Month: March 2022

This should truly be horrific tonight on Bally Sports as the Thunder and the even more putrid Orlando Magic square off with two of the worst records in the NBA.

We might see players falling down on purpose or just giving the ball away to create transition opportunities the other way.

This could truly be the crowning event of the Thunder’s two-year road of tanking to somehow mitigate the loss of Kevin Durant to the Golden State Warriors.

Why would Sam Presti even put Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on the floor tonight is my first thought?

From what I’ve seen so far there’s only one player on most everyone’s Top Five list I would pick with the top pick. That would be Jaden Ivey from Purdue.

He looks to have it all. Calling him the next Ja Morant to me isn’t an exaggeration. Plus, his mom coaches the Notre Dame women’s team. You know the BBIQ is there as well, plus the drive to get better every day. She’s tough. I’d take her over Coach D to coach the Thunder as well.

But history shows us there will be surprises outside of the Top Five picks in this draft class. Watch the video above as a reminder.

If I’m Sam Presti…Jaden Ivey is the name, I have circled in red. I’m not sure what center I’d try to land with that Clipper/Suns pick.

Chet Holmgren still concerns me. Part of me thinks Poku should be the hedge for Chet….if that makes any sense.

This is the pick Sam Presti can’t miss. This can’t be Cole Aldrich, Mitch McGary, Jeremy Lamb, Alex Abrines, Andre Roberson, Josh Huestis, or Terrance Ferguson.

This is the pick which will shape the future of the franchise in Oklahoma City moving forward.

This player needs to galvanize the Oklahoma City fanbase for the next eight seasons. Chet Holmgren may very well turn out to be a solid NBA player as he gets older. But I don’t think the Thunder need to take that risk if they can configure assets to land Jaden Ivey.

The Thunder have a nice framework in place. This is where Sam Presti needs to make a trade or two and reshape his team’s future.

Sam Presti needs to remember his own credo between now and the NBA draft…”Scared money don’t make money.”

Scared general managers don’t win championships either.

This needs to be Sam Presti’s One Shining Moment

Quite frankly…405Baller’s Journal entry was what I would describe as below my expectations. If I wanted to highlight that level of work, I’d just go ahead and repost the usual fluff-cupcake-drivel provided by Brandon and John Napier.

Consequently…I’m going to bump 405Baller’s piece this week and hope he submits something next week equal of the praise I’ve given him.

This is my post of the week from the Daily Snowflake written by William Hurst:

‘I think rednuht wrote more content today than the DT staff have written all year.”

Bravo.

Not only non-hyperbolic, but spot on like a Jimmy Connors two-handed backhand baseline winner.

This was in response to a detailed analysis of NBA draft prospect Shaedon Sharpe which was submitted by Dr. Rednuht and OKC Jim.

Nice work, gentlemen. We’ll be keeping in touch. This is the kind of content I’m talking about if you want to be mentioned in the same breath with The Athletic. I know some people there. Let’s just say…someone has contacted me about some changes being made here at the Daily Cupcake. Take care. Be safe.

This is a good question. The good news for Baker Mayfield in all of this is twofold, 1 he gets away from one of the worst owners in the NFL in Jimmy Haslem, and 2 he leaves Cleveland as the only quarterback in the past twenty-two years to win a playoff game.

If I’m Baker Mayfield or his agent, where do I want to be once the Browns write him a check for this season and then cut him?

My answer is if I’m Baker there are two teams, I have my eye on currently… those two teams would be the Pittsburgh Steelers with Mike Tomlin, and Seattle Seahawks with Pete Carroll.

Both of these teams made quarterback moves already this season. The Steelers added Mitchell Trubisky while the Seahawks added Drew Lock in the trade with the Denver Broncos.

Both of these teams are proven winners. Both have head coaches who I think both know Mitchell Trubisky and Drew Lock aren’t the answer beyond being an NFL backup quarterback.

If I’m Baker, I would get the settlement figured out with the Browns. The Browns by the way are going to have twenty-two other issues to deal with once Deshaun Watson’s civil lawsuits begin to unfold.

Even if Baker starts as the backup behind Trubisky that would be my destination if I’m thinking this all the way through.

I previously had a healthy Baker somewhere around No. 17 or so on my NFL quarterback rating list before the left shoulder injury. He’s not an NFL top ten quarterback. But with the Steelers, they don’t need a top ten quarterback to be a playoff contender.

