I mean, Dave Chappelle is a millionaire. He can be brutally honest. It is what it is. The poor white people in this country who fell behind because of the Economic Meltdown of 2008 and the effects of globalization just quite frankly don’t read enough to kind of know what’s going on. Instead, they opted to get conned by a con man.
So why are the markets still rolling in the U.S.? Because contrary to what Trump said to these white people, the U.S. economy was/is larger then than the combined economies of Japan and China were when he took office. Europe is in a condition of financial flattening and doesn’t even have 2% growth. Russia’s economy is almost completely reliant on oil, so it tanked as well.
BTW…the U.S. economy was creating 200,000 new jobs a month when Obama left office.
So…despite Trump, for the time being, the U.S. is the only place for investors to dock their money. As far as the Dow hitting 25,000…I think the world is saying “Despite the dumb fuck you just elected, America is still the safest hedge.”
My son went with some buddies to the Rose Bowl. He called me I think it was on Saturday and said, “We’re going to see Dave Chappelle tonight in Los Angeles.”
I didn’t say anything immediately. He then said, “You know who Dave Chappelle is, right?”
With my eyes rolling as far backwards as they can roll without leaving the back of my head, “I replied, yeah, I’ve seen Dave Chappelle do standup.” As in I’m a fan of Dave Chappelle and actually have his iconic routine on this blog where Chappelle said to give American Caligula a chance.
I’m having dinner with my son tomorrow night. I plan on asking him about the Dave Chappelle night in Los Angeles. This should be interesting.
The fact it appears Sam Presti and Billy Donovan have finally come to terms on Alex Abrines gives me hope. I have no idea if Abrines is actually really injured right now or not, but I know the fact every minute he doesn’t see the floor helps the Thunder cause and my mental serenity.
Russell Westbrook, a.k.a. Bad Little Dude, says the closing of the deal which keeps Paul George a Thunder for beyond this season is simple. Bad Little Dude says, ‘Just win the NBA championship and things pretty much fall into place’.
I like that. It’s simple, to the point, and for a non-millennial like me connects with my inner competitiveness. Just go win it all.
Okay. I’m going to help Russell with a roadmap as to how this could be plausible. Quid pro quo. He stayed. I should help him. Simple.
If OKC is to pull this off, then I would say the Thunder not only need to overcome the T Wolves, but the San Antonio Spurs as well for the eventual No. 3 seed in the West. Just get on the other side of the bracket opposite the Warriors.
Houston doesn’t do that much for me. They’re beatable in a seven game series. They have inner demons as well. Neither James Harden or Chris Paul have ever won anything. I don’t lay awake at night worrying about the Rockets. The Warriors…yes, but not the Rockets.
So…the Thunder swept their little LA road back to back with a 127-117 win over the Clippers on Thursday night. In case you didn’t notice—OKC scored a combined 260 points in these two games which is very Warrioresque in as much as what it takes to score the ball with the Warriors and the Rockets.
Nice wins because I look for trends in a team. First trend here is the Thunder have been good on the road since they dipped to a 2-11 road record at one point. The Thunder now stand at 8-11 roadwise for the season. Put that on your Thunder dashboard.
Another trend which is obvious is that Westbrook, Paul George, and Carmelo are at times now showing maybe they’re figuring this out. OKC’s big three combined for 82 points against the Clippers and it appeared somewhat natural. Not that big of a deal.
I’ve been very clear about what I think Billy Donovan needs to do. He needs to be a better NBA coach. He, along with his team, need to elevate hand in hand. I’m hopeful this Alex Abrines thing is over. That Milwaukee game still pisses me off. I want to see Billy Donovan coaching on the edge. I want to see some urgency. I want him to be the kind of coach who helps this team eventually go toe to toe against the punk Warriors.
I have no idea how far Terrance Ferguson will go this season, but I know this. The Euro frilly Alex Abrines isn’t the answer. So whether Billy D eventually goes with either a nine or ten man rotation as we get to the goal achieving portion of the schedule is irrelevant to me.
The rotation should go 1 Westbrook, 2 George, 3 Carmelo, 4 Steven, 5 Andre, 6 Jerami, 7 Raymond, 8 Hustis, 9 Patterson, 10 Ferguson. First seven are set. The last three should inter-shuffle depending on the night and the opponent.
