This Colin Cowherd piece was excellent and I’ve been saving it to see what Sam Presti was going to say. I mean, heck, this piece even has something by Low Energy Royce Young where it sounds like the writer isn’t fourteen years of age and an assistant coach at a U10 YMCA rec league. Good for Low Energy Royce Young…. you just had a flash of genius experience. Go get a Dippy Topped ice cream cone with Little Nick Gallo and call it a month.
Thank you, Colin Cowherd for being the adult in the room.
Here’s the thing, Russell Westbrook has the knees of a forty year-old matched with the emotional maturity of a twenty year-old. This isn’t going to work. It didn’t even work in 2012 in the NBA Finals when Harden was still around to be the point guard co-pilot.
This was good. Spot on. Bottom line…Russell Westbrook needs to change his game while Sam Presti and Billy Donovan quit enabling this immature losing culture to continue.
You’ll notice the San Antonio Spurs with the best coach in NBA history in the collective bargaining era aren’t anything special without Timmy Duncan in his prime being the face of the franchise in the Alamo City.
I would also hope the local scribes who cover the Thunder would take notice the Thunder aren’t all that much without No. 35 making Russell Westbrook appear to be a point guard who can take an NBA team to at the minimum a division championship and perhaps a second round appearance in the NBA post season tournament.
So really what has Sam Presti done in Oklahoma City once Kevin Durant decided nothing was going to change with the Thunder in relation to the way Russell Westbrook plays the point guard position?
In these three years since the Hamptons—the Thunder have won 47, 48, and 49 regular season games. They have not won an outright Northwest Division championship. They have been the No. 6, the No. 4, and the No. 6 seeds in the rugged Western Conference. They are 4-12 in post season games when as real sports people know is when the real NBA season separates the pretenders from the contenders.
The Thunder with Presti making the decisions did not opt for a gradual rebuild after the Durant escape from Oklahoma. The best trade Presti ever made was to trade Serge Ibaka for Victor Oladipo, Domas Sabonis and Ersan Ilyasova who was later traded for the rights to Jerami Grant. This was a great trade. This was the trade which if left alone would have produced three young players all on rookie scale contracts who would have been the obvious core of the Thunder moving forward.
Imagine if you will the Thunder right now with Oladipo, Adams, Sabonis, Grant, and Ferguson as the starting core with some 6th man later acquired who could score the ball.
This isn’t a championship team, but at least it’s not a farcical joke bordering on the Little Miss Sunshine version of an NBA team with acute dysfunctional disorder.
This would actually be a young team one could like and somewhat respect.
Instead–Presti and Clay Bennett pushed all their chips in the middle for Carmelo Anthony and then made the trade for Paul George. Only problem is—they still had a point guard who to date has proved he can’t win anything without Kevin Durant carrying his lunch pail for him.
Paul George is a ball player. I’d roll with Paul George because he’s an honest two way player on both ends of the floor. In fact–after Durant’s escape from Oklahoma Crazy … Paul George was the player at the top of my list to replace Kevin Durant.
But we’ve witnessed to date that is Paul George is not enough to mitigate the absurdly high usage Russell Westbrook who turned into Frankenstein during the Oscar Roberson triple double season when every bad habit he previously had was stoked even more by Sam Presti and his decision making.
I haven’t written anything on here in regards to Donald Trump in quite some time and I’ve written nothing to date about the Mueller Report. I don’t need to read the Mueller Report because I already knew as the son a really good trial lawyer that collusion with the Russians would be an extremely difficult thing to prove in an American courtroom.
I already knew Trump was a human junk bond so it’s not like even now I care what’s inside the Mueller Report.
He’s a pussy grabber. He’s a liar. He’s a cheat. He’s a rogue, a grifter, little-handed motherfucker with a tiny dick who needs to get off by bullying others even though his top tier escort wife has taken on the issue of bullying as her First Lady national cause. He doesn’t even have a dog because no dog would claim this piece of shit as his owner.
But I will give him this–he does fully understand how far America has fallen from a cultural standpoint and knows how to exploit this on a Twitter account.
