Author: Mike

I had a great time. I bought myself three nice, collared shirts this Christmas for the Heat, the Warriors, and the Grizz. My ticker broker not only got me a seat behind the Warriors’ bench he got me an even better deal for the Raptors game coming up later this week. I’m not buying one of their shirts even though I think Nick Nurse is one of the best coaches in the league.

Like Melvin…I only sit low at this point in my life. Those dumbass suckers up in Loud City who paid full price to ante up this season I genuinely feel bad for, but I’m guessing those folks are primarily Trump Proud Boy types who don’t understand free market economies enough to sit down in the lower seats.

There were quite a few Warrior fans like me in the building. Almost what I would describe as an expectant electricity in the air even though the Thunder are in reality a G League team. I would love to see the Thunder without Shai play at either Kentucky or Auburn in a packed gym on the road. Those are the two best college teams I’ve seen this year and both have rosters and coaches in reality superior to the Thunder. But I’m not sure how they would handle Dort, Bazely, and Giddy in a forty minute game.

Calipari or Bruce Pearl vs. Presti’s little G League coach. You can’t be serious.

Klay and Steph basically just kind of walked thru the motions most of the game coming in on an eight-game winning streak. But when the annoying G League Thunder drew within five points late in the game it was winning time for the Splash Brothers. Like Tony Bennett finishing the night with an encore rendition of I Left My Heart in San Franciso.

No Shai as expected. His deal with Presti doesn’t require him to play games the back third of any of these tanking seasons in Oke City.

But I have to write this, as far as Lu Dort, Bazely, Giddy, Tre Mann, Ty Jerome and Kenrich…they worked their asses off so as folks like me could witness a fairly entertaining game between a serious contender and an NBA pretender.

My respect for those six players is genuine, but I feel sorry for them in that they got stuck having to play in what in essence is a Triple A minor league city pretending to be something it’s not.

Lu Dort and Kenrich on a real team with a real GM and a real coach could be tangible contributors this season. It hurts me that both of these guys have done everything right and find themselves trapped in this shit show in Oklahoma City.

Lu Dort has what I think is one of the worst contracts in the league while Shai gets paid a max deal in essence for playing limited minutes every season. Somebody needs to transfer some of Shai’s money into an account for Lu Dort.

Sam Presti never learns, does he? He created the monster known as Russell Westbrook, and I fear if Shai’s agent allows him to stay here too long Shai will turn into the same type of entitled brattish star Russell evolved into. How can he sit there and watch his young teammates play so hard and not feel any guilt?

That’s not leadership…that’s for certain.

The Warriors will definitely need Draymond back if they want to beat Phoenix though…that’s for certain. It was fun watching Johnny Kuminga and Moses Moody play extended minutes. Johnny Kuminga has the body and jumps of Giannis, just saying.

In closing, I laughed when I came home and watched the delayed broadcast. The pathetic Thunder telecast team evidently saw this as a ‘barometer game’ of sorts. Hilarious. The only barometer games this Thunder could hypothetically play are if they play either Auburn or Kentucky on the road. If you’re playing five fouls like in the college game that would make it even more interesting.

Those would be true barometer games for the Thunder.

Next up…the hot and always well coached Toronto Raptors in Oke City.

1. How many NFL black head coaches have won a Super Bowl? Two. In 2007, Tony Dungy became the first African American NFL head coach to win a Super Bowl. Ironically, the Colts beat the Chicago Bears 29-17. Then Bears’ head coach Lovie Smith who along with Dungy became the first black head coach to lead a team to the Super Bowl.

This is how that decision to kick the ball to Devin Hester went from inside a Chicago sports bar. Bob re-kicking that punt to Tyreke ‘The Cheetah’ Hill was child’s play considered to this. Yet, the Colts came back and won a Super Bowl.

The second NFL black head coach to win a Super Bowl was Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin in 2009 when the Steelers defeated the Arizona Cardinals 27-23. With that win, Mike Tomlin became the youngest coach in NFL history to win a Super Bowl.

