Welcome to OKCThunderGround!

Greatest player in the history of the game in Oklahoma tonight to introduce Russell into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. Should be a special night for Russell, Michael, and the state.

How appropriate. On the eve of Russell Westbrook being inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame he goes to the rim with an epic left handed dunk for the game winner in a thrilling 105-103 Thunder win over James Harden and his Rockets.

If the Westbrook dunk isn’t the epitome of Westbrook then I don’t know what is. Some might say he should have held the ball and taken the foul which was coming. But there was an opening to the rim and in true Westbrookian form he went to the rim with no conscious whatsoever and left with an epic game winning dunk. Hello Oklahoma Hall of Fame and Michael Jordan.

This game wasn’t pretty or a piece of art, but more to the point it was a must win game for this young Thunder team which hopes to be relevant and in contention for a No. 4 seed in the West come April.

Westbrook’s line went 30-7-9 with a 9-20 night from the field. Unlike the game in Detroit though, this time he got some offensive help from Victor Oladipo. Oladipo was outstanding in this ball game. This is the Oladipo the Oklahoma City Thunder need night in and night out. Oladipo double doubled with 29 points and 10 rebounds on a 12-18 shooting night from the field. A far cry from his 4-17 performance in Detroit. If OKC gets this version of Oladipo moving forward they will continue to be relevant for the No. 4 seed in the West, if it turns out to be the Detroit version it will be a long season.

Now to Andre Roberson. What do you say about this person/player? He absolutely sucks shooting a basketball, yet he’s clearly OKC’s most valuable defensive player. It was vintage Roberson against the Rockets as he did a stellar job on James Harden limiting The Beard to 13 points on a 4-16 night. Plus, and this is probably the key to this Thunder win more than the epic Westbrook left-handed Jordanesque dunk, Harden didn’t have his ass parked at the free throw line all night. Offensively, it was vintage Roberson as he went 0-5 from three, 2-11 overall, missed a critical gimme late game layup, then of all things made the bucket which gave OKC a 102-100 lead. If Dickens were writing this recap it would have started with it was the best and worst of Roberson all wrapped into one basketball game.

Steven Adams and Domas Sabonis didn’t do a lot offensively, but both played what I’d describe as overall efficient games in spite of single digit offensive nights. Especially Adams on the defensive end as his play with Roberson on the pick and roll defense of Harden was key to the Thunder winning this game.

Kanter played limited minutes because of the style Houston employs so it was one of those nights where Kanter was somewhat useless considering he’s getting around $17.5 million this year. On a bright side, both Jerami Grant and Alex Abrines had positive games with both hitting two threes and making a positive impact on the game. Like most young role players they both play better at home, so maybe this is what we’ll get from these two at home on more nights than not as we at some point in Oklahoma transition into winter.

But make no mistake about this, it was OKC’s effort, hustle, and defense which won them this basketball game. Houston scored a total of 13 points in the fourth period. Take away Eric Gordon’s three point make with one second left and the Thunder held the Rockets scoreless from the field in the game’s final six minutes. So having thought about this long and hard and ignoring his offensive output in this game, I’m making Andre Roberson my No. 1 Star of the Game and somehow I can’t believe I just did it, but I did and I don’t feel bad about it.

OKC improves to 7-5 with the New Jersey Nets coming to town on Friday night. It should be a win, but as the Orlando Magic game showed, nothing can be taken for granted or assumed with this young Thunder team.

Russell Westbrook being honored tonight by the Oklahoma Hall of Fame with one Michael Jordan doing the honors. Hope Michael enjoyed the left-handed dunk and the wink.

No Reggie Jackson, no Andre Drummond, and like the Thunder the Pistons were playing their third game in four nights. It didn’t matter. Detroit cruised to a relatively easy 104-88 win over the Thunder on Monday night.

It was the Thunder’s fourth straight loss. Losses against Golden State, Toronto, and the Clippers aren’t bad losses. But a home loss to the Orlando Magic and a double digit road loss to a Pistons’ team minus their two best players raises some serious concerns. The primary concern being — Russell Westbrook needs some consistent offensive support from Steven Adams and Victor Oladipo on a nightly basis.

Westbrook was Westbrook on Monday night. His line was Westbrookian… 34/15/8. Consider he did this with only 21 shots from the field. Only one problem, he didn’t get much help. Steven Adams scored four points, but was outplayed by Aron Baynes. Victor Oladipo scored nine points, but was outplayed by Kentavious Caldwell Pope. Andre Roberson and Domas Sabonis both had bad nights. Putting it bluntly, not one of the other Thunder starters helped Russell much if at all.

