Author: Mike

Houston Rockets 118 — Oklahoma City Thunder 110

For the 13th time this NBA season, the start-studded OKC Thunder lost the fourth period and the game. Stunningly, OKC leads the entire NBA in this category with two of the league’s four best players on their team.

But I’m not even sure anyone should be writing recaps on the Thunder down the stretch of this regular season as it appears the team and Thunder organization feel like they turned some sort of corner winning eight games in a row before unilaterally ending their best stretch of basketball in two seasons by not playing Durant and Ibaka against Reggie Jackson and the Pistons.

Three games in a row have now been stinkers with flashes of the mentally lazy, entitled basketball which has plagued the Thunder at times this season.

The same things which it appeared OKC had worked thru are now back in full view again. Harden going off for 41 points. The Rockets as a whole scoring 38 in the fourth. Westbrook with 8 turnovers, Durant with 6. As a team 19 assists to 21 turnovers. Ugly basketball which screams ‘we don’t care’.

So with five games left in this regular season I’m not sure any of us blogging about the Thunder should be writing all that much. Maybe they’re rope-a-doping the Warriors and Spurs into a sense of false complacency. Only problem with that though is guy named LeBron has basically owned them and will be waiting for them if they somehow do basketball’s version of Miracle by winning eight games in successive series against the Spurs and Warriors.

My advice would have been to work hard down the stretch and actually try to become a better basketball team. So much for that. Five games left against Denver, Portland, Sacrament, Lakers, and then the Spurs on closing night.

Thunder are 53-24 and none of these games mean anything at this point to a team which quite frankly has been the most underachieving team in the entire NBA for their almost four year body of work since the NBA Finals season.

Their doesn’t appear to be much hunger. Doesn’t appear to be a team with a mission or a desire to get better. Just a team which pretty much does what it did through the course of the Scott Brooks era, namely hope Durant and Westbrook are enough to win games against most of the teams in the league.

Mike Jackson

 

Tough day for us OU fans. But life moves forward, not backwards. Pretty sure Ferris Bueller said this or something close to it. I need a little something to soothe the rough edges and put me to sleep without thinking about the game from earlier today. Can’t actually believe I went this many games into a Thunder season with Russell Westbrook and haven’t had to play this yet, but I need it tonight. Hope ‘Nova kicks North Carolina’s ass.

I knew Ferris Bueller said something like this. So, we lost a basketball game. Been there, done that. Moving forward…………….life never stands still. Smell the roses and all that.

 

 

 

 

North Carolina and Villanova advance to Monday night’s national championship game. Both were easy double figure winners. But Villanova literally destroyed Oklahoma by a 95-51 count.

Thus, OU’s season ends with two milestones they wish they didn’t have on their resume. 1 The worst ever loss in a Final Four game, and 2 with 41 NCAA Tournament wins OU is first among all programs in wins without winning a national championship.

A horrible game for Buddy Hield and company. They never got going offensively and played uphill the entire game. Still, a great season for these kids, especially the seniors of Hield, Cousins, and Spangler. They were part of turning the program back around despite what happened this evening.

I feel bad for the way they exited, but they accomplished a great deal this season and can take solace in all the positives from this season despite how bad it feels right now.

With Jordan Woodard, Lattin, James, and Buford—Lon Kruger has some players back, but these three seniors were very special for OU hoops and will be remembered in a very good way. Namely, OU became relevant again and people actually started going to games again at LNC.

OU has been to three Elite Eights and one Final Four since 1988, but it was that Monday night at Kemper Arena which will forever be remembered. OU beat Villanova in the Elite 8 in ’88 to advance, hoping the same can happen this evening with the Sooners advancing to the championship game on Monday night.

 

 

 

 

There’s some team shuffling for the final spot in the West between Dallas, Utah, and Houston, plus there’s the possibility Portland jumps injury decimated  Memphis for the 5th seed, but otherwise the West is set in stone with Golden State, San Antonio, OKC, and the Clippers at 1 thru 4.

The only real drama remaining is to see if the Warriors can get to 73-9 and break the Bulls’ record. At 68-7 with seven games remaining, five of which are home games it would appear doable. Their remaining slate goes– Boston, Portland, Minnesota, San Antonio (April 7th), @ Memphis, @ Spurs (April 10th), and Memphis.

Hope they do it. They’ve been a fun team to watch and shown mental toughness in overcoming injuries to Ezeli, Bogut, and Iguodala. If they win tonight against Boston they’ll be sixteen games up on what has been for the most part a healthy Oklahoma City team.

Can’t wait to see the Warrior vs. Spurs games. Hopefully, Popovich plays his players.

Oklahoma City Thunder 119 — LA Clippers 117

I have a suggestion for NBA commish Adam Silver, since none of the teams in your league seem to have any interest in playing an 82 game regular season then why not shorten the season to 72 games and give the players some rest and save the fans from watching this bullshit.