In 2011, the Steelers returned to the Super Bowl under Tomlin and were defeated 31-25 by Aaron Rodgers’ Green Bay Packers. This was Aaron’s only Super Bowl victory in his illustrious Hall f Fame career to date.

Word has it Jimmy Garoppolo will be Mike Tomlin’s next quarterback in Steeler Town. That will be interesting because for any AFC team to make it to the Super Bowl they would have to get past Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, and Justin Herbert. My first thought there is Jimmy G isn’t quite in the league of those guys.

2. Who are the three black NFL quarterbacks who’ve won the Super Bowl?

The answer is three. 1 Doug Williams, 1988, 2 Russell Wilson, 2014, and 3 Patrick Mahomes, 2019.

3. Since the current trend in the NFL is for offensive coordinators to ascend to NFL head coaching positions how many NFL offensive coordinators are there currently?

Only two believe it or not. Eric Bienemy with the Kansa City Chiefs and Byron Leftwich with the Tampa Bay Bucs. Hard to believe neither of these two guys are head coaches given the same Joe Jon Bubba white boy retreads we keep seeing in various NFL head coaching positions. My analogy on the Joe Jon Bubbas is that if you failed as the general manager of a McDonald’s why would you be given a second chance at the Burger King down the street? That makes no sense whatsoever.

One of Berry Tramel’s greatest lines of all-time was in reference to OU firing its only black head football coach in history in 1998… John Blake. Tramel stated, ” Just because you work at a Taco Bell doesn’t mean you should manage a Taco Bell.” I thought it was a great line and I agreed with it because I would have fired John Blake if it were me.

But my question is why does the NFL keep hiring the same failed white Joe Jon Bubbas who litter NFL sidelines?

4. Since the implementation of the Rooney Rule in 2003 how much progress in the NFL has been made as far as the hiring of NFL general managers?

As of 2019, when Ozzie Newsom stepped down as the general manager of the Baltimore Ravens, one black general manager was left in the NFL, the Dolphins’ Chris Grier. As recently as 2016, however, the NFL had seven black general managers. In other words, inclusivity at the front office level has trended in the wrong direction since 2019 even with the Rooney Rule in place.

That’s it for my NFL Black History Month posts. Next up my U.S. Supreme Court Black History Months thoughts.

Have a wonderful Monday.

LET’S GO WARRIORS!

I’ve had this game circled for a while. I’m going and have my Warrior shirt for the game. I’m too old to wait on Sam Presti to see a legitimate team again in Oklahoma City. I hope the Thunder get there eventually, but I don’t have time for this nonsense for another three years or so.

I wish the Thunder well because I enjoy seeing other teams from major league cities with major league payrolls come here to play.

I wouldn’t call it my divorce from the Thunder, but more me just coming to the realization of what this franchise is all about. I’ll gladly pay the money, but not for this nonsense. And it’s not just this tank. It’s the fact they had Kevin Durant for a decade and never pulled the trigger on obtaining a real shooting guard to be on those Durant teams. Not acceptable.

I’ll never boo or act poorly at the games, but I’m divorcing these people because of irreconcilable differences on how they operate. But clearly, I want the team to survive so I can see other NBA teams come to the city…like the Warriors with Klay Thompson.

Klay since his return is averaging 16.3 ppg, 3.5 rbspg, and 3.1 astspg. He’s averaging 43% from the field and 38% from threes.

He’s coming off his best game since his return in a win versus the Kings.. On February 4th, Klay scored 23 points while shooting 72.7% from the field and 77.8% from behind the arc. That’s pretty good and Porter Moser would kill for half of that from his entire team.

Other than the OU women the basketball in this state this season is close to unwatchable. People shouldn’t have to pay to see this level of basketball. It’s horrific.

I think I have a ticket behind the Golden State bench if my ticket broker comes thru on the deal he thinks he has for me this game. He knows I’ll only pay 40-50% of face ticket value for any Thunder ticket. That’s our agreement. I don’t pay full price to see Tony Bennett tank at a concert and this is pretty much the same thing. This is entertainment, not some horseshit deal like being a Posse Club member and waiting once a decade to see a good team. That’s absolute bullshit.

