A little bit more from me on Nick Collison before I move to something else on Monday. Again, I love what Nick Collison stands for in today’s greed/me first culture in the NBA.
Nick was the Big 12 Player of the Year his last season at Kansas. He was a lottery pick by Seattle in the NBA draft. On a different team, with different needs, he could have carved out a role with better individual stats. But that’s not what Nick Collison was or is about.
What Nick is about is giving his team and organization the best chance of realizing its potential and winning. The real Thunder fan remembers the Nick/Harden two man game and how he helped James Harden settle into a more productive role in that special 2012 season.
The real fan knows how much Nick helped both Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook become better, more mature NBA players. The real fans knows how he helped all of these young players conduct themselves as professional NBA athletes.
And, btw, to you Thunder fans who still hold a grudge against Kevin Durant…get over it. Both Kevin and Russell deserve to have their jerseys hung right there next Nick’s in the rafters. And if you’re that shallow and that stupid in regard to Kevin Durant—then I would suggest you’re not a real Thunder fan of any sort. You’re more what I would describe as a John Steinbeck/Grapes of Wrath Okie with an inferiority complex.
- And, yeah, btw, Mrs. Juanita Elijah had me read the Grapes of Wrath my junior year in her American Lit class. So MJ knows John Steinbeck and the Grapes of Wrath, plus Mice and Men, and East of Eden. Just saying. Don’t embarrass yourself with me on this with some pathetic post on my my private message board. Don’t go there with me.
Nick wrote a beautiful letter to the OKC fanbase following this summer’s NBA championship season expressing his feelings to the Thunder fanbase. It’s beautiful. I’m not going to post it on my blog because Nick works for the Thunder and in all honesty he probably doesn’t like some of the things I posted during all of the draconian tanking and premediated losing by his boss.
So I think it would possibly be disrespectable of me to post Nick’s heartfelt letter on my blog. I’m sure you can find it on the net following the amazing and always hard-hitting Little Nick Gallo.
Have a beautiful life, Nick Collison. You deserve it, buddy.
MJ