As more and more of the story comes out it blows my mind what actually occurred on Friday night.
The Thunder it seems tried to trade both Paul George and Russell Westbrook to the Toronto Raptors in a deal which centered around Paschal Siakam. But in the end it did not happen and we have this deal the Thunder leveraged with the Clippers instead.
Amazing story.
It just goes to show you how star status contracts in the NBA don’t really mean all that much in this age of superstars building their own teams.
And it turns out that the seemingly quiet Kawhi Leonard was the biggest wheeler dealer in the group as he set all this in motion earlier in the week.
But I am glad Kawhi did not end up with the Lakers with that collection of talent pooled together. That would have been terrible for the league.
As far as the Thunder, they had already showed it didn’t matter how much they spent. They were not going to be championship relevant so in essence once Sam Presti unloads the remaining $171 million owed to Russell Westbrook we can see exactly what the Thunder are going to be moving forward.
I’m not crying because even if you kept these two guys together they weren’t going to win anything or do anything of any team consequence down the road.
They were 3-8 in post season together. They had fallen behind the Utah Jazz, the Denver Nuggets, and the Portland Trailblazers in the pecking order of the Northwest Division. Forget about calibrating any path to an NBA title, Sam Presti didn’t have a plan in place to win his own division.
Presti didn’t move beyond Billy Donovan. He used his recent first round pick to evidently do another Josh Huestis stash or something of the like. He added a couple of vets in Muscala and Burk who in no way would have changed the narrative for the Thunder.
So…at some point why not at least get your fiscal house in order and see if there’s a path to putting a team on the floor which can at least be competitive and have a star who can answer a Berry Tramel question.
The Thunder are not a playoff team even with Westbrook still on this roster so it would seem a youth rebuild is in the offing once we know where Russell Westbrook lands. These Thunder not only will not make the playoffs, but they will not be in the NBA’s Christmas Day package of games.
On this past Friday night the the NBA universe changed in Oklahoma City. The reality of a league Howard Schultz sold himself out of came ‘thundering down’ upon the college market of Oklahoma City.
I’m okay with this because the way the Thunder played the past two seasons was literally unwatchable at times and it will be refreshing to see some young players trying to establish themselves in the NBA.
But let’s make this clear, the window in Oklahoma City didn’t close on Friday night and into early Saturday morning. That window closed on July 4th, 2016, but was only completely validated this week-end by Sam Presti himself.