Without Chancey Billups and with Jrue Holiday the Portland Trailblazers look like a different group. This in no way was a horrific loss considering who sat out for the Thunder on Wednesday night. Nope. In fact, if Jrue stays healthy and can be the glue to this young team…the Blazers might be a team we put on ‘a team to watch this season’ list.
But what OKC is doing in relation to Shai’s heavy, heavy minutes these first tens games makes little sense to me.
If you’re going to play by the load management Bible then I would suggest Shai be the benefactor of much of this load managing.
Like the other MJ, Michael Jordan, this MJ has little tolerance for excessive tank,ing and excessive sitting by certain NBA players. It takes away from the authenticity of the regular season games. Tanking and too much load management are two of the primary reasons the NBA iniated the Emirates NBA Cup. That being, to make organizations put more authenticity into the regular season games.
I love these Thunder players most of whom became members of the organization due to the draconian tanking of Sam Presti. Yeah…figure it out–the Thunder have depth like no other team in the Association and much of that depth is because of so many players still on rookie scale deals or low enough salaries to keep the Thunder out of the 2nd apron of the payroll tax.
So…let’s look at who didn’t play for the Thunder last night…per my Top 6 Thunder list I posted yesterday…2 JDub, 3, the seemingly always brittle and bruised Chet H, 4 Caruso, 5 Lu Dort, and 12 Kenrich Williams.
That would be five of the Thunder’s Top 12 sitting last night against a pretty good team while the cornerstone of the franchise logged a heavy 38 minutes while keeping his team competitively afloat with 35 points.
This is bullshit. This is precisely what Michael Jordan is currently talking about in a public manner. That being, the overall softness of the current players in the NBA. Caruso and Lu Dort should be ashamed of themselves. I expect this type of bullshit from Chet, but not those two.
If I were the FBI and the NBA …I’d be as concerned about the overuse of load managementand tanking as much of that of point shaving in low profile games.
But in closing let me write this down before logging off…Shai, Aaron, Ajay, I-Hart, and perhaps JWill played their asses off last night. If you Thunder fans are still going to keep booing Kevin Durant who seldom missed games with Thunder except for the Jones fracture season…you might want to hope this load management is applied in a more nuanced manner so as not to burn out Shai before the real season begins in April.
Jrue Holiday is a nice fit for these Blazers. He went 6-10 from behind the arc last night. Jrue’s the type of hybrid guard who in my view could not only replace Fred van Fleet for the Houston Rockets, but give the Rockets the type of two-way guard play they will need if they’re to overtake the Thunder in the West. We’ll have to see how many games Jrue plays this season by the week before the trade deadline.
The West is starting to take shape a bit. OKC, San Antonio, Denver, Lakers, Rockets, Warriors, Blazers and maybe the struggling TWolves who now have Anthony Edwards back on the court.
I think this year’s trade deadline will be fascinating to see which team in the West adds the neccessary player to challenge the Thunder.
But if I’m Sam Presti and Coach Mark…those heavy, heavy Shai minutes might be something to start tracking if the other players are so soft they can’t pull their links on the proverbial chain.
Peace, grace, and dignity.
MJ