I wish the Thunder the best in this game and I hope they give us a show…which I think they will if both Dort and Wiggins play in this game. I’d love to see Dort and Kenrich come with me to Golden State. I love what both of those two guys are all about. Just saying.

I’ll keep the blog just so there’s an honest voice on the Thunder in the market, but that’s the extent of it. No sex or intimate contact. Simply platonic.

LET’S GO WARRIORS!

I swear…it just seems like every day I’m becoming more and more like Melvin. Maybe it was these insane Trump people combined with Covid and the Daily Thunder messageboard which put me over the ledge. I don’t know. I just want to hang around with Auburn Chick and the dog, blog a little, and try to avoid the rest of humanity as much as I can this winter. Hopefully…it’s just a stage.

It’s Black History Month and we have an off Sunday for those of us who are passionate NFL fans.

We just can’t seem to get past race issues in this country even though the only black person to ever win the White House served two terms and today still has the highest approval rating of any living president. My guess is if you went further back with approval ratings even beyond the living presidents… Barack Obama would probably garner the highest approval rating of any POTUS in the past century.

Not because of his policies per se, but the fact he brought some dignity to the office.

Isn’t that odd considering for some reason the NFL today only has one black head coach?

I’m guessing Barack Obama’s popularity didn’t translate to the NFL billionaires club.

One black head coach in a league dominated by black athletes. One, that being Mike Tomlin with the Pittsburgh Steelers. One.

Thank goodness for the Rooney family or that number would be none. There’s even a rule named for the Rooney family in this regard called the Rooney Rule, which just recently fired Brian Flores is challenging in a lawsuit. Flores won his last eight games with the Dolphins and lost his job while Mike McCarthy in Dallas somehow kept his job. That seems a little odd.

Isn’t it strange the NBA, another black dominated American professional sports league, boasts a forty per cent ratio of coaches?

Who was the first black quarterback to start an NFL season? It was Joe Gilliam with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1974.

Who was the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl? That would be Doug Williams in 1988 with the Washington Redskins. I in no way plan on calling the Redskins the Commanders…that’s just silly at this point and I’m not generally a politically correct person. But racism in America isn’t silly because it still exists and it was emboldened openly by the 45th president of the United States.

Can you imagine we have white people in this country who today question a black female judge being nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court despite the fact she graduated from Harvard and has the exact amount of experience on the federal appellate court as Clarence Thomas?

What would be the problem I ask aloud?

Same qualifications, same color.

Both are much more qualified than the four times bankrupted dimwit who liked to share erotic furniture store shopping tales to his bus buddy Billy B. I mean…that person’s main qualification minus being the Celebrity Apprentice magistrate was the fact his Daddy left him a $420 million trust fund.

Go figure these Trump people with some logic attached. I double dare you. Tell me what it is I don’t understand.

But it’s stunning in professional sports we still in America can’t come to terms with the notion of racial equality.

I’m not sure what to write about Porter Moser’s basketball team right now. I want to be fair. Don’t want to knee jerk and overreact to the Sooners’ seventh loss in their last eight games.

But I also don’t run a little fluffy homery blog either. I don’t want this to read like a Thunder post game presser. I’d like to say… for the most part I try to tell it like it is.

From the point OU went to Austin at 2-1 in Big 12 play this team has not been the same, or you could just say they’ve been exposed by the fact the level of competition in the rugged Big 12 is just too much for this roster of players.

I’m a very pragmatic blogger. A Libra. I knew going into conference play the Sooners would be challenged to go 8-11 in conference play. I thought the ceiling for OU in this league would be at best a fourth or fifth best place finish in the league.

As of this writing if I were doing a Big 12 poll I would have the Sooners at No. 9 only ahead of West Virginia.

