Author: Mike

I won’t lie, the Thunder’s 122-118 win over the still dysfunctional Sacramento Kings was a very anti-climatic event for me. After living through Mason Crosby kicking two plus fifty yard field goals in the last two minutes to propel the Packers to the NFC Championship Game in Atlanta next Sunday, I’ll admit it was hard to summon passion in watching the Thunder almost blow a 17 point lead against the still hapless Kings.

I was very gentle with my wife after the game. Win with grace, lose with grace is the way it should always be. Dallas had a heckuva season and should be proud they almost came all the way back from being down 21-3. But like I wrote yesterday before the game–Green Bay has Aaron Rodgers. He never ceases to amaze me. He’s simply an amazing quarterback.

The Thunder game actually depressed me even though Oklahoma City won the game to improve to 25-17. Russell Westbrook had another triple double with 36 points, 11 rebounds, and 10 assists so there was that. Enes Kanter had a huge game with 29 points, 12 rebounds, and a +19 rating. But mainly the thing which clings to me about this game was that OKC almost blew a seventeen point lead while turning the ball over 19 times.

But still OKC improves to 4-4 in January and 25-17 overall. Given what I predicted from OKC before the season with OKC winning somewhere between 46-48 games they’re on that pace and I shouldn’t be greedy other than just wanting to see them play smarter basketball.

Steven Adams suffered what appeared to be a concussion last night and only played twenty minutes so we’ll have to see if he’s available tonight in Los Angeles against the Clippers.

Like I wrote, with the Packers very much in the Super Bowl hunt– I’m having trouble focusing on the Thunder right now. Here’s Aaron Rodger’s girlfriend, Olivia Munn, who btw very much has an Oklahoma connection in that she attended Putnam City North high school and the University of Oklahoma. This is cute, Olivia on Stephen Colbert talking about the engagement, the dog, and such.

We’ve had six NFL playoff games so far this January and not one has been what could be described as a good football game. I don’t believe any of the six have even been a one possession game. Today could be potentially the best day of NFL football in quite some time if both games play out to their potential with Green Bay at Dallas in the first game and the Pittsburgh Steelers at the Kansas City Chiefs in the second game.

And for me it’s NFL nirvana as the Green Bay Packers are my favorite NFL team period, while the Steelers are my favorite AFC team easily. Probably the two classiest, successful NFL franchises with the Dallas Cowboys, the New England Patriots, and 49’ers (pre self implosion) right there in the mix as well. But I would give the Packers, the Steelers, and the Cowboys the edge because they’ve all three won multiple championships with different quarterbacks and different coaches, while in New England it’s basically just been Tom Brady and Bill Bilichick. As far as the 49’ers, they’re so bad currently I’m not even sure Joe Montana and Steve Young actually existed or if Bill Walsh was just a figment of the Bay area’s collective imagination.

Conversely, the Packers have won championships with three different three head coach-quarterback duos in the Super Bowl era…Vince Lombardi-Bart Starr, Mike Holmgren-Bret Favre, and Mike McCarthy-Aaron Rodgers. The Cowboys have done it with four different coach-quarterback combos…Tom Landry-Craig Morton, Tom Landry-Roger Staubach, Jimmy Johnson-Troy Aikman, and Barry Switzer-Troy Aikman, Suffice it to say if the Jason Garrett-Dak Prescott combo garners the Cowboys another Super Bowl Trophy it will be a testament to how great the Cowboys’ offensive line truly is in this era of collective bargaining.

Packers vs. the Cowboys will pit the most talented quarterback in the league in Aaron Rodgers vs. that Cowboys’ offensive line and the two rookie sensations in Prescott and Elliott. In the history of the NFL, rookie starting quarterbacks have gotten their teams into the playoffs nine times, but they have a collective record of 8-15. Of the nine quarterbacks, only four have gotten their teams to the conference championship game. No rookie starting NFL quarterback has ever won a Super Bowl. Okay, so you must be wondering, who were the four? The answer to this great NFL trivia question is Shaun King of the Tampa Bay Bucs, Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Joe Flacco of the Baltimore Ravens, and Mark Sanchez of the New York Jets.

But here’s the thing which gives Dallas Cowboy fans hope, none of those four quarterbacks had this offensive line and a running back like Zeke Elliott alongside him. So even though Aaron Rodgers is the most talented QB in the league, I don’t feel it’s improbable the Cowboys could get to the Super Bowl with Prescott, that offensive line, Elliott, Dez Bryant, and home field potentially in the NFC Championship Game.

The Packers are my favorite team, the Cowboys are my wife’s favorite team, though I’m not sure we’ll be able to watch this game in the same room.

