Update: Chris Sheridan looks at interim coaches in limbo and says Scott Brooks is a “near lock“: “Start with the fact 
that nobody in Oklahoma City has uttered anything but positives when discussing him. Add in the dynamic that he gets along splendidly with general manager Sam Presti and got more out of Jeff Green and Kevin Durant by sliding them over to power forward and small forward, respectively. And toss in their two most recent efforts — playing the Celtics tough for 3½ quarters Sunday, then stunning the Spurs in San Antonio on Tuesday — and you pretty much get the picture that Brooks is there to stay. Think the Sacramento Kings are kicking themselves for passing over Brooks in favor of Reggie Theus two years ago? When they promoted him, the Thunder said they’d give Brooks every opportunity to earn the job. He did.”
HoopsWorld has Scott Brooks as one of next year’s leading Coach of the Year candidates: “This team has taken significant steps this season and Brooks has defined three players (Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and Jeff Green) to build around. Thabo Sefolosha immediately contributed upon his arrival after being ignored in Chicago. Brooks’ biggest obstacle next season will be building offensively. Oklahoma City ranked 29th in the league in offensive efficiency. Brooks has gotten Durant’s approval and hopefully will return to coach the Thunder next season without the “interim” tag.”
The Magic traded Dwight Howard to OKC? Huh? How did I miss this? Oh, it was just an April Fools joke played by the Magic: “The Magic’s PR and Marketing team sure had some fun with April Fools’ Wednesday in Orlando. Let me try my best to explain. Giddy with whoopee cushion excitement all night long, the Magic pretended to “trade” Dwight Howard to the Oklahoma City Thunder, “re-sign” former great Penny Hardaway, and “play professional basketball” exactly like the Washington Generals. (They nailed that last one flawlessly, falling 99-95 to the sub-sub-sub-.500 Raptors.)”
Berry Tramel with some excellent points on the cost of losing: “You know what I’m talking about. The theory that defeat is fine, since every loss increases the odds of Oklahoma City landing hometown hero Blake Griffin, the runaway best player available in the 2009 NBA Draft. It’s only natural to check out the lottery standings, since the playoffs never were an issue for the Thunder. When OKC pulls a stunt like it did Tuesday night – winning at San Antonio – you check the standings and realize if the Thunder had minded its own business, this morning it would be tied for fourth place in the lottery standings. Instead, the Thunder is sixth. That’s a huge difference in lottery odds – 13.7 percent for fourth, 7.5 percent for sixth. But those odds are 13.7 and 7.5, not 83.7 and 77.5. And no matter what the odds, increasing them comes at a high cost. Losing is not easily shaken. Mason is exactly right; losing can become a habit.” Read more…
Other
Excellent stuff here emailed in by a reader. I’m a bit of a stat guy myself, but I don’t think there’s anything that can judge “Can the guy ball?” And like I wrote about last week, Russell Westbrook can absolutely ball. Here’s a better way of saying it.
By John Mietus
One key element little discussed in this year’s NBA rookie of the year race is the importance of intuitive feel for the game, basketball genius for lack of better term. Some coaches and statisticians try to refer to this “feel” as Basketball IQ, but that attempts to quantify with numbers (high or low) a player’s innate feel for the game. The truth of the matter is that most great basketball players simply feel the game out, and no statistical measure accurately captures the beauty or volatility of such play. That’s why team’s can write PER measurements on Ricky Rubio or Larry Bird without ever fully realizing the “win potential” of either player.
I’m not always a fan of what Charley Rosen, the FoxSports.com NBA writer, says about basketball. Rosen tends to be negative to the point of absurdity when discussing the greatest basketball players in the world, but he makes valid points on the contributions of players in regards to a team concept. Rosen points out that 90 percent of the players on the court at any given time of a game do not hold onto the basketball. That implies that 90 percent of the game happens away from the ball. And even in the NBA, even in a league designed to be played one-on-one, plenty of opportunity for improvisation and contribution occurs when a player does not actually have the basketball in their hands. It goes well beyond, “Is this guy setting a screen where he should be?”, and has more to do with a feel for spacing, for angles, for opportunities to make plays. It happens on both ends of the floor and allows an intuitive player to separate himself from players of average ability. But can it be measured? Not concretely. It can only be felt.
I want to talk about Russell Westbrook and the critical measures of a player’s capability. Watching Russell play this year on television or live and you can see the joy of his game. He’s like a child who has yet to realize all the limitations and boxes life will attempt to put around him. People get concerned over his turnovers or his “low” shooting percentage but they may miss his bouncy athleticism, his intuitive ability to make plays, his general court sense. Russell’s been out trying things this year, experimenting, pushing the boundaries of statistical analysis. Read more…
Other
Update: David Thorpe has a really cool Rookie Watch out – which player should each rookie study? For Russell 
Westbrook, he says Dwyane Wade: ”When Wade is at his smoking-hot best, he’s both a dynamic athlete and a skilled midrange shooter. That combination is necessary for Wade to be special, because some teams often build a wall around the rim and force him to make jumpers. Westbrook is incredibly athletic with and without the ball, so imposing his will on most possessions by using that gift gives him an advantage almost every time. And he is learning to do that now. But if he also gets his midrange game to work efficiently, he’ll be headed to the All-Star Game and the Thunder will be playing in late spring.” Also interesting is who he has O.J. Mayo studying.