I’m not going to worry about Paul George and the trade deadline anymore. Westbrook is right. This is on him, his teammates, and Billy Donovan to close the deal with Paul George. At some point, you have to draw a line in the sand and if you can’t sell yourselves over the Lakers right now–then who can you sell yourselves to? I mean, seriously, their own star rookie forward just called his own team out for laying down and quitting against the Thunder on Wednesday night.
So…the Thunder improve to 22-17 and visit the Phoenix Suns on Sunday night.
OU rode Trae Young’s 27 point, 9 rebound, 10 assist night to a 109-89 win over rival Oklahoma State in Norman on Wednesday night. Fellow true frosh swingman Brady Manek led the Sooners in scoring with a career best 28 point night. All told, it was a night when OU’s overall team balance showed itself as Young while clearly being the star of this team–is seeing more and more support from his teammates every game.
The game was a sellout and the rest of the home slate for conference play is either already sold out or will be by the respective game days. Which is a good thing because this team deserves to get this kind of crowd support.
Young is clearly the star of this team, but Lon Kruger has a nice overall team with multiple pieces. Manek, a local kid from Harrah, has been solid from Game 1. Then there’s Christian James, Cam McGusty, and quite frankly an overall roster with nice balance and depth all the way through the 11th or 12th man in the rotation. If you look at OU’s roster, there’s only one senior among the top twelve players. So–even if Trae Young decides he can’t turn down being a top five pick in this summer’s NBA draft…Lon Kruger has done a good job of reloading his program after the departures of Buddy Hield, Isiah Cousins, Ryan Spangler, and Jordan Woodward from the Final Four team. In case you haven’t noticed…Lon Kruger knows what he’s doing.
OU will take it’s No. 7 national ranking to Morgantown this Saturday evening to play the No. 5 West Virginia Mountaineers in what should be an extremely interesting game. There will be no easy wins moving forward for the Sooners or any Big 12 team for that matter. This conference is a death knell. Just look at the coaches in this conference…all big time except O State’s Mike Boynton who’s in his first season ever of head coaching at the DI level. Bill Self, Bob Huggins, Lon Krueger, Jaime Dixon, etc. You better bring your team ready to play every night if you expect to be competitive.
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On the Thunder front, the Thunder took care of business and routed the LA Lakers by a count of 133-96. Rookie Terrance Ferguson got the start in place of sitting Andre Roberson and had a 24 point night while hitting six threes. Daniel Hamilton had some nice minutes as well. Good for both of them.
Hard to glean much from this game because the Lakers are so bad, but it’s a win and the main thought I take from this game in LA is if Sam Presti is in all the way with the notion of going with Paul George past the trade deadline without a contract extension of some sort.
Very interesting situation. Westbrook says winning the championship will be a sales pitch enough in itself. Right now–I would calibrate this team’s chances of winning four playoff series and sixteen playoff games without home court advantage as the No. 5 seed at somewhere around maybe 1-2% at best. So–what I’m saying here–is at what juncture in this does Presti make sure and get something for Paul George so as he didn’t trade Oladipo and Sabonis , whom he got for Serge Ibaka, for nothing except one season of play and the double hit of another team in the West moving the Thunder down a notch in food chain peg.
Presti got nothing for Durant. Not even a draft pick. He made a great trade for Ibaka in getting Oladipo and Sabonis, but if Paul George walks for nothing— I don’t know, buddy. What happened to sustainability?
Anyway, nice to see Ferguson have a nice game. Abrines was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t have any volume on while watching the second half of the game… so I’m to assume he was hurt and nursing another minor injury of some sort or else Presti and Donovan finally realized maybe the dude on the rogue blog isn’t completely crazy and might know something.
The Thunder in Staples again tonight–only this time against the Clippers. I think I’ll be bold and go with Matt Pinto on the audio and TNT on the video. Others can listen to the Alvin the Chipmunk and Bullwinkle Show if so inclined.