Correctable errors aren’t being corrected. It’s not one thing. One game it’s turnovers like it was in this Bedlam game in Stillwater. Another game it’s OU getting hammered on their defensive boards like it was in Monday’s loss at home to TCU. In another game like the one in Stillwater it was the lack of any real assertive point guard play.

It’s a multitude of things.

I’m not some newbie watching OU hoops. From the point of Johnny Mac’s teams back in the old fieldhouse through yesterday it’s rare I’ve missed an OU basketball game.

I wouldn’t say OU is lacking heart as much as I would say they’re lacking a point guard who will step up and lead the team. Porter Moser can’t do this from the bench.

Jordan Goldwire is a senior transfer from Duke who struggles on the offensive end of the floor. Bijuan Cortez is a freshman not ready for the rigors of the rugged Big 12. Austin Reaves now plays for the Lakers and Davion Harmon who should have been the Sooners’ point guard this season transferred to play for Lon Kruger’s buddy Dana Altman in Oregon.

It you’re a real sports fans in Norman the real story beyond Caleb Williams going to USC is that Porter Moser doesn’t have a point guard who can handle the challenges this league presents every single possession.

On Saturday at Gallagher-Iba, I only witnessed two OU players who I thought were competitively engaged. That would be Tanner Grove and EJ Harkless.

Tanner scored 23 points and was the lone bright spot in this loss in Bedlam I. EJ Harkless did score 15 points, but he also committed a Westbrookian eight turnovers and appeared to blow up anytime the Sooners needed to hunker down and run an offense of any sort.

The other OU players went a combined 7-32 from the field. Seniors Jalen Hill and Moj Gibson both played two of the softest games I’ve seen from either of them in their OU basketball careers.

Jacob Grove and Ethan Chargois gave the Sooners virtually nothing coming off the bench. As in nothing.

I honestly don’t know what else to say. Your season was on the brink and you’re playing in a rivalry game against an Oklahoma State team which is on probation and has its own plethora of offensive challenges and only Tanner Grove shows up to play.

OU has eight Big 12 games remaining. At home the Sooners get Texas, Texas Tech, O State, and West Virginia. On the road the Sooners play Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and Texas Tech. Tell me where you see four or five wins in those eight basketball games.

OU’s Season on the Brink went the wrong way this week in a draconian way. These were two games the Sooners desperately needed. It was the first time in OU hoops history they lost to TCU in Norman. It was Mike Boynton’s third straight win in Bedlam and Cade Cunningham is now a Detroit Piston.

My advice to first year coach Porter Moser right now would be to not worry about making the Big Dance, but instead to take his team to a level of play where they can execute basketball basics as a team and hopefully find a way as a team to play forty minutes of basketball at a Power 5 level befitting a program which in fact has a storied basketball history.

My wife was friends with the sister of the second wife of Bobby Knight. Back when Season on the Brink was just released and then became a NY Times bestseller…I obviously bought and read the book. I loved it.

So around this time Gina told my wife she was heading to Bloomington to spend a week with her sister and Bob Knight. I asked her if she would take my book and get it autographed by Coach Knight.

True story. When Gina got back she handed my wife my copy of Season on the Brink and another hard copy of a book titled Bob Knight: His Own Man by Joan Mellon.

Evidently…Coach Knight was so outraged by how he was portrayed by John Feinstein in Season on the Brink he then worked with an English Lit professor from Temple named Joan Mellon to write the second book.

So I look in my copy of Season on the Brink and it’s not autographed. Then I open my copy of Joan Mellon’s book and it’s autographed by Coach Knight with a note attached.

The note read:

Mike,

You wasted your time reading the other book. This book better depicts who I really am.

Best wishes, Bob Knight

——————————————-

In closing this post…

Hang in there, Coach Moser and always remember ‘Player makes the coach.’ That never changes…. just ask Greg Popovich.

I tell you what…my whole world view of Little Nick Gallo did a three-sixty in Portland on Friday night as LNG led the Thunder to their straight win with a hard fought 96-93 win over the injury/trade decimated Portland Trailblazers.