And I have to admit as a rogue Thunder blogger…whenever I see our own Little Nick Gallo and Low Energy Royce Young trying to do whatever it is they think they’re doing with Russell Westbrook…I start laughing so hard it’s as if I’m young again and reading a Dan Jenkins novel in my high school American Lit class.
Who could make this shit up?
I mean–this is straight out of Sam Anderson’s Boom Town if he had stayed around this long to extend his book. But of course—he would have spared Low Energy Royce Young because they’re friends.
Only in Oklahoma could an NBA team spend $200 million dollars on a season and finish in 4th place in the Northwest Division, go 1-3 against the last place Timberwolves…and then not fire their college coach even though they hedged the $6 million by dumping TLC’s salary and tax implications at the trade deadline.
Only in a place where Mary Fallin could be elected to two terms as governor could something like this happen.
I’m okay though. It isn’t my money or my team. I call it Oklahoma Crazy, not Boom Town.
And you know who are the happiest people on the face of the earth this morning? Kevin Durant and his entourage because they have been fully vindicated by what has been displayed in Oklahoma City since the departure on July 4th, 2016.
It was like listening to Trump hit the 10,000 lie plateau in his historically corrupt presidency. Does Sam Presti think every human on the universe only reads Low Energy Royce Young and Little Nick Gallo?
I was embarrassed for him…and the lip smacking. He literally drove me insane with the seemingly never ending lip smacking. First thing you learn in a college speech class is no gum chewing and no lip smacking. I knocked them dead with my final speech in my college speech class. Sam Presti is not in my class in that regard.
It was as if this was his first rodeo giving this speech.
I’m not sure Sam Presti hasn’t been given way too much credit for being a basketball savant.
Okay. Portland took Greg Oden in the draft. Then as we know everyone’s grandmother would have taken Kevin Durant as the second player in the draft.
So without Durant—Sam Presti is 4-12 in post season as a GM with one of the league’s highest payrolls these past two seasons.
That’s just a fact.
But he’s in Oklahoma and like when Trump is in West Virginia… they both know they can make up anything and the local simpletons will nod their heads.
The parts about Russell Westbrook’s three point shooting and the absence of the always fragile Alex Abrines as being factors which he couldn’t have forecast left my jaw agape.
Wow. Seriously…wow.
Keep chucking threes Russ because we all know Alex Abrines will be back from Spain to get the Thunder over the hump next season.
I’ll do this blind without even knowing the Thunder’s roster or schedule next season…. OKC will be a first round exit again next season and be the No. 8 seed in the West.
This morning I was driving my truck and Rocket Man by Elton John came on and it reminded me of Sam Presti. He kind of reminds me of a one-half ET and a one-half Mr. Rodgers.
So it’s not like I’m expecting anything of consequence tomorrow at his faux presser. He’ll feed these Okie dimwits what they need to hear to write their almost virtually unreadable stories. It’s pathetic…like I said yesterday…like Trump at one of his rallies in West Virginia telling those idiots coal is the ticket.
I think about this constantly…of Oklahoma, West Virginia and Alabama—which one is the dumbest state in the Union…and, uh, I can never really come to a conclusive winner.
I haven’t written anything yet on our corrupt grifter president and the Mueller Report because there’s been too many great things going in the world of sports. I may try and work something in on Donald Trump later this week and start breaking down the Vegas odds on the 2020 presidential election. CSPAN and Nate Silver have both sent me private messages telling me they like my political stuff and would be interested in co-linking. We’ll see.
My grandson…Baby Robert—went on a five mile hike straight up a mountain just outside of Denver yesterday and evidently all went well. Chris and Elaine both love hockey and are going to the Colorado Avs Game 3 tomorrow night at the Pepsi Center. Avs have the next superstar in the NHL in # 29 MacKinon on their team, please make sure and watch him play.
I just hope at the Presti presser that his henchmen don’t pre-script questions for Little Nick Gallo and Low Energy Royce Young to ask fluffers to make the mood easier than it should be considering how badly the Thunder have underachieved these past two seasons.