They need a ball distributor, a winner, a guy with a chip on his shoulder, and someone who takes care of the football. I wouldn’t hold Baker’s interceptions against him from last season because he shouldn’t have even been on the field playing. Think about that. Why would you want to play for an organization which didn’t sit you down when it was obvious you were physically unfit to play.

The answer is…because you’re the Cleveland Browns and you’ve been the worst NFL team the past twenty-two years or so.

The Pittsburgh Steelers are the anti-Cleveland Browns if ever there was such a thing. The Rooney family is what Jimmy Haslem will never provide in Cleveland, namely, solid, consistent leadership.

If I’m Baker Mayfield this is the path I would pursue. It might require some patience. It will require the acknowledgement the next deal will be for an NFL mid-level quarterback versus that of a former No.1 pick in the draft.

If Baker had been sat down with his injury last year like he should have been his… NFL body of work would be a three-year resume. Year 1, his rookie year the Browns missed the playoffs on the last play of the season. Year 2, the Browns appeared playoff bound until Miles Garrett got suspended the entire season for the hit on Mason Rudolph. Year 3, the Browns made the playoffs, beat the Steelers in the first round, and lost to the Kansas Chiefs on the road on their last offensive series of the game.

Baker Mayfield to Pittsburgh is where he should be headed if the cards play out correctly…. even if he starts off there as the backup.

I would think for Baker Mayfield…patience is the key word moving forward.

Thank god, I stayed home and didn’t make the drive to Norman to see the OU women get bludgeoned by the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. That first period was right up there with the super tanking Thunder as some of the worst basketball I’ve ever observed in my life.

I know if I’d gone and sat behind the OU bench…I would have said something aloud which would have gotten me in trouble.

It was horrific even beyond what the Thunder have done this season minus the 73-point beating the Thunder took back in December or whenever that happened.

The first ten minutes tonight in Norman and the 73-point loss in Memphis rank as the worst B-ball games I’ve ever witnessed in my life to date.

But enough of that sunshine…tomorrow is the weekly installment of 405 Baller’s Thunder Journal

I want to thank the recently banned 405 Baller from the Daily Thunder- Cupcake for sending me the video above. The Baker Mayfield to Seattle Seahawks video was interesting as well. It should be a lively discussion this week.

I don’t think the Thunder are bad enough to list as one of the ten worst teams of all-time, but I would like to see the Thunder play the OU women or Jabari Smith’s Auburn Tigers on the last game of the season with the No. 1 draft pick at stake.

What would Sam Presti do at that point?

Who would he put out on the floor if this scenario unfolded?

Food for thought.

But let’s consider some of the data after the Thunder’s 132-123 loss to the Celtics tonight.

The Thunder have now lost ten straight games. Of the Thunder’s last twenty-one games dating back to February 4th the pathetic Thunder are 3-18. If you go all the way back to January 2nd, the Thunder Tankers are 7-31.

If the Thunder could somehow declare Shai Gilgeous-Alexander injured and out for the season tomorrow afternoon you’d have to think the Thunder would be a gut cinch to lose their last ten games of this NBA regular season.

That would bring the Thunder in at 20-62 for the season. One would think the Thunder a gut cinch to clinch a top three slot in the draft lottery where I’m pretty sure Sam Presti would draft the physically emaciated Chet Holgren as the next great bulimic White Hope of the NBA.

If the Thunder could lose these ten games that would mean the Thunder would finish this season at 7-41 in the calendar year of 2022.

It would mean the Thunder like last season would finish 2-23 in their final 25 games of the basketball season.

So…back up to 405 Baller’s almost prescient video above. If the Thunder in back to back seasons finish 2-23 in their last 25 games of the season…would that qualify as historically bad?

I’m going to sleep on it as well as the notion that Pete Carroll would take Baker Mayfield in Seattle as a one-year rental?

You better bring your Big Boy ‘A’ game tomorrow, 405 Baller.

Let’s look at the numbers. We’re now to the Sweet 16. Kansas, Texas Tech, and Iowa State have all advanced.

Including OU’s 1-1 record in the NIT… the Big 12 is 10–4 in post season. Three teams…Baylor, Texas, and TCU are gone. Of those three losses the total sum margin of losses was 21 points. Nary a blowout in the group. Only Texas against Purdue didn’t have a chance at the end to win their second-round game.

Iowa State beating both LSU and Wisconsin is a bit of a stunner as the Cyclones were playing the shakiest ball in the league minus West Virginia the last two weeks of the season.

