick Carlisle.
Quin Snyder is probably a coach who falls into that category. I’m very familiar with Snyder in that he both played for and coached under Coach K at Duke. You can’t get a much better pedigree than that although some of the dullards in Oklahoma might say — “What about Jeff Capel?”
But you study Quin Snyder a little deeper because he’s an interesting guy and not your normal coach. He’s actually a coach who I find interesting because of his diverse background.
Snyder has both an MBA and a law degree from Duke. Not your typical jock turned coach. Know who graduated from Duke who was a major impact on the NBA being in OKC? That would be another interesting guy named Aubrey McClendon.
Snyder has made multiple stops at both the college, the pro, and the Euro side of basketball. Again, an interesting guy.
He coached as the assistant head coach for Coach K then not long after found himself as the head coach who succeeded Stormin Norm Stewart at Missouri. Snyder lasted six years at Missouri before he was fired because of NCAA allegations of improper recruitment of a player.
Sounds a little bit like Jeff Capel doesn’t it?
Here’s the difference. Quin Snyder didn’t go back to Duke to sit next to Coach K as an assistant.
Nope. Instead, Quin Synder became humbled by his experience and exit from Missouri and embarked on a tour of coaching stops which made him understand why he failed at Missouri.
He coached in Russia. He coached in the D League. He took on several assistant jobs. He worked his ass off and made himself a better coach.
If ever a coach in the NBA earned his job it’s Quin Snyder.
And of course, he’s now head coach of the Utah Jazz and the most likely coach to win this year’s NBA Coach of the Year Award.
As a human and not an Uber driving robot, I love the fact Quin Snyder pulled himself up off the canvass after the Missouri experience and found himself as a coach.
Now…if say Coach K ever quits at Duke who would I hire?
I’m thinking Quin Snyder and not Jeff Capel would be my basketball coach… and I actually met and very much liked Jeff Capel.
I wish more NBA coaches were as interesting as Quin Snyder.
Except for a 19-0 run in the third period these were the Oklahoma Thunder we saw on many a night during this NBA season of torment. All the bad things which had me screaming profanities during the first 79 games all came back to roost as the Thunder in essence got schooled by rookie Donovan Mitchell in losing pivotal Game 2 by a 102-95 count inside Chesapeake Energy Arena.
But there was no screaming from me this time around. My screaming tirades with this team will never happen again. I know who they are even if they weren’t for those two games in Houston and Miami. Trends and numbers usually play themselves out in team sports.
In hockey, teams which win the first two games of a best of seven series go on to win 89% of the series. In NBA basketball– I would assume the number is similar–though I’m too lazy right now to google it. So, yeah this was a huge game in that Utah now has home court and the Thunder at least for this Game 2 proved all the bad habits they embraced as a team are all still there.
It was another horrible start for the Thunder as they once again came out of the locker room with nothing and were quickly behind 9-0. It was a game where Steven Adams couldn’t stay on the floor due to foul trouble before eventually fouling out and only played 22 minutes against a team which has a guy named Rudy Gobert. It was also a game were OKC’s trio of Westbrook, George, and Anthony went a combined 19-58 from the field.
Except for Jerami Grant…Billy Donovan didn’t get much from his bench like he did in Game 1 when they went a collective +44. On this night, Donovan rolled Ray Felton, Alex Abrines, and Pat Patterson on the floor for 40 minutes and got a -26 in return. Abrines and Patterson were both scoreless in this game.
But even more than these things it was a game which showed OKC’s shooting numbers from Game 1 were an outlier of sorts as the Thunder reverted to seasonal norms of going 11-35 (31.4%) from three point land and 12-18 (66.7%) from the free throw line.
It was also a game where the Thunder as a team choked shooting the ball in the fourth period going a collective 6-28 from the field as Utah rookie Donovan Mitchell shone as the brightest star on the floor while Westbrook, George, and Carmelo went poof into the Oklahoma night.
The Utah Jazz were the hottest team in the NBA the last thirty games of the NBA season and now the Thunder travel to Salt Lake in desperate need of a split to get back to Oklahoma City at 2-2.
A big game for the Boston Bruins looms as they have a 2-1 series lead with Game 4 in Toronto tonight.