It used to be a big deal when the upstart Thunder played the Lakers. We all used to chant, “Beat LA.” Now we just hope Paul George isn’t living in LA and playing there come mid February. So excuse me if I could care less about the Thunder in LA tonight. If Paul George wants to be a Laker, then so be it. But I’ll write this–if Sam Presti screws around and gets nothing in return for Paul George then it would be a very hard thing to take the Thunder seriously moving forward.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that if the Thunder weren’t careful they could become something less than the primary basketball story in Oklahoma this winter. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Trae Young and the Sooners are 11-1 and No. 7 in the AP poll heading into tonight’s Bedlam game in Norman. I don’t write this to be snarky, but the truth is, OU will be my focus tonight and the Thunder playing the Lakers in LA will be a secondary storyline for me. This will be the first time since the Thunder arrived in OKC I’ve had this feeling in my heart…like in–I don’t care about the game tonight and it’s the first Wednesday in January.
And consider, in this this span of time of the Thunder’s presence in OKC, OU had two other National Player of Year players with Blake Griffin in 2008 and Buddy Hield just two seasons ago when the Sooners made the Final Four. Clay Bennett and his fellow owners have gone deep into the luxury tax this season, but here’s the thing–fans want a team which plays hard with some sense of urgency and meaning attached to the season itself. The games need to have the appearance they actually mean something. That’s why fans pay money, they want to feel it means as much to the players as it does to them.
Here’s another thing to ponder, would this Thunder roster be better suited to Lon Kruger’s coaching style versus what we’ve seen to date from Billy Donovan. Maybe Clay could talk Lon Kruger into doing the the Scott Frost thing and coaching two teams simultaneously. Just kidding, kind of. I mean, seriously, I wonder if OU regent and Thunder owner Clay Bennett has given any thought to the possibility the best basketball coach in the state isn’t coaching the Thunder, but is coaching the Sooners in Norman. Close your eyes Brian Davis, Michael Cage, Nick Gallo, and Royce Young…pretend you didn’t read that and go back to gulping apple juice from your Thunder sippy cups.
Anyway, OU is 11-1 with three of their wins coming against ranked teams Wichita State, TCU, and USC. The Sooners haven’t lost since an early season loss to Arkansas in the prestigious early season Portland tournament. And OU hasn’t just won, it’s been more than that in that true freshman point guard Trae Young has emerged as a serious contender to win National Player of the Year honors.
The Big 12 is rugged with five teams currently ranked in the top eighteen in the AP Poll. Every game will be tough and hold meaning. Players will play hard, they may not win every time, but I can assure you they’ll play hard for forty minutes. Maybe Billy Donovan will take this sliver of salient fact to heart since he appears to have difficulty getting his team to commit to 48 minutes of attention to things like detail and effort. I wonder if the Sippy Cup Four have ever pondered that notion.
One of my buddies is a sportswriter, which means he almost knows as much about sports as I do. From time to time he rolls his eyes at me when I passionately talk about the Thunder. His eyes roll, he sighs, and then says something like, “Mike, they don’t play hard for 48 minutes. They coast. The league is bullshit.”
So tonight while the Thunder are playing the worst team in the West in LA–my attention will be on Bedlam with Lon Kruger’s Sooners hosting Mike Boynton’s O State Cowboys. If you want to see teams play hard, watch Boynton’s team play Kruger’s team tonight.
Note to OU regent and Thunder owner Clay Bennett: I don’t mind paying a hundred bucks a ticket to see an NBA game. But I seriously mind it when the team doesn’t play hard. Truth hurts.
Just a great football game. I had it as a pick ’em game and the closeness of the game did not in any way surprise me. Georgia is a good ball club, as is OU, and when I look back at what is already being described as the best game of the year and the greatest Rose Bowl ever—I’m a little sad, but in no way have any regrets as a fan. OU had a great season, and quite frankly had three separate chances to win the game even after Georgia came back in the second half. Give Georgia credit, they made some plays.
Let’s be honest here, Big 12 defenses lack physicality, so I pretty much expected Chubb and Michel to have success, but not quite that much success. I thought freshman linebacker Kenneth Murray had a difficult game. Plus, OU’s kicking game was horrific if you objectively take the game apart. The bad squib kick giftwrapped three points to Georgia, the blocked field goal effectively ended the game, the inability of OU kick returner Jeff Badget on three straight kickoffs to get the ball beyond the 17 yard line in the third period denied OU field position , and the bad punt by Austin Siebert which led into Georgia’s tying touchdown all contributed to OU losing the game.