I thought he did good. He made me proud. He’s actually better when you give him a sustained run of minutes on the air. I’m not saying he’s Tony Romo or Jeff van Gundy or Al Michael, but he wasn’t bad and I’m giving LNG my first helmet sticker for the win in Portland. I’m thinking the guys looked over there and said to themselves…”If Little Nick Gallo can pull his link on the proverbial chain then the least we can do is handle this horrible Portland team.”

My second helmet sticker goes to Mamadi Diakite for his nice solid play in the paint. I’m very aware of this guy because he played significant minutes on the that 2019 Virginia national championship team. OU played Virginia in the second round of that tournament, and he was a good player. I’m not saying he’s a star, but he could certainly fill the Nerlens Noel role and the Thunder with Diakite, JRE, and Muscala could play the Center by Committee option next season when they start trying to win games again.

My third helmet sticker goes to Ty Jerome because he’s turning himself into a functional NBA hybrid guard who will be a solid piece moving down the road.

My observation of the game is without Shai on the floor the ball doesn’t stick. The ball floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. I see a lot of options moving forward on how to construct a pretty nice team if that’s what Sam Presti wants to do in Oklahoma City.

Next up… the return of Chris Fisher in Sacramento tomorrow night. Postgame song is for Little Nick Gallo for livin’ the dream in Portland. Maybe they need to think of a new role for LNG.

Skies are bright blue at the Deer Creek Weather Station. Ten inches of snow fell in this historic storm. Not a trace of wind today. Pretty good snow removal weather. Some of the other inmates here at the Deer Springs Correctional HOA Facility are arguing amongst themselves as to how several of them parked their fantasy Urban Cowboy trucks prior to the storm in regards to driveway exit trajectories. None of these dudes have made it thru a hard day of labor in their lives. Typical Edmond bullshit. Sigh.

Pauli is exhausted and napping after her lunch and three rewinds of the Walter the Cat commercial.

Think I’m going to hook up the boom box and pipe some music outside while I start shoveling snow.

This is one of those kind of days you could actually get a snow tan from the reflection of the rays. Not a beach, but it’ll have to do today.

Thinking of the city slicker Edmond Urban Cowboys made me remember this song. Great song…can’t believe I paid to see the movie though. Bud & Sissy….sigh.

I would assume or hope the Thunder after the conclusion of this second season of tanking begin the process of finding their next head coach. The kid Presti has put in charge of the tank has done a nice job for I’m sure what is a league low salary, but it’s time to start getting serious again. I’m not dissing the tank coach, but like I’ve written on here before I can’t imagine one team in the Big 12 would hire Mark D as their head coach.

You know, actually hiring a proven successful head coach who might be a fit with all these young players and Nick Collison in the front office might be a logical next step once we see who the Thunder draft this summer.

My first interview was with Bill Self of Kansas. I’ll put Bill Self down again below on this post below. My second interview is with Jay Wright from Villanova. Like Self at Kansas, I like the manner in which he communicates with his players. I like the manner in which he runs his teams.

Both of these guys have been at their current jobs for a long time. Maybe one of them is ready to take the next challenge. Every coach has an ego which needs to be fed. Don’t ever miscalculate that doctrine of coaching.

For Self it makes total since. He graduated from Edmond Memorial. He played for Eddie Sutton at O State. He head coached at Tulsa University and Illinois before taking on the Kansas job which is just like feeding the OU football monster.

So…my short list so far is two as in Bill Self and Jay Wright.

I doubt you’d ever read something like this at the Daily Thunder. You know why? They wouldn’t have Sam Presti’s written permission.

That’s why.

Truth hurts.

This is Bill Self after his top ranked Jayhawks didn’t get a chance to play in the Covid cancelled NCAA Tournament. Great coach. Straight from the Eddie Sutton tree, yet unlike Sutton’s run at Kentucky, Bill Self has carved out a hall of fame coaching career at Kansas. Whereas Coach Sutton’s Hall of Fame resume basically came from his stints at Creighton, Arkansas, and Illinois.