Good to see P.J. Carlesimo has found work: “I can’t remember the last time I saw Carlesimo on-air, but I don’t remember him being that bad. He always seemed to have a surly disposition to me, but maybe a fun environment like TNT Basketball is what the former coach needs. We shall see.”
In the comments of Darnell’s blog he says he’ll have a Serge Ibaka update Monday in the paper and had this interesting note: “Basically, the front office loves how he’s developing over in Spain. The plan is to bring him over to join the team for summer league play and evaluate him in an NBA-type setting. It’s still unclear if the team will bring him over for next season. My guess is no. But again, that’s just my guess.”
Kevin Durant evidently bruised his hip against the Spurs, but he acts like he’s OK: “I couldn’t run like normal,” Durant said. “I just wanted to stick it out and fight through it. After I get some treatment [Wednesday] hopefully I’ll be all right.” Oklahoma City’s next game isn’t until Friday against the Blazers.” He did it early in the second quarter and he went on to score 15 more points so yeah, I think he’s OK. Read more…
Other
Defense is one of the most difficult things to quantify in basketball. It’s not as simple as just figuring out how much the guy a certain player is guarding scores and then you have a number to with which to judge. In basketball the team context in unavoidable. The schemes teams run rely on “teamwork” defense, helping, rotating, switching, double teaming, etc., making player defensive evaluation sort of a nebulous concept.
But we acquired Thabo in late February at the deadline and he came with a defensive reputation. I don’t claim to know everything there is to know about playing defense in the NBA, but when you see a player like Thabo get after it defensively for the first time, you know your seeing aggressive, intense defensive effort. Great defense may be a little difficult to quantify, but you sure know it when you see it; especially after some of the porous performances we saw in December.
I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of our offensive and defensive numbers broken down by months since Read more…
Other
Sort of surprising when I first read this, but I am starting to see some logic in it. Darnell Mayberry reported today:
Rookies D.J. White and Kyle Weaver have been assigned to the Tulsa 66ers, the Thunder’s D-League affiliate.
It’s the third time White has been sent to Tulsa and the first time Weaver has been sent down.
In four games with Tulsa, White has averages of 14.5 points, 7.5 rebounds, 1.0 assists in 30.8 minutes. Weaver has played in 49 games for the Thunder, 17 as a starter, and is averaging 5.4 point, 2.1 rebounds and 1.8 assists in 20 minutes a game.
The goal is to get both players extended minutes with the 66ers, more than they currently would with the Thunder. Both players are expected to be in uniform tonight when the 66ers face the Austin Toros but expect both players to be recalled before the end of the season.
Weaver had his best month in March and is a solid part of the rotation as the 7/8 man. He shot 51% from the field and 41% from downtown and scored 7.1 ppg in March. My guess is that they want to keep him busy and get him some big burn (hopefully they let him run the point now that Livingston is with the big club). Most Thunder fans like his game at 20 minutes per night. Perhaps we can see what he does in Tulsa with say 36 minutes.
We only have one more game this week, on Friday, but next week is a busy week with 5 games. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Kyle back for next week’s 5 games.
I would like to see D.J. get a little burn with the big team also. This is the third trip down and so he can’t go down again this season if he is recalled.
Other
HoopsWorld rookie rankings: “If Derrick Rose is the superstar point guard of this class, Westbrook is definitely right 
behind him. To know that he’s already scoring so well and seeing the floor so well is one thing, but he’s actually one of the better rebounders of the group as well. If the Thunder ever get back on track and become a contender, he’ll be a big part of it.”
Tony Mejia (I always think of Tony Almeda – he even sort of looks like him) on tanking: “Winning for spite — that, I understand. May as well go to town and surpass Oklahoma City and Minnesota and fall below the seven percent range as far as their top-pick chances go. Winning for the sake of winning? Don’t see the benefit. Developing talent is one thing, especially since many of these teams in contention for worst record are among the NBA’s youngest, but as far as I’m concerned, rattling off a winning streak at this time of year is counter-productive. It means sacrificing your scratch-offs. Watching Sacramento celebrate an overtime victory over Shaquille O’Neal and his Suns, all I could wonder was whether the Kings will be as thrilled come May 19. Coupled with back-to-back Washington losses, the Kings temporarily forfeited 51 lottery combinations.”
Kevin Durant says the team would be better off with Blake Griffin: “I’m looking to do what’s best for my team, you know?” Durant said. “And if the best thing I can do to help us win is to use myself to get traded for a game-changer like Griffin, then I’m going to do it. I’m a team guy and I just want to do everything I can do to make us better.”
Words about Shaun Livingston: “I like the future he has,” Brooks said. “He’s going to help. He’s a prospect we obviously like. We want him to get better as much as he wants to get better.” General manager Sam Presti said having Livingston spend time just up the road in Tulsa helped the Thunder evaluate him, and he believes the 6-foot-7 point guard has done what he needs to do so far to make progress on his way back to the NBA. Presti expected Livingston to join Oklahoma City’s summer league team to help continue his development leading up to next season.” Read more…
Bolts