You see, although what happened in Houston was nice, bad habits don’t just go away with one game though. It just doesn’t work that way in team sports.
There has to be a collective will of sorts.
Prayers and best wishes for the Popovich family. I’m clearly an outlier in dumb red Oklahoma. I love Popovich and the honesty he’s had in saying publicly the things about Trump which not one single sports journalist or member of the Thunder has had the balls to say. Not one, except for Russell Westbrook. Prayers are with you, Pop.
I wasn’t even going to write about this again, but I was browsing newsoksports and read some bullshit Barry Tramel wrote on this whole ordeal of typical Oklahoma stupidity.
Here’s the thing to me, the comment Brian Davis made is completely irrelevant.
This man is not a racist. He’s a dude who realizes his viewing base is how do I put this… not all that smart.
He’s just a homer of a sports announcer who somehow ascended to a great job of being the television voice of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Which by the way has probably been the most interesting NBA franchise to follow these past ten years when you consider guys named Durant, Harden, and Westbrook all got their professional start in the league via this organization.
But what this whole story says to me reaffirms why Oklahoma ranks near dead last in education. Why Oklahoma has regressed these past ten years as a state rather than the opposite despite the international fame the pro hoops has provided. Why Oklahoma has a governor who many in this country rank as the worst in the nation. Why Oklahoma has two United States senators who don’t between the two of them appear to know much of anything. Why states like Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Alabama are states where Trump got his largest voting pluralities. Why Oklahoma appears to actually have become dumber these past ten years rather than the opposite.
This is the question Barry Tramel should have posed instead of a page full of words on the origin of the phrase cotton pickin.
Why has Oklahoma actually become dumber these past ten years?
This isn’t about political correctness in Oklahoma. This state has no political correctness. This is the state which gave Donald Trump the gift of Scott Pruitt to run EPA into the ground.
This isn’t about political correctness, it’s about why Oklahoma as a state and a people can’t smarten up and as group start moving into the current century and addressing it’s very pressing issues…like for instance coming to that flash of genius moment where it might want to realize it doesn’t have enough revenue with it’s current tax laws to have something more than the worst state educational system in the country. Or maybe the thought it might be helpful to elect smart people to run the state.
Maybe this is the crux of the issue and it somehow correlates as to the how and why a goofy homer like Brian Davis ever got this job in the first place.
The answer is transparently clear.
Dumb.
Oklahoma is a dumb state.
And in reality–Brian Davis, a smart dude from Northwestern, realized being dumb on the air in Oklahoma was the perfect career move.
Google Peter Principle or Grover Norquist Tax Pledge instead of the origin of cotton pickin’ if you want to reach the truth as to how Brian Davis has kept his job all these years.
So as we witness this Kawhi Leonard debacle in San Antonio–I ask the question are there any Tim Duncans left in the agent driven world of the NBA?
It’s sad to see this happening with Greg Popovich and the Spurs. It truly is because they appeared to be the one organization in all of pro sport who were immune to the axiom that the NBA is merely nothing more than an agent/super star driven league.
So much for that naïve thought.
But here we sit watching this sad drama where Kawhi Leonard not only doesn’t play, but he doesn’t even accompany his team and sit with them as they go through the process of being eliminated by the Golden State Warriors in the first round of the Western Conference Playoffs.
Kawhi Leonard doesn’t have time because he’s with his people in New York going through the process of forcing the Spurs to unload him this season to a team who has a coach who won’t ever get on him. I guess Kawhi’s people are his uncle/agent and some doctors who won’t confirm what the Spurs’ medical staff has said about Kawhi’s quad injury.
Agents and money drive all of pro sports, but especially in the NBA because if one superstar is landed you can build a team around that one star fairly easily with the aid of a smart GM.
But we live in an age where loyalty doesn’t really mean much across the landscape of pro sports.
We live in an NBA age where the concept of awarding an NBA Coach of the Year award is somewhat of a joke. So who’s this year’s NBA Coach of the Year I ask aloud?
