First off…I love Jerry West and on this very blog I’ve been writing for quite some time he would bring the Clippers full circle from being Donald Sterling’s joke franchise to a contender.
He is Mr. NBA. He is the logo of the league. He’s is the most successful executive in the league and right after he snookered Sam Presti back in 2016 in the Hamptons…I looked at my father and said, “Clay Bennett should hire Jerry West.”
And here we sit three years later a franchise on the verge of going into full tank mode because the Thunder were once again tooled by Jerry West.
Now some in this small college market will say Sam Presti won the trade with this truckload of draft choices who could very well turn out to be Cameron Payne, Mitch McGary, Josh Huestis, Cole Aldrich, Alex Abrines, Terrance Ferguson and now this person named Darius Bazley or whatever.
These same people claim Sam Presti is a NBA savant of sorts. Oh, really. Tell me of one village idiot you know who wouldn’t have drafted Kevin Durant after Portland took Greg Oden as the No. 1 pick. Tell me of one person you know who then wouldn’t have taken Durant.
These last two days I’ve sat back and read the local scribes in innocent college market Oklahoma City rationalize how this trade went down and how the fact that in a week the Thunder in reality have dumped their three best players and how Presti won this trade with this slew of picks who could be the next generation of Josh Huestis and Darius Bazley.
And for the most part I’ve bitten my tongue with these people.
In a way this is karma for Oklahoma City and what happened in Seattle. This is a rude introductory course on what it’s really like to be city with a major league sports franchise.
I’m guessing every person in Seattle is smiling right now.
Karma is a bitch. Especially when it happens twice.
Oklahoma City meet Jerry West. Your owner should have hired him.