For the second straight home game, Oklahoma City fans wasted their time and money on a game which ended up being another version of junior varsity basketball at NBA ticket prices. No Blake Griffin, who’s still serving a suspension for bitch slapping one of his own trainers. No Chris Paul, no DeAndre Jordan, no JJ Redick, no Paul Pierce. But plenty of Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers who had their way pretty much all night against a Thunder defense which gave up 69 first half points against these guys.

I must confess, I fell asleep at least four times and changed to Lawrence O’Donnell at least another six times in hopes of seeing something interesting on television…so I have no idea who purported OKC lockdown defender Andre Roberson was guarding, but evidently Roberson wasn’t in prime Bruce Bowen form tonight.

Please read this Adam Silver—this game had less appeal than a Texas Tech vs. TCU girls softball game. Less interest than watching to see if Donald Trump even knows what he supposed to say about abortion as a Republican. And certainly less appeal than Lyin’ Ted Cruz dicking with Trump about his wife. This was completely gongable.

Kevin Durant played 40 minutes after sitting out the contest against former teammate Reggie Jackson on Tuesday night. But I guess if you calibrate the fact no one wearing a Thunder jersey played any defense whatsoever, I’m to assume that calibrates into Durant actually playing 24 real game minutes tonight.

By the grace of God and a Steven Adams tip with 29.6 seconds left, this one ended in regulation.

In theory this could have been Kevin Durant’s last regular season game in Oklahoma City since only one more home game on the regular season slate remains with the dumpster fire and in turmoil LA Lakers coming to town on April 11th. I refuse to even go into the Russell-Nick Young  sexual wiring fiasco in as I’ve seen enough of that from Trump and Cruz of late.

Adam Silver, again I write this… if you’ve got a gong, please gong the rest of this NBA regular season away except for the Warrior vs. Spurs games.

Mike Jackson

 

It will be interesting to see the Thunder’s approach on this. The team as a whole basically had rest the entirety of last season because of the injuries while other teams were still playing into June. Then there was the rest period from the All-Star break thru around March 12th when the team collectively woke up.

Plus, as we’ve all seen with our own two eyes, there’s been quite a bit of resting on the defensive end of the floor for much of this season. So what I’m wondering to myself is what exactly do they need resting from when you consider they’ll be an underdog to get out of the second round and their run into post season could be relatively short.

I think I’d just play my team right now, be smart about it, don’t run the two stars into the ground with heavy minutes in these last games, but please no repeat of the strategy we saw in Detroit on Tuesday night.

 

If only Michael Lewis had known this circus was coming he could have planned to do his second book on presidential politics. It’s to the point it’s not even worth paying attention to what Cruz and Trump are saying. Nothing more from me this week on the GOP race until the Wisconsin primary next Tuesday.

But first this.

And there was this.

But then there was this.

But way back when there was this.

And just before Iowa there was this…and if you can figure out what any of these people are actually trying to say you should be the Chairman of the National Republican Committee.

That’s it for now till next Tuesday. Keep up the good work, Losers.

 

 

 

 

Well, I just got through reading both Royce Young and Anthony Slater’s take on the game last night, and in all candor all I can I write is I wasn’t surprised. I’m not at all a big Bill Simmons fan, but his tagging of OKC’s local media as the Prestettes is totally on the mark. Instead of any narrative on the game, the team, and the season, there’s all this fascination with Reggie Jackson and his antics and the effect it had on Thunder players like Russell Westbrook, Steven Adams, Kevin Durant, and Nick Collison at the end of the game.

And you know what…I’m going to come to Reggie Jackson’s defense even though he played as poorly as his former Thunder mates last night. Truth be known, the Pistons didn’t win last night because of Reggie Jackson, they won in spite of Reggie Jackson, but the Thunder are so stupid they allowed this to happen coming off one of their best nights in almost two full seasons of play.

Think about what I just wrote, in almost two full years of play with two of the league’s four best players, a road win at Toronto with a slumping Kyle Lowery qualifies as a signature win. Think about that. To me, this says a great deal about the Thunder.

And exactly what were Kevin Durant and Serge Ibaka resting from? Kevin Durant played in 27 games last season. He’d already sat seven games this season and sleepwalked for about three weeks after the All-Star break. What rest was needed? The only people more well rested than Kevin Durant are in the United States Senate.

I’m just reading all this and blown away on multiple fronts. The world has changed, my friends. There is no way I could fathom prime Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Larry Bird, or Magic Johnson allowing themselves to be sat in this game.

So why are Thunder players or Thunder beat writers even rehashing this aspect of last night’s game?

Leave it alone. If OKC as an organization isn’t smart enough to stagger their players in a well thought manner–then just leave it alone.

In Reggie Jackson’s world it was his One Shining Moment and if the OKC Thunder are dumb enough to allow it to happen then accept it for what it is and don’t say a word about it.