What I’m saying is that under the brightest lights in Lawrence…Bill Self has emerged and survived as an elite coach known for his strong relationships with his players.

I tell you this… after a guy watches over thirteen-hundred minutes of Seinfeld in a thirty-six- hour window he could use a song or two to clear the mind.

I need a couple of songs to do just that.

It has to be seventy-degrees somewhere tomorrow…doesn’t it? But just not in Deer Creek, Oklahoma. Hang on and keep warm. If you’re a Trump faux evangelical or a member of the Oklahoma legislature you prolly shouldn’t click on this one. The video content might be too much for you given your fervent spiritual beliefs.

You gotta remember…I married an Auburn girl even though she told me she would never come back to Oklahoma. Told me not to fall in love with her because she’d never live in Oklahoma…then called me four months later and told me to come on down there and to a have talk about the situation. This kind of became our song that week. True story. Just like Noah and Allie in The Notebook. It’s not a bad fallback position for me for Auburn to be the No. 1 team in the country right now in hoops.

This is right there at the top of my Blake Shelton play list as well. There’s a great video which goes with this song, but it might be too much given this is Oklahoma. You don’t know which books the Proud Boys are going to burn first and which videos could get you thrown in prison fastest. I’ll play it safe and do it this way.

OU finally got the signature they’ve been waiting for on talented defensive back Gentry Williams from Booker T Washington in Tulsa.

In my mind…OU finishing as high as 8th nationally recruiting in this class considering the pathetic exit from Lincoln Riley the day after Bedlam is a testament to Brent Venables’ national reputation as an elite defensive coach who was in essence associate head coach on two Clemson national championship teams.

The Sooners restocked and in some cases in my mind will be better next season on the defensive side of the ball. I’d still like to see the Sooners add one more high-quality interior defensive lineman to mitigate the losses of Isaiah Thomas and Perrion Winfrey. But otherwise, I think OU will be better and deeper across the board defensively. I think the Sooners will have several edge rushers who make us forget the loss of Nik Bonito fairly quickly.

I look for Gentry Williams if he stays injury free to be the first Sooner defensive back freshman to crack the threshold of meaningful rotational minutes. He can play either corner, safety, or nickel. In my mind he has a chance to be as versatile as current Pittsburgh Steeler Tre Norwood. I thought Tre did dome very nice things with the Steelers this season.

Other than Caleb Williams…what did OU really lose to USC?

OU lost Mario Williams who other than making that play against Oregon in the Alamo Bowl probably had the lowest yards after catch numbers I can ever remember from an OU wide receiver on bubble screens. OU also lost defensive back Lawrence McCutcheon, but he like Williams will probably be better suited for the uber soft PAC 12. Neither will be losses OU will miss.

Spencer Rattler was already leaving regardless of what Lincoln Riley did. Jaden Hazlewood is a guy at wide receiver I would have liked to have kept, but with him going to Arkansas that might actually toughen him up as far as winning more fifty-fifty balls. I respect the fact Jaden chose Arkansas and is going to play for the Hogs in the rugged SEC West. I respect the fact he’s moving up rather than down competition-wise.

Losing Austin Stogner to South Carolina hurts, but OU is keeping senior Braden Willis and picked up Daniel Parker from Missouri in the portal. Plus, OU signed two really nice freshmen tight ends.

Considering the exit from Norman by Lincoln Riley….I think it’s fairly amazing the Sooners on paper look to be headed towards a Top Ten 2022-23 season.

Dillion Gabriel in my mind is the favorite to be the Big 12 Newcomer of the Year and possibly more depending on how quickly the offensive line comes together.

It was all good in Norman this week because we already knew Caleb Williams from the point of the Alamo Bowl postgame presser was headed to USC. That kid was more evasive in that presser than Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham two weeks after the Proud Boy-Little Brains Insurrection. I could see Caleb Williams becoming a United States senator at some juncture if the United States is actually still a nation by the time Caleb becomes age eligible.

If you didn’t think Caleb was becoming a Trojan…then you weren’t paying attention or reading my blog.

BOOMER!