Kansas has a real chance to advance to the Final Four given the demise of both Auburn and Wisconsin in their regional bracket.

Texas Tech would have to beat Gonzaga to advance to the Final Four.

Watch out for Villanova is all I can say at this point. Jay Wright in my mind is the best college coach in the business. His team doesn’t beat itself. If only Sam Presti would at some point hire a strong coach like Jay Wright, there could actually be some light at the end of the tunnel for the tanking Thunder.

I’d put the PAC 12 second on my list right now with both Arizona and UCLA still left in play. At third…I’d go with Juwan Howard’s Wolverines and the Purdue Boilermakers still in play.

Then I’d go the ACC with both Duke and North Carolina still very much in the hunt.

Then surprisingly the SEC comes in dead last of the Power 5 conferences with only Arkansas still breathing but scheduled next to play Gonzaga in the third round.

Look at the coaches we still have in play. A virtual list of Hall of Famers:

Coach K at Duke, Jay Wright at Villanova, Bill Self at Kansas, Mark Few at Gonzaga, and Mick Cronin at UCLA. All five could be in a coma and give the Thunder more presence on the bench than they currently have steering the Thunder tanking ship. Throw in Billy Donovan as well. These people in Oklahoma City are adorable. Bless their racist little domestic terrorist hearts.

It’s turning into the wonderful tournament I’d hoped it would be.

The OU women host Notre Dame this evening. If I weren’t exhausted from last night…I’d probably go. We cheered hard last night. Very hard. Who knows…maybe at the last instant I’ll get a burst of energy and head down to Norman.

Coach Jennie was at both of the OU men’s NIT games. Seems like a nice woman.

Coach K… if you weren’t playing Texas Tech… I’d be cheering for you in the next round.

It turns out the Committee was probably right in leaving OU out of March Madness this season. OU’s inaugural basketball season under Porter Moser came to an end on Sunday night with a heartbreaking last possession 70-68 loss to the St. Bonaventure Bonnies.

If you follow college basketball you knew this wasn’t going to be an easy game for the Sooners. This is a St. Bonaventure team which made the NCAA Tournament last season. It’s a team with four senior starters who’ve been together their entire college careers, plus a third year juco. These guys know each other basketball wise. They know who they are. None of the five seldom leave the floor. Four of them played forty minutes in Norman on Sunday night.

This was the Sooners’ eighth loss this season which came down to the last possession of the game. If the Sooners simply win four of those games their record this morning is 23-12 versus 19-16.

To me…this season was pretty much about one thing, point guard play in the last four minutes of close games. I’m not dissing Jordan Goldwire because he came to Norman through the portal from Duke as a situational defensive guard.

Jordan actually got better the last seven games of the season, but on Sunday night nursing a sore ankle, his play in the second half was not what Porter Moser will need looking into the future.

Three horrific turnovers at the just the wrong time sealed the Sooners fate as an NIT second round exit.

Moving forward…what Porter Moser will need to evolve in his OU program is some sort of continuity with his players.

Next season OU will return the Groves Brothers, Jalen Hill, EJ Harkless, and CJ Noland. That will mean five of the top nine Sooners will be returning to Norman.

Jordan Goldwire, Marvin Johnson, and Ethan Chargois are all super seniors moving on in life.

If Moj Gibson returns that would be a sixth Sooner returnee. I’m not sure what Moj will decide to do. I walked past him after the game in the tunnel and he quite frankly looked crushed.

Two of OU’s freshmen this season, Bijuan Cortez and Alston Mason, were not contributors once the Sooners got into the grind of the Big 12 regular season.

Porter Moser has three freshmen coming in who are all top ESPN Top 100 players.

Benny Schroder, a 6’7″ guard from Germany, Milos Uzan, a 6’4″ point guard from Las Vegas, and Otega Oweh, 6’6″ swing player from New Jersey.

These three all need to be the next nucleus in Norman which stays in Norman for a while.

This OU team had five transfer portal players. That’s just too many. I would say in the age of the portal in college basketball…you need to maybe just be adding two to three players via the portal in normal times.

OU will need a big to replace Etan Chargois and a Swiss Army knife type to replace Marvin Johnson.

If Bijuan Cortez stays in Norman, he could be a reliable backup point guard. From my perspective, if Moj Gibson stays, that means OU should be looking for either two or three players with specific needs roster wise.

For me…I had a blast this season following the Sooners. I think the future will be bright with Porter Moser. But he needs a point guard, and he needs to bring a sense of player continuity back to the program.