As a team, OKC shot 37.5% from the field and were 5-27 shooting threes.

OKC’s second leading scorer was Jerami Grant with 11 points. Enes Kanter was OKC’s third leading scorer. This simply won’t cut it if OKC aspires to be any type of seeded playoff team come April. Adams and Oladipo were recently extended new contracts because they need to be OKC’s second and third best players on a consistent basis.

In OKC’s first ten games the team played hard. Competed and gave fans some hope. This wasn’t the case last night in Detroit. But then again, OKC lost in Detroit last season on a night when Durant and Ibaka took a rest night off.

The Thunder now stand 6-5 and a better sense of reality of this team has set in perhaps. Clearly, the first pressing issue has to be Russell Westbrook getting some consistent offensive support from Adams and Oladipo. The Thunder will never get consistent offensive support from Andre Roberson because it’s not in is game on a nightly basis. When you had Durant, Westbrook, and Ibaka — his lack of shooting was an issue. Now it’s more than just an issue because teams are completely clogging the middle to take away the Westbrook-Adams pick and roll.

With Durant, Westbrook, and Ibaka, the Thunder could get away with Roberson’s lack of offensive skills. But with this team, not so much.

The Thunder return to game action on Wednesday night to host James Harden and his Rockets. One would expect great games from both Westbrook and Harden. The question is which will get the most help from their teammates.

No one should be shocked or upset with OKC standing at 6-5 eleven games in. Best case scenario with this team is either a four or five seed as presently constructed with everything going well. But if Russell Westbrook can’t get any help from his teammates in road games it’s going to be a long, frustrating season for both Westbrook and Thunder fans alike.

Houston Rockets at the Peake on Wednesday night. No reason to not give James Harden the same reaction they Serge Ibaka. James Harden didn’t so anything wrong. He just wanted his own team to quarterback.

Serge Ibaka got a warm twenty-five second ovation from his former home crowd, then turned in a career high 31 point night which included a mid-baseline jumper from the right against Steven Adams which splashed with only half a second left.

OKC used a timeout, moved the ball up court, but came up short on a desperation pass at the rim from Nick Collison to Russell Westbrook.

Orlando Magic 119 — Oklahoma City Thunder 117.

This begins a week of Thunder reunions with some of its former star players. The Detroit Pistons with Reggie Jackson in Detroit tonight. James Harden returns on Wednesday with his Houston Rockets. We’ve already seen the first version of Kevin Durant in Oakland while last night we saw Serge Ibaka at his very best with a sprinkle of former Thunder forward Jeff Green added for good measure. Maybe those five should just assemble their own team and see how far they could go with a starting five of Durant, Green, Ibaka, Jackson, and Harden. You could almost make the argument that stating five would be almost as potent as the Warriors since the Warriors would be without Durant and probably still with Harrison Barnes.

Russell Westbrook was outstanding offensively scoring 41 points on 14-21 from the field. Westbrook triple doubled with a line of 41-13-18.

The Thunder came out with little energy and scored but 13 points in the first period. Westbrook had but five points in the first period, but scored in double figures in the remaining three periods. At one point the Thunder trailed by as many as 21 points before gradually chipping away and had several single digit leads coming down the stretch.

But the Magic always responded with Ibaka, Elfrid Payton, and Evan Fournier all having big offensive nights. With the game tied at 117 and the shot clock off, Serge Ibaka delievered a clutch game winner he never would gotten to attempt when he played alongside of Durant, Harden, and Westbrook.

In the end, it was a bittersweet night at Chesapeake Energy Arena as the Thunder dropped to 6-4 while Serge Ibaka had the greatest moment of his professional career.

Oklahoma City in Detroit tonight for the second night of a back to back.

This was an exit interview in the literal sense in that Serge was traded to the Orlando Magic not long after for Victor Oladipo, Domas Sabonis, and Ersan Ilyasova– who is now Jerami Grant if you’ve paid attention to Sam Presti’s transactions. So, yeah, Sam Presti did pretty good on this trade.

Serge will always be one of my favorite Thunder players. Good player, good human. Always had a smile on his face and something nice to say. I’ll be disappointed if he doesn’t get a standing ovation tonight during intros.

I’ve always admired Gregg Popovich. Before becoming an iconic NBA head coach, he attended the U.S. Air Force Academy and later became an intelligence officer. Popovich nails it and if you’re a white person in America who voted for Donald Trump, I don’t honestly know what to say to you. Don’t just say you didn’t like Hillary Clinton. It never should have to come that. Donald Trump never should have emerged as the nominee from either major party in America. If white America had felt so inclined they could have chosen Jeb Bush, John Kasich, or even Marco Rubio as its nominee. All three would have made conservative Supreme Court nominations. All three would have at the least retweaked Obamacare. Don’t use either of those excuses for just electing the same canidate the KKK and David Duke endorsed. Don’t do it, because you had seventeen choices in all from the GOP primaries and pulled the trigger for Donald Trump.

