Quite frankly, I’m glad it’s over and I was rooting for Terry Stotts and his team to advance. I hope they keep it going and beat the winner of the Denver-San Antonio series as well. As I’ve written on here before–back in my college days–Stotts was a key piece on an OU team which won it’s first ever basketball Big 8 championship in the late 70’s.
I’m happy for Terry Stotts and his fabulous guard tandem of Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum. The team lost Josef Nurkic in the last weeks of the regular season and just kept coming and finding ways to win. I’m also happy for Enes Kanter for getting to have this moment in his professional basketball career.
As far as the Thunder—they are in basketball hell right now and Clay Bennett has some very serious thinking to do in the coming days to decide what to do with this team which quite frankly has been the biggest joke in the NBA for two years running now. We won’t be needing to witness Carmelo Anthony’s exit interview as an alibi as to what has gone wrong with what was as recent as 2016…the NBA’s version of America’s Team.
I’m not Sam Anderson. I’m not a liberal from the NY Times Magazine writing a book on urban renewal in Oklahoma City correlated with the Thunder basketball operations.
I’m very confident in my ability to tell this story as someone who’s lived this and knows sports…especially from a basketball perspective interwoven with a complete understanding of having lived most of my life in Oklahoma.
When I started this blog… not long after my father was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. So–in reality…this is the first year of my blog as it took me some time to adjust from what happen with my dad. But I did archive and outline on here and now I’m ready to go.
First and foremost–I’m a fan who wanted the Thunder to succeed. But I’m not a fan who’s a homer or who has a quid pro quo attached to making a living by running a Thunder blog or creating a Thunder brand which generates revenue.
I set out on this simply because of my genuine passion of sports and basketball in particular. I found it fascinating that in a place like Deer Creek, Oklahoma…players like Chris Paul, David West, Tyson Chandler, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Russell Westbrook and Paul George would be playing for an NBA team twenty minutes from my front door. Truly amazing what Hurricane Katrina set in place back when all this started.
So much has transpired from a basketball standpoint in this time span. It is not an exaggeration to claim only behind the Warriors have the Thunder been the most compelling NBA story during this time span
But as I sit here this morning–the Warriors are in pursuit of a threepeat and fourth championship in five years, while the Thunder have not won a playoff series since Durant’s escape to Oakland in July 2016.
The Thunder are a collective 4-12 in playoff games without Kevin Durant being the face of the franchise. With Durant—this franchise made it to four Western Conference Finals and the one NBA Finals in 2012.
The story here is very simple after last night’s ending in Portland–that ending being… the championship window in Oklahoma City officially ended.
We know the Russell Westbrook era doesn’t have a championship parade ending… or at least with Westbrook as the starting point guard.