Steve Kerr’s quadruplets of stars have publicly admitted they were burned out after only being together for 18 months. LeBron has had better years than this one as an NBA coach. Pop looks like a dinosaur. Billy Donovan’s team didn’t appear to be all that concerned about winning games until the first 79 games were in the books. The jury is still out on Mike D’Antoni until we see what they do in the playoffs. And Portland’s Terry Stotts’ team has cratered a bit coming down the stretch.
The answer is there isn’t such a thing as an NBA Coach of the Year any longer. There should be the MVP Award, the NBA Executive of the Year Award, and the NBA Agent of the Year Award. The coaches are just there to give the appearance that there is some reason for their outdated existence in the NBA world. You know.. kind of like where robots are going to start driving for Uber.
But if forced to pick the one player left standing in the NBA who’s career path most resembles that of Tim Duncan to date…I could only come up with two players to date. Russell Westbrook and maybe Anthony Davis in New Orleans.
But primarily Russell Westbrook as he’s the only star in the NBA who in my estimation would sign a long term deal to stay in Oklahoma City once the constraints of the NBA’s collective bargaining allowed him to freely do otherwise.
Russell Westbrook stayed when he didn’t have to and displayed loyalty to Clay Bennett, Sam Presti, and the Oklahoma City fans.
So while I never saw Tim Duncan dress like Russell Westbrook there are some other common threads between the two.
I love this! First off—Westbrook is half naked wearing some new powder blue outfit I’ve never seen before. Then, after Tramel asks some predictably overthink question, Westbrook allows Carmelo to handle the question so he won’t be mean to Tramel with a curt reply.
Here’s the thing for you Oklahoma college media types. This isn’t nuclear fusion. Billy Tubbs and Eddie Sutton told you this numerous times. Even they rolled their eyes at you at times.
When you shoot the ball well, good things usually happen to your team. It’s a contagious confidence thing. You run faster and play better defense. Your testosterone count may even go up depending on the individual.
Note to the Oklahoma media types…quit overthinking all this. It’s a simple game.
When OKC shoots 48% from three point land and 87% from the line—I’m thinking to myself on those nights they’re going to be close to unbeatable.
I would have had two questions for Russ last night:
1 Bad Little Dude…how much did you pay for this outfit and 2 could you buy an extra one for Tramel to dress him up for these presssers?
We’ve been told the OKC Thunder have been holding back in anticipation for the NBA Playoffs. They almost held back too late, but on this opening game of post season for the Thunder they looked like a team who could make some noise in notching a 116-108 win over the Utah Jazz in Game I of this first round series.
Paul George was a monster. Literally a monster as he scored 36 points on a 13-20 shooting evening and going a Thunder best ever in going 8-11 from the beyond the arc. Even KD never made eight threes in a game. I had no idea.
Russell Westbrook was excellent as well scoring 29 points and looking every bit the part of a player Paul George should hang around with beyond this post season.
OKC came into this game ranked 29th in free throw shooting and 27th in three point shooting efficiency.
So who were these guys tonight at the Chesapeake Energy Arena?
OKC went 14-29 (48.3) shooting threes and 20-23 shooting free throws (87%).Basketball is fairly simple. If you play defense, move the ball, and shoot the ball like the Thunder did tonight you give yourself a chance of being pretty good. The Thunder were pretty good tonight.
Steven Adams, Carmelo, Corey Brewer, and Alex Abrines were all pretty good tonight as well.
Even though OKC got off to a horrible start—I was calm just by the fact I wasn’t having to listen to dumb goofy stuff on the Fox Thunder telecast. I hung in there, stayed calm, and allowed Matt Pinto to steer me thru the early game waves.
Not that Clay Bennett or Sam Presti give a shit what I think, but I think what I’d do is kind of change things around and stay with this new broadcast lineup and move Brian Davis to the post game show if he can contain himself and not come across like Trump’s buddy Sheriff Joe with his murky use of adjectives in describing the team’s franchise player.
The BBQ from Earl’s was sublime. I put away a slab of the St. Louis style ribs and a box of okra.
The Thunder lead the series 1-0 and Game 2 is in Oklahoma City on Wednesday night.
I’m thinking the German beer hall in Bricktown with the food order going …German pretzel, duck fries, and the green pepper and German sausage plate platter with maybe some German beer.
This is me, the new casual Thunder fan who can roll with it.