Two games like the ones on tap in Dallas and Kansas City later today are what you hunger for as an NFL fan in January. I’m set with the pizza and the wine. Not sure what arrangements my wife has made for food and drink. If she’s nice she can have some of my mine. Can’t wait.

Lots of things to consider historically as we head towards the inauguration of reality television star Donald Trump next week-end. Who can we really compare him to historically? Hitler? The despicable Roman emperor Caligula? Perhaps, a meshed combination of the insecure Richard Nixon, racist George Wallace, with a touch of porn star publisher Larry Flynt sprinkled atop the bad hair? My mind remains open as I explore all the historical possibilities.

During Trump inauguration week I’m going to formulate my official historical comparison of Trump. Let’s start with Hitler.

This loss doesn’t really shock me because at some point Karl Anthony-Townes, Andrew Wiggins, and Coach Tom Thibodeau are going to get it figured out and become a pretty decent basketball team. Who knows, maybe it might even start to happen with more frequency the second half of this basketball season.

The T Wolves beat the Thunder on Friday night at home for their third straight win, and for those who don’t follow the NBA as a whole the Wolves have now beaten James Harden and Russell Westbrook in successive games. I picked the Wolves to be an 11th or 12th place team or so in West ‘this year’, but once Thibodeau figures out what he wants to do with his point guard position, I think it’s pretty clear Karl-Anthony Townes and Andrew Wiggins are two guys you can build a team around.

I guess at some point in this recap I have to write about how bad the Thunder were on Friday night in Minnesota. Fairly bad, but more to the point, Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams were awful. When Westbrook and Adams are both bad on the same night I’m not really sure there’s a current team in the NBA this Thunder can beat, albeit on a Karl Anthony-Townes night where he feasted on the Thunder for 29 points and 17 rebounds. Wiggins was just so-so, but with Zach Lavine out with an injury, even Ricky Rubio lit up the Thunder on this night.

This Thunder team can’t win games unless Westbrook and Adams play well, end of story. Russell Westbrook did garner his 19th triple double of the season with a 21 point, 11 rebound, 12 assist night, but he also had ten turnovers and was a putrid 1-10 shooting threes. Russell Westbrook shot 7-23 from the field, while the Thunder had 19 assists coupled with 18 turnovers. More to the point, Steven Adams only had FIVE SHOT attempts the entire game. None of that equals a win in the NBA.

Even more to the point, Alex Abrines and Jerami Grant between them didn’t score a point much less make a three. On the night, the Thunder were an abysmal, brutally bad 3-20 shooting threes. On a whole, the Thunder shot 38.8% from the field. Again the Thunder were collectively horrible on the offensive end, but I put most of this on Russell Westbrook because we’ve talked about this before, namely the ball has to move for this team to have a chance, it can’t just be Westbrook chucking threes when he’s pretty much a career 30% shooter from beyond the arc. This isn’t complex. Minnesota only scored 96 points in this game. It’s not like 97 points by the Thunder is an unreasonable goal against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

But like I wrote at the top, it’s not as if this loss really shocks me because overall the margin is narrow for this Thunder team on any night and Karl Anthony-Townes is an exceptionally talented player.

The Thunder drop to 3-4 in the month of January and now have five more in a row on the road before they see friendly fans again in Chesapeake Energy Arena on January 26th versus the Dallas Mavericks.

Next up the Thunder in Sacramento on Sunday night after the Packers-Cowboys divisional playoff game at Jerry’s World. Go Aaron Rodgers! Go Russell Westbrook!

I think this ‘event’ actually happens next Saturday. Maybe Kevin Spacey will show up and we’ll realize this was the just an extreme version of some House of Cards binge watching or just a really bad hangover. Doubtful. It is what it is and if nothing else we will discover if the crafters of the U.S. Constitution ever envisioned a canidate becoming a sitting U.S. president who’s one part Bernie Madoff, one part Larry Flynt, and one part Charlie Sheen.

Frank and Claire move over, you’ve become too boring to be watched or followed by serious followers of executive branch obsessive dysfunction. True, some will say if Hillary had prevailed there would have been plenty of storyline drama with Bill Clinton once again prowling the White House corridors in search of new intern talent, but even with Bill Clinton back and getting lap dances in rooms where Lincoln, Madison, and Washington once roamed, there would have at least been the perfunctory effort to somewhat shield all of us from all of it being shared on Twitter with a ‘She really sucks in bed’ tweet from the leader of the free world.

So here we are on the cusp of what this country has never experienced before, namely a Twitter bully with the keys to the nuclear codes with a revived Cold War between the United States and Russia lurking on the horizon. Imagine Donald Trump making the ultimate decisions during a Bay of Pigs like crisis and it doesn’t take all that much imagination to hear ‘Blow Them Up’ chants emanating from Donald Trump’s more ardent Twitter followers.