Baker Mayfield moves on. Kyler Murray will be OU’s starting QB next season. For me, if OU wants to aspire to win a national championship in this era of SEC dominance, it has to start with their linebackers. OU has to have linebackers with more physicality who can still run with the spread defenses of the Big 12
So…now we have two SEC teams in the championship game…yawn. I would guess it will be something like Alabama 20- Georgia 16. Snore. UCF should have an opportunity, a Big Ten team should have had an opportunity, and even a PAC 12 team should have had an opportunity. I’ve always been a proponent of an eight team field and still am. BTW…nice to see Josh Huepel land the UCF job.
Either way, it was a great season for OU. They just have to become better from a physicality aspect in a league which is basically a finesse tackling in space league. Maybe easier said, than done. Big 12 went 5-3 in bowl play, but collectively if the league wants to win national championships they all need to become more physical.
OU vs Georgia National Semi-final this afternoon. I went to the 2003 Rose Bowl when OU beat Washington State 34-14. Most incredible football venue I’ve ever been to. A Bucket List kind of day. I’m home today. If OU advances I’m going to try to get to Atlanta for the National Championship Game. My son and his buddies are there. They went and saw Dave Chappelle and Jon Mayer last night. To be young again, eh.
I’m marking this down as the week which could have gone gold gone bad. After the Thunder beat Toronto to improve to 20-15 and pull within one game of the T Wolves in the Northwest, there was all the sudden a feeling of optimism about this Thunder season. A feeling the pieces were coming together especially considering the Thunder had two more home games inside Chesapeake Energy Arena to close out 2017.
But all that has gone flat as for the second home game in a row the Thunder couldn’t as a team do all the little things which ultimately separate contenders from pretenders. Sure, the Thunder still finished the month 12-5 and Russell Westbrook will most likely win Western Conference Player of the Month, but in the big picture OKC is still three full games behind the T Wolves, but more importantly still has the look of a team still searching for its identity and a coach who might be in over his head.
Consider this, OKC’s Big Three of Westbrook, George, and Melo combined for 84 points, but in the end it was rookie point guard Dennis Smith Jr. who stole the show at end in the final two minutes as the Mavs won their fourth straight in defeating the Thunder 116-113 on the road.
In the final 1:39, Smith scored 11 of his 19 points and made every clutch play, while quite frankly… Russell Westbrook didn’t. Otherwise, Westbrook had another triple double and dominated the game. But it’s what you do at closing time which really matters in close NBA games.
OKC falls back to 20-17 a full three games behind the T Wolves and now hits the road for five of its next six games.
The storyline here isn’t the bad officiating which has been bad this entire NBA season for various teams, the storyline is as a team when OKC had a glorious opportunity to show it was a serious contender..it wilted with soft defense, some soft coaching, and two bad losses to reset the Thunder back into a gaggle of Western Conference second or third tier teams with Denver, Portland, New Orleans, and maybe even Utah with a healthy Rudy Gobert.
It was in this game I couldn’t take it any longer and muted the volume on the Fox television broadcast and went with Matt Pinto on the audio. I can’t take it any longer….even Antonio Davis. It’s like watching Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee-Sanders pressers on crowd size.
The Thunder didn’t lose these two games because of the zebras, they lost these two games because as an organization from head coach thru the roster they’re somewhat soft and didn’t bother to play hard for 48 minutes. Their defense didn’t show up against the Bucks or the Mavs. When the Thunder had a glorious opportunity to show the basketball world there was toughness attached to them…they wilted and went south at home against Milwaukee and Dallas.
Don’t get me wrong, Milwaukee should be an up and comer in the East, and Dallas with Carlisle is always interesting even when they’re struggling…but there’s no way this home stand should have ended this way. No way.
So…here the Thunder idle, back with teams with less talent, but apparently with more passion for the task at hand.
The obvious has to be to written…rookie Dennis Smith Jr, thirty-nine year old Dirk, and Harrison Barnes were too much for the Thunder on New Year’s Eve in Oklahoma City on a bitterly cold night to usher in 2018.
Thunder hit the road to play the Lakers on Wednesday.