Warriors one up on the Rockets and the Celtics finally flexed their muscles in their opener at Milwaukee. I’m rooting for my buddies Terry Stotts and CJ McCollum’s father to beat Denver, but I think they’ll really miss Nurkic in this series because Denver’s coach (Mike Malone) will not be outcoached like Billy Donovan was in the first round.
I’m not losing any sleep over the Thunder. They’ve become anecdotal at this point and I don’t want to change the domain on my blog.
I haven’t played this in the month of April and I have to play it at least once a month to get thru the presidency of Donald Trump. So if you’re white, and if you’re poor, and if lightening quick Sec of Commerce Wilbur Ross isn’t laundering any cash for you yet in his Cypriot bank….this is for you.
I’m beat. Tough day. I could use a Diana Krall song. Too much rain.
This blog wasn’t put in place to give readers the usual dose of rainbows and butterflies they might get from other Thunder blogs. This blog was put in place because as a long time NBA fan I became frustrated with the low level of coverage provided in this market minus when Berry Tramel feels as if he’s seen enough.
So I know we have this big Sam Presti event coming up this next week. Apparently… he’s going to do his best job of imitating Donald Trump at a West Virginia rally explaining why coal should be the fuel of the future. Just so we’re clear Thunder fans…you’re West Virginia and that wasn’t a compliment if you think it through.
I was actually going to pull up Carmelo’s exit interview from last year and came upon this. Again, if I could unload Russell Westbrook and the worst current contract in the NBA for say Buddy Hield and D’Andre Fox or Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum—I would jump all over it not think twice.
I wouldn’t blink. So, for the second straight Sam Presti State of the Union Speech—the general manager of what was in 2016 still America’s Team before the Game 6 meltdown against the Warriors holds in his hands the worst current contract in the NBA.
Carmelo, actually of the three, might have been the most lovable guy at the podium. But there is a sweetness about Paul George I have to admit.
What I would give to have an OKC Thunder media pass just to be able to ask Russell Westbrook three questions before being escorted out of the media room.
Denver, in beating the Spurs tonight in Game 7, won their first playoff series since 2009 when Carmelo was still the face of the Denver Nugget franchise.
I would assume the 2019 version of Sam Presti’s State of the Thunder will be coming sometime early this next week.
I don’t know what else to say. So…I’ll post this and then hear what his spin is on the current state of the Thunder and then make a post of some sort on here.
Presti is definitely a smart dude, but I get this feeling he doesn’t have the ability to admit internally he may not always be the smartest guy in the room.
He and Clay Bennett have quite bit on their table right now so the best of luck to them as they navigate through this summer figuring out –what’s next for the Thunder?
The Thunder season is mercifully over, yet there’s been so many great things in sports recently it’s not at all that big of a deal to me. Life goes on and besides I was pulling for Terry Stotts. The NCAA basketball tournament was excellent with Auburn, Virginia, Texas Tech and Michigan State. Tiger’s win at the Masters is one which will go down for the ages. And who knows maybe in these NBA playoffs we might have something great lurking with this Houston-Golden State series which in my mind pits the two best two teams against one another in the Western Conference semis.
I love the Stanley Cup Playoffs. For me, there is nothing like playoff hockey. There is a sheer beauty in the speed, skill, smarts and toughness which is the essence of hockey played at the highest level on the biggest stage.
Like in the NBA, a team has to win four series and sixteen games to hoist the cup. Unlike with the NBA though, there is still a respect for the manner in which the game is played at all times and not the allowance for all the superstar nonsense.
In the first round both in the East and in the West the No. 1 seeds Tampa and Calgary were eliminated rather easily. The East lost both of their premier stars from the tournament both Ovechkin and Sid Crosby’s teams were both eliminated. This won’t be good for television ratings I would think, yet the games go on and an eventual champion will be crowned.
The Boston Bruins are my team. Always have been since the days when I was a kid and Boston’s Triple A affiliate was right here in Oklahoma City. My two favorite players of all-time are both Bruins… both defensemen. Bobby Orr and Raymond Bourque. Both won Cups. Orr won two with Boston before his knees gave out and Bourque never won a Cup in Boston, but did win a Cup at the twilight of his career with the Colorado Avalanche.