Maybe the ultimate nuclear decision to launch or not to launch will be decided by a Twitter poll of sorts from unemployed factory workers in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin acting out their ultimate frustrations. Don’t scoff, because in fact the Clintons garnered three million more votes than Caligula Lite, but in reality, those handful of voters in those three states decided the course of the Presidency, the Supreme Court, and in essence, the country as a whole unless there’s some shockingly surprising political behavior by some Republican senators when push comes to shove.

I find it odd there’s still all this clamor this week in regards to a new purported Trump revelation in regards to his character or more to the point his complete lack of character. I mean, at this point, even if there were a video showing Trump, Billy Bush, and Putin frolicking together in a Moscow brothel, what possible difference does it make at this point? Been there, seen that, and like Trump said himself, his Twitter groupie followers wouldn’t hold it against him if he shot Rosie O’Donnell in broad light in downtown Manhattan. More to the point, they’d be chanting, “Killed Her Dead.”

We are what we are now as an admitted nation of extreme dysfunction. What more need be written than the fact Billy Bush’s sex mentor garnered over 80% of the fundamentalist vote in the election…. and here’s the thing, not one conservative has mentioned in analysis of the election results–if Trump had been running against say Ronald Reagan, Bush 41, or even Teddy Roosevelt back from the grave, Trump still would have won because he is what we’ve become as a country and a culture.

So I’d give the Trump Russian porn video a rest and just admit America has fallen further from a character standpoint than even Frank and Claire thought possible, let alone our forefathers.

When Russell Westbrook missed badly on his seventh and last three point shot of the night at about the three minute mark in a one possession game, it felt like ‘here we go again’. But not so as from that air ball moving forward, Westbrook and the Thunder were almost perfect in finishing off the Memphis Grizzlies with a display of cutting, spacing, passing, finishing, and winning in a big game which now puts the Thunder at 24-16 for the season.

For me the play of the game was the Adams block, then Westbrook pushing the ball and finding Oladipo on the right wing for what turned out to be the game changer at just the moment the Thunder needed it most.

Other than Westbrook going an abysmal 0-7 from threes tonight, he was otherwise excellent in recording another triple double and becoming the first player since Magic Johnson to record this many triple doubles in an entire season since the NBA merged with the ABA forty years ago. Think about that. Westbrooks’ triple read 24 points, 13 rebounds, and 14 assists.

My tell all tea leaf important stat of the night had Westbrook only taking 19 shots while the Thunder had 21 assists as a team. Add to that the Thunder had 27 fast break points while the bench kicked in 43 points. All good things.

The Stache Brothers were again excellent in combining for 31 points and 21 rebounds. Enes Kanter played his most minutes in a game this season and is clearly elevating his game in a continual sustained kind of way as this moves along.

Victor Oladipo hit four threes and made the game’s most important shot, but what was even more impressive than him making the shot was the fact Russell Westbrook trusted him enough to allow him to take the shot. I’m circling this play in red for a reference footnote later in the season possibly. Big play from a team, trust, confidence, building standpoint.

Andre Roberson was very good again and quite frankly easily outplayed Tony Allen in my estimation. Really not even close.

Cameron Payne still looks stiff and slow to me, but again it’s been a long time since’s he’s played meaningful games.

Jerami Grant was good and Alex Abrines continues to trend his game upward as each game passes. Lauvernge did some nice things as well. But doesn’t he almost always?

For me the storylines are simple…1 the Thunder made the smart plays down the stretch against a playoff caliber team and won, 2 Oladipo hit the game’s most important shot, and 3 Billy Donovan keeps pushing more minutes of Adams and Kanter together on the floor whenever he can.

The Thunder are now back in 6th in the West and quite frankly when they play like this instead of just watching Westbrook jack threes in the last four minutes they’re a fairly dangerous basketball team.

The Thunder are now 3-3 in the month of January and play at Minnesota on Friday night.

Up front I have to admit I only watched this game when there were commercial breaks in the Alabama-Clemson national championship game. Deshaun Watson and Clemson won at the end in an exciting fourth quarter so it was a great evening all around for me.

OKC won in Chicago on Monday night by a 109-94 count in a game in which they led pretty much from wire to wire in a relatively easy road win. Jimmy Butler tried to play, but wasn’t himself so that needs to be noted on here, but during this January Month of Hell for the Thunder…any win, especially a road win is a very good thing for this basketball team.

OKC improves to 23-16 and has now won two in a row as it fights for its seeding position in the West. For the month of January the Thunder are 2-3.

