Kevin was superb Sunday evening at his old haunt inside the Peake as his Nets toyed with this Sam Hinkie version of the Oklahoma City Thunder by a score 120-96.
It was vintage efficent Durant as he scored 33 points on a 9-17 shooting night. Patty Mills was superb as well chipping in 28 points on a night when he went 9-12 from beyond the arc.
When Patty Mills shoots he ball like that the absence of Kyrie Irving isn’t really noticeable. But I would guess Kyrie will be back sometime after Christmas and be an active contributor to the Nets.
Good to see former OU National Player of the Year Blake Griffin has found a basketball home where he can play on a relevant team to close out his NBA career.
James Harden as well seems to have found a place with Kevin even though he needs to lose weight and recalibrate his game to the new NBA rules which were designed to put a halt to him living on the free throwline.
But Kevin Durant’s game is still gold regardless of what the Oklahoma City fanbase wants to think of his departure from Oklahoma City in 2016. In retrospect Kevin was right for leaving the Thunder. He never would have won a championship in Oklahoma City.
I put it on Sam Presti. He never reeled in Russell Westbrook’s game. He never really added a true starting shooting guard to the Thunder while the Durant window was still in place from 2012 thru 2016.
Presti never hired a head coach who could control Russell Westbrook’s worst inner basketball impulses in the last six minutes of meaniful games and it is what it is.
You will never ever hear Little Nick Gallo or Royce Young say this on a Thunder telecast. Because quiet frankly both are Sam Presti puppets versus being journalists with any hubris whatsoever. They’re puppets on a payroll. It would be like asking the Trump kids to evalulate their father’s presidency.
I have no agenda. I’m not on Presti’s payroll. I want the Thunder to be good. I’ve forgotten more basketball than either of the puppets will ever know. I’m not writing this to be mean, but on a blog you’re supposed to write honestly. It bothers they never are just truthful in making evaluations on the team they ostensibly cover. A journalist is supposed to be a conduit of truth and knowledge versus just being a paid for pimp.
As far as the Thunder… I hope Sam Presti really knows what he’s doing with this Sam Hinkie rebuild of his.
Here’s my Vegas Thunder take on the Thunder from an actuarial point of view. I just turned 64 in October. Let’s say realisticly I live to be 75. I’m not trying to be morbid, I’m just trying to be somewhat pragmatic about the Thunder and why I’m adopting the Warriors and the Heat this season. If I were Vegas I would calibrate the Oklahoma City will not win another first round playoff series during the remainder of Mike Jackson’s time on this earth.
I don’t mean that in a snarky way. I’m not trying to be hateful. I hope the team holds enough interest for the people in Oklahoma City to keep buying tickets and sustaining the team, but I don’t at this point have any faith that even if some of these draft picks actually hit that Presti can in this sleepy little Donald Trump redneck market keep players here who really don’t want to be playing here.
I’ve written this on my blog before. Even though my birth certificate says I’m white. I don’t consider myself white. I’ve consider myself mixed ever since my liberation at John Marshall during my high school years.
If I were an elite black NBA player… Oklahoma City would be the absolute last city in the league I would want to be playing in. And I write this in spite of all the wonderful things which have been done via MAPS thru the years.
It’s not the city’s infrastructure per se which would drive me away, but it’s more to the point it would be hard for me to ignore the fact the people I was playing in front of in my own arena see America thru the same prism as Donald Trump.
That would bother me. That hypocrisy would eat at me day by day. The fact I still have relatives who defend Trump bothers me. It has altered the way I evaluate people. Maybe that’s a sad commentary of me, but it’s a truthful one…and I’m truthful on my blog.
So when I think about Kevin Durant’s career post Oklahoma City and contemplate these fans who still hate him… I smile to myself for Kevin Durant. He won his two rings. He won two Finals MVP trophies. Maybe he’ll win another at some point…. if Kyrie would pull his shit together and Harden would lose some weight.
Kevin needs to damn well stay off Twitter would my primary suggestion to him, but otherwise Kevin Durant is evolving as a player and a human.
Moving forward, always forward.
I’m happy for him. Not happy enough to adopt him over Tyler Herro and the Miami Heat this season, but happy for him from an avuncular lense of sorts. Kevin’s journey is still a work in progress.
Tyler Herro in town tonight as the Heat need to take care of Sam Hinkie’s tanking Thunder squad.
Light ’em up, Tyler.
Note to Sam Presti…play Mike Muscala tonight and quit cheating your own paying customers and see if that gives the game the appearance of something beyond a fixed outcome. Your working defintion of sustainablity and mine are virtual worlds apart. Maybe galaxies apart.
Note to self…I love the fact I just used ‘avuncular’ in my Kevin Durant column today. It’s a great adjective Americans should use more often.