Watch Kelvin’s teams play in Houston. Those guys actually know each other. But then look at Mike Boynton’s team this year in Stillwater, and again, too many players on the roster who don’t really know each other.

Continuity in the age of the portal will be the challenge in Norman.

This is Milos Uzan, the Nevada high school player of the year. Milos per ESPN is the 55th ranked player in this year’s class. A true two-way point guard. To me, Milos is the starting point of Porter Moser’s rebuild in Norman. Visualize Milos at the point, Moj at the two, EJ at the three, Jalen Hill at the four, and Tanner Grove at the five.

Then as a freshman, Porter could bring Benny Schroder off the bench as the sixth man, Jacob Grove as the seven, CJ Noland as the eight, and Otega Owah at the nine. That would be a pretty nice basketball team. Plus…another big through the portal for interior rim protection.

Here’s Benny’s highlight mix from last August. As of September 2021, Benny was ESPN’s No. 1 international prospect in this season’s recruiting class.

I just watched Kelvin’s Houston team rout the poser Fighting Illini. This will be Houston’s third straight trip to the Sweet 16.

Here’s a trivia question for you. Who are the two most winning DI programs in DI the past six years?

The answer would be… 1 Gonzaga, 2 Houston.

Kelvin while at OU took two different teams to the Elite 8 and one team to the Final Four. I hated when he left to take the Indiana job, but I get it. He wanted to be at a school which was a basketball first school.

Since Billy Tubbs, four different OU coaches have taken a team to the Elite 8 and three different coaches have taken an OU team to the Final Four. The Final Four coaches were Billy Tubbs, Kelvin Sampson, and Lon Kruger, while Jeff Capel took the Blake Griffin team to an Elite 8.

Billy had a National Player of the Year runner-up in Wayman Tisdale. Kelvin never had a POTY status player. Jeff Capel had a NPOTY in Blake Griffin. While during Lon Kruger’s ten year stay in Norman, he had two NPOTY winners in Buddy Hield and Trae Young.

The recruiting class threesome Porter has coming next season should be OU’s best class since the 2018 season.

Porter has ESPN’s No. 1 international prospect committed, while the other players are both Top 75 national players per ESPN.

This was a transition year in Norman and yet Porter in essence had this team in the NCAA Tournament last Saturday night until they were nudged out of the bracket by two game results last Sunday.

Here’s Porter above showing why he’s considered one of the best coaches in the nation.

We don’t pout when things don’t our way. Instead, we pull ourselves up and compete. That’s what life is…day in and day out.

My cousin Taylor and I will be heading down to Norman later this evening for the 2nd Round of the NIT in what should be a tough game versus St. Bonaventure.

The goal is to compete and win the tournament if possible. To get better for next fall.

So far, a fabulous NCAA Tournament. Some incredible games today as the first half of the Sweet 16 is now in place.

Michigan surprised me. They’ve shown some resolve in their two tournament wins. I thought there were two second half coaching mismatches today… which to me were glaring.

I thought Michigan’s Juwan Howard coached the pants off of Rick Barnes in the Wolverines’ upset win over Tennessee. Rick Barnes looked lost in the last four minutes of the game.

In the last game of the night, I thought Mark Few and Drew Timme out-coached Penny Hardaway and Larry Brown as Gonzaga overcame a 12-point second half deficit to advance over a very athletic Memphis team. I thought Memphis completely misplayed Duren’s foul situation, then misused their timeouts down the stretch.

Baylor losing to UNC didn’t shock me because just eight days ago I saw the Sooners beat Baylor in Kansas City pretty much leading that game from wire to wire. These Baylor guards are simply not as good as last year’s trio of guards which led the Bears to the national championship.

The Gonzaga-Memphis game to me was almost worthy of an Elite 8 type of game.

Let’s make no mistake on this…on this night Chet Holgren was probably Gonzaga’s fourth most effective player behind Drew Timme, Andrew Nembhard, and Joshua Bolton.

Holgren in this game was basically a role player who at times in this game was exposed by his slow feet and emaciated frame. I’m not dogging the kid because why would I care if Sam Presti takes him or not.

But I’ll just say…if Chet Holgren is the best player in this draft…then this draft class is being vastly overrated. This kid for the most part has been sheltered by playing a very soft schedule and by being carried by the two Andrews.

I would take Jabari Smith, Jaden Ivey, and Keegan Murray before taking on the prospect of turning Chet Holgren into an elite NBA player.