In what turned out to be a very good basketball game on Friday night inside Chesapeake Energy Arena, the Los Angeles Clippers held on at the buzzer as a Russell Westbrook 25 footer was a little strong. Not the best shot given the situation, but we’ve seen far worse over the years. Plus, keep in mind, Andre Roberson botched two previous late possessions by not handling Westbrook passes cutting to the basket. So I don’t think anybody should be railing on Westbrook for the shot.

OKC has now dropped its last two at home is coming back down to earth as what we thought they’d probably be. That being, a fun entertaining team, but not a serious contender as currently constructed. Westbrook needs another offensive option he can lean on night in and night out.

Westbrook almost tripled doubled going 29-14-9. Domas Sabonis had an excellent game with a double/double and four made threes.

On a whole, OKC set a team mark by going 16-28 from three point land. So while the loss was discouraging, there were some nice things to cling onto from this game from a team standpoint.

Young guards Victor Oladipo, Andre Roberson, Semaj Christon all had some good moments in the game. Enes Kanter had a double/double of his own. Jerami Grant continues to show flashes. The only real negative in this game was Steven Adams only had five shots and six points.

But the real bright spot was obviously Sabonis as he’s getting better and obviously more comfortable with NBA play every time he steps on the floor.

But again, if OKC wants to jump into that tier of West teams which includes the Warriors, Spurs, and Clippers–Russell Westbrook is going to need another offensive piece whether it be Rudy Gay or someone we’re not thinking of presently. Cam Payne simply coming back from injury doesn’t propel OKC into that grouping of teams.

Admittedly, I’m having trouble completely focusing on the games right now as our country is going thru a truly historic transition, but in the wrong way. Like in the Richard Nixon getting on the heliocopter and going back to California way in 1973. Think eight years back and the thought the United States had just elected the first black man to the presidency. Think back to Obama’s acceptance speech on a crystal still November night in Chicago. Think back to an inauguration with so much hope and possibilities attached for future generations of young Americans. Now back to the future where white America just elected a canidate who was endorsed by David Duke, the KKK, and Vladamir Putin. While young protestors in Amercian cities of every color know they just witnessed a really bad episode of Jerry Springer Live.

Consider this, several years ago, NBA commish Adams Silver and his league governors banned Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling from the league for life for racist comments, and rightly so. That’s why you see Steve Ballmer sitting courtside now. In direct contrast, white America just elected an openly racist canidate to not only the highest office in the land, but in the world. White Republican America just got it’s country back, I guess. But at what cost, rolling back history a hundred and fifty years?

I haven’t to date read any comments on who Thunder owner Clay Bennett voted for on Tuesday. He’s a Republican obviously, and was an early supporter of Jeb Bush which isn’t a bad thing because Jeb Bush is a decent man. But I’d be curious to know if he voted for Trump or left that slot on his ballot blank. I’d be curious to know how all thirty NBA owners voted given the fact the league is predominantly a black league. Might be an interesting piece to read in the NY Times or Washington Post.

The Dow started out today almost 1,000 points up from last week despite the fact Donald Trump won the election. Most predicted a cataclysmic reaction from the U.S. markets ala Brexit. But for the most part, Brexit II in the U.S. primarily took place in Ohio, Michigan, Pennslyvania, and Wisconsin where angry white voters went for Donald Trump in this election. Otherwise, the rest of the Electoral College map was pretty much the same as in 2012.

I hate to tell these white people the truth, but here it is. Donald Trump could care less about you. He’s basically a New York Democrat who teeters in the middle on many issues. I find it hilarious some of these people view Paul Ryan as a ‘squish’, yet now somehow envision Trump as the visionary of the hard right.

Here’s Trump in January of 2016 talking about his ability to work with Pelosi, Reid, and/or Chuck Schumer. I’d pay far more attention to this dynamic than the protests which are currently going on this country regarding Trump’s win in the Electoral College. Again, there was no mandate. He lost the popular vote.

Here’s Trump on Morning Joe back in January. I love the parting shots he takes at Lyin’ Ted Cruz. That should be Trump’s starting statement with Schumer and Pelosi– “It could be worse, it could be Lyin’ Ted Cruz standing here instead.”

A thirty minute interview with Spurs’ coach Gregg Popovich on Trump being elected would be priceless. I love this.