When I look at a Thunder box score the two things I glance at first are 1 how many shots Russell Westbrook took, 2 how many assists the team as a whole accumulated. Anotherwords, did the ball stick in Westbrook’s hands or did the ball move. On this night, the ball moved which is a very good thing for the Thunder. Westbrook didn’t triple double shy of one rebound, but he had a very nice overall game with 21 points, 9 rebounds, and 14 assists, but more to the point, the Thunder accrued 30 assists on the night as Westbrook kept his shot total at 19. I’ll go out on a limb and state if the Thunder corral 30 assists on any given night they should win the basketball game.

Adams, Oladipo, and Kanter all had double figure nights as they should because they’re the second, third, and fourth best basketball players on this team. Andre Roberson had a another nice game as well.

To me the challenge for this Thunder team and Russell Westbrook is simple, do they want to just pursue the triple-double thing or do they want to incrementally get better every game and strive to become the third best team in the West come late April.

It’s not that I think the two are incompatible, it’s just clear to me that for this team to move forward the greatest challenge is for Russell Westbrook and the team’s other three best players to take collective ownership of the team versus than it just being Westbrook as a sole proprietor.

No more college football. Nothing more from Meryl Streep unless she has something to say at the Oscars, just my focus on the Thunder moving forward until maybe the inauguration of our strip bar owner president elect.

Thunder will host the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday night in what should be a great basketball game.

The Thunder play in Chicago tonight and I’m not sure if I’m going to recap the game or not in that Alabama plays Clemson tonight for the college football national championship. Yesterday was excellent for me with the Green Bay Packers whipping the NY football Giants by a 38-13 count while advancing to the NFC semi-finals against the team I hate the most…the Dallas Cowboys. Hope Jordy Nelson’s ribs are okay.

I didn’t see Meryl Streep’s speech in regards to Donald Trump, but I heard about it and watched it on youtube this morning. Of course, everything she said was accurate, but I’m not really sure if what she said will resonant long term with America as we see it today. In defense of Meryl Streep, and this comes from my heart as a parent and the father of a son, if any parent raised their son to treat other people like Donald Trump treats people how in the world could you as a father feel like you’d taught your son anything about the journey of life and the Golden Rule. I loved what she said, it was spot on, but as she finished her talk I could visualize the Trumpsters chanting ‘Lock Her Up’ or ‘Build the Wall’ in the background… and I thought to myself did she really accomplish anything with those six minutes. And I think the answer sadly would be….no.

It doesn’t matter the Denver Nuggets aren’t very good and have now given up 120 points or more for the fourth straight game. What matters for the OKC Thunder is that in their first of three homes games in the entire month of January they beat the Nuggets by a 121-106 count inside of Chesapeake Energy Arena.

This wasn’t like the three straight road losses in that the Thunder had a working margin heading into the final few minutes and again the Nuggets are a very bad defensive team which is going absolutely nowhere. Just win the game and get some confidence heading into Chicago on Monday night. Mission accomplished on both counts for the Thunder.

Russell Westbrook notched his 17th triple double of the season and it was easy, but then again it was the Nuggets sitting on the other bench. Westbrook’s line reads 32 points, 17 rebounds, and 11 assists. Westbrook defied his 30% average shooting threes and gave his impression of Steph Curry for the second straight game going 7-12 shooting threes and being a Durant-like efficient 10-20 from the field overall. Unlike recent games of late when Westbrook has put up thirty shots or so, Westbrook didn’t monopolize the shots nearly as much and there was some offensive flow for OKC for most of the game.

There was good balance from OKC’s other starters. Adams went for 16 and 6, but should have still had more touches. Oladipo had a high energy game with 15,3, and 3. I thought Andre Roberson had a very nice game for the second game in a row with 13 points, 8 rebounds, and was 5-8 from the line. Sabonis added nine points and like Roberson was a contributor for the second straight game.

Enes Kanter did his thing scoring 14 points coming off the bench. Jerami Grant had four blocks. Lauvergne only five minutes and thus wasn’t much of a factor. Alex Abrines chipped in 7 points and continued to show some grit in his overall game.

Tonight marked Cameron’s Payne’s return from his Jones’ fracture injury in his first game of the season. Payne went 3-4 scoring 8 points in thirteen minutes of play. I thought he looked slow and pretty much like a guy who hasn’t played much in while, but Payne down the road can help this team offensively once he gets back into game shape. How much he can help this team remains to be see.

OKC improves its overall record to 22-16 and is in the 7th seed position in the West. The Thunder head to Chicago for a Monday night game against a 19-18 Bulls team led by Jimmy Butler. Westbrook vs Butler in itself is an intriguing matchup, but this is one of these January from Hell road games where Westbrook needs to finish and OKC needs to win.