If this kid had played in the Big 12 on any roster besides Kansas and Baylor this season, he would have struggled with not only the physicality of the league, but the end-to-end speed of the league as well..

Gonzaga basically plays in a league with one other decent team, that being St, Mary’s.

But back to Drew Timme. I love him. He’s a Texas kid. He may not be an NBA prospect like Chet, but Drew Timme has a set of balls and a college game which makes me wish he had played on a Big 12 team.

I loved what he said to ‘his’ team at halftime with the Zags down by ten points.

He basically said, ” I don’t give a flying fuck if we end up losing this game, but we’re not going out as a bunch of very soft guys.”

Toughness begats toughness…and respect. Don’t ever lose sight of that.

Anyway…I love Drew Timme. I hope we get to see Gonzaga play Texas Tech in the regional finals. That would be a war.

What a tremendous basketball game. The defending champ Baylor Bears came all the way back from 25 points down with less than ten minutes to force overtime.

This game had it all.

It’s hard to remember a game turning so dramatically on one play, but that’s exactly what happened when former Sooner Brady Manek got the Flagrant 2 on the high elbow. The ejection was the correct call. A piece of poor judgement by Brady as he was well on his way to a 40-point game.

I’m happy for Brady, his teammates saved his ass in overtime. That would have been a very bad way to end a college career.

I thought Baylor had them heading into overtime, but give these gritty Tra Heels credit, they never quit fighting.

Amazingly, Texas which played its best game of the season yesterday in beating Va-Tech, along with Purdue look like very dangerous teams to advance in this region.

Just a fantastic Tournament game. It will be hard to beat that game.

Tar Heels…win, survive, and advance!

Hard to believe Coach K is seventy-five years of age. The time he has spent at Duke has gone by in a flash. I’m eleven years ‘younger’ than Coach K, so as I witness his last tournament it does bring a sense of sentiment to my heart.

In today’s age of coaching, he probably would not have survived his first three seasons at Duke where, he won a combined 39 games in three years. Yet, Tom Butters, then AD at Duke, stuck with him despite the rough beginning.

Coach K was a disciple of Bobby Knight at Army where he forged his basic tenets of a coaching style which began with defense and ball movement.

When Coach K arrived at Duke, they were the regional triangular stepchild of North Carolina and NC State. This was back when Jimmy V was at NC State and Dean Smith was at Carolina in their respective hay days of coaching.

Slowly, year by year, NC State fell to third place and then in more time Duke surpassed even North Carolina as the premier program in all of college basketball.

Perhaps, not a stretch to say it was Coach K at Duke who assumed the massive void left in the world of college basketball when John Wooden’s run at UCLA came to an end.

I wonder how many current OKC Thunder fans even know Aubrey McClendon was a Duke graduate.

I also wonder how many OU fans realize former Sooner head coach Jeff Capel was at one time supposed to be the heir to the Duke throne when Coach K retired from coaching.

It’s interesting that even in football crazy Oklahoma there are some side stories attached to Coach K and Duke.

Duke became America’s premier ‘it’ destination college wise because of Coach K, Cameron Indoor Arena, and the basketball team.

Duke basketball became America’s version of Camelot much like the Green Bay Packers under Lombardi were in the sixties.

Coach K also became the savior of the U.S. Olympic program where his teams won three gold medals to go along with his five national championships at Duke.

Some might say Coach K took the best of Bobby Knight and learned what parts of Bobby Knight to take with him as a college head basketball coach.

I would probably have to agree with that sentiment. But I also know Bob Knight took the time to send me an autographed copy of the book about him written by Joan Mellon so as I wouldn’t have the wrong impression because of John Feinstein’s NY Times bestseller… Season on the Brink. I still can’t believe he did that. But I think it’s kind of cool he did that. That wouldn’t happen nowadays either.

It will be a massive upset if this Duke team gets out of its regional and advances to the Final Four. In order for this to happen the Blue Devils would have to beat both Texas Tech and Gonzaga in consecutive games with what is a very young team.

But you never know. Maybe there’s one last magical run left for Coach K.

In closing, in my lifetime, below is how I would rank the five greatest men’s college basketball coaches:

1 Coach K, Duke

2 John Wooden, UCLA

3 Bob Knight, Indiana

4 Al McGuire, Marquette

5 Larry Brown, Kansas and UCLA

Coach K, thank you for the thrills. It was a magnificent run. I hope you enjoy your retirement from coaching.