I’m not sure who my third favorite player is at times…it changes from time to time. Not Gretzky for sure—he was a pretty boy who needed an enforcer. A real hockey player can do these five things…skate, shoot, pass, check, and fight when you have to command your space on the ice. Maybe Gordie Howe is my third favorite player.
Anyway, with all the top teams minus Boston in the East falling in the first round Vegas probably has the Bruins as the team to beat in the East. But I take nothing for granted because hockey is a sport where you have to earn every inch and every goal to survive through the bracket and advance. Columbus will be tough.
Tough to glean much from this one way or another. You would have hoped for a little more self examination from a team standpoint, of why OKC is 4-12 without Durant, but to me way too much was centered on stats, triple doubles, and things which Russell Westbrook feels can’t be taken away from his individual legacy regardless of if the Thunder ever win a first round series again.
I don’t find Russell Westbrook to be either an interesting or compelling interview. I found myself listening to his gum chomping cadence as much as anything.
He never once to me articulated if all this post season losing hurt him in a serious way.
I didn’t take much from this either way. If you told me you could trade Russell for Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum… I’d do it. If you told me a package was possible which would include DeAndre Fox, Buddy Hield, a big or perhaps a draft pick as well…I’d do it. If something reasonable is out there…I’d seriously explore it moving forward.
Bottom line…you can’t win in the NFL with a QB who almost every time it matters throws two picks in the fourth period in a game when it really matters. Russell Westbrook is that NFL quarterback analogy-wise.
If the singular goal for Clay Bennett and Sam Presti in OKC is to see Russell Westbrook break the career triple double record then they’re on track. But if the goal is to be post season relevant—I don’t see that with Russell Westbrook in Oklahoma City. What I see is the worst current contract in the NBA looming over the Thunder’s head.
First off…Jim Traber is my slam dunk winner for the best Thunder coverage of the Oklahoma City Thunder this basketball season. Not even close. His work and his sense of humor were the only things from this market which I at all found consistently entertaining.
I went Mark Rodgers at No. 2 and Dusty D at No. 3 with Berry Tramel at No. 4.
The Thunder youth demographic which evidently reads Low Energy Royce Young and Little Nick Gallo did not crack my Top Ten. You can’t be a love slave to your Thunder employer and make my list. You at some point have to construct an honest paragraph to make my list.
So…Traber’s Theory of Thunder Punkification goes that the idiotic public relations department and Sam Presti of the Thunder has allowed the petulant Westbrook to spread punkism throughput the whole team.
I do agree Russell Westbrook is now regularly behaving like a punk, but I don’t think this has spread throughout the entire team. When your point guard and ‘leader’ behaves like a punk then it’s really hard to confront him if the coach, general manager and owner won’t do the same.
Hence, one of Kevin Durant’s major complaints abut the Thunder…they wouldn’t reign Westbrook in and make him accountable. So–I wouldn’t just blame Billy Donovan for what has happened here. I would hold Clay Bennett and Sam Presti as equally responsible for the Punkification of the Thunder in what is a market which describes itself as being a Christian faith based city.
I guess the part where you look up into the stands in Utah and tell a woman you’re going to f–k her up is a part I missed in the New Testament. Or where you every game tell the game officials they’re full of shit on national television. Or the part where you act like a ten year old dropping F bombs after making a shot in the second period. Or the part where you curse to the other bench. Or the part where on certain nights you tell yourself to f–k off on the court. Or the part where you don’t answer Berry Tramel’s questions, yet answer three questions in a row to your boy pet gerbil…Little Nick Gallo.
This is so odd to me. Because when I became a father and my wife had our son…I got my act together. Yet with Westbrook, the exact opposite apparently has happened. What would you say to your young son after acting like an idiot on television? What kind of example is that? Do I go too far in saying Westbrook is almost as bad of an example to young men as the grifter Donald Trump?
Are you kidding me, Oklahoma City Thunder organization?
So.. I guess the Oklahoma City Thunder are having their exit interviews today to explain this Titanic of a basketball season.
Perhaps, this would be an appropriate time for Sam Presti to apologize to the season ticket holders for what they just pissed their money away for thinking they were going to see a professional basketball team with the third highest payroll in the NBA.