One thing Sam Presti likes is guys that can play multiple positions; guys that are diverse and athletic and that sometimes even defy the conventional norms for what a player should be built like for a given position on the court. Players he’s acquired in the last few years like Desmond Mason, Kyle Weaver and Thabo can all play the 2 and 3, and Weaver can also play the 1. James Harden can play the 2 for sure, but in college he handled the ball an awful lot leading me to think that he may see some minutes as a sort of combo guard. Kevin Durant has played the 2 and the 3 and the 3 seems to be his natural position now, but he may evolve into a great option at the 4 down the road with a game like Dirk Nowitzki. Jeff Green has the body of a 4 but the game of a 3 for the most part. Where does Serge Ibaka fit? Can he play the 5? Etan Thomas is a natural 4 but has spent a lot of minutes in his career at the 5. Oh the possibilities.
The problem with all this roster diversity is that it lends itself to logjams. On the Thunder the Shooting Guard, Small Forward and the Power Forward positions seem to be the most logjammed from my perspective. Read more…
Housekeeping note: There is now a mobile edition for Daily Thunder. I’m still making a few tweaks to it so if it changes or messes up, that’s why.
Barkley’s Mouth asks if Kevin Durant is a superstar… yet: ”However, as much as his stats will be better, so will Durant’s maturity and intangibles as he goes through his third season around the league. Superstar? As much as I love his game and laid-back way about him, it’s still a bit premature to annoint him as such. Durant is a star, certainly, but until more people other than fantasy basketball geeks know about Durant’s game, which will be a tougher task because of the market he plays in, the “super” is too early to add. A trip to the All-Star game, and more importantly the NBA postseason, will go a long way in getting that “super” adjective before ‘star.’”
Training camp is a time to figure out the little things. Coming in, you’re going to know most everything you need to about your team. But not everything. Maybe you need to answer a position battle. Maybe you need to figure out the last piece of your rotation. Maybe you need to define a role or two. Every team has the camp questions because hey, that’s exactly what camp is for. Here’s 10 questions the Thunder likely has coming in that hopefully will have answers (or close to at least).
Who is starting at shooting guard? The biggest question. Thabo or James Harden? Obviously, Harden wasn’t drafted third overall to be a career bench player. He’s going to be a starter. But does he start the season as it? Does he take the job halfway through? Does he get it next year? Regardless of who wins starting honors, both are going to see extended minutes. If you ask me who will be starting alongside Russell Westbrook in the Thunder backcourt come Oct. 29, I’d say Thabo. Harden is the future, Thabo is the now. They are going to complement each other extremely well so it doesn’t matter a whole heck of a lot, but I bet Scott Brooks goes with the veteran. Read more…
(I’ve always liked Brian Davis’s call on that.) Finally, the Thunder flipped the script at the buzzer. After losing five or six times as the horn sounded, OKC did it to someone else for once. I remember being a little excited after that game. Read more…
First off, Happy Training Camp Day and Happy birthday to Kevin Durant who turns 21 today. Go get yourself an adult beverage young man. You deserve it.
John Hollinger has his forecast up for OKC. He has the Thunder finishing with 36 wins and finishing 10th in the Western Conference (Insider): “Could the Thunder make it to the playoffs? Absolutely. I have them finishing out of the money, but they’re certainly in a position where if enough things break right, they could make it. Chief among them would be breakout years from the youngsters and a monumental campaign from Durant, and along with that would have to come an outstanding run of health; this team is not laden with quality depth.”
The AP’s recap of media day: ”The moving trucks and house-hunting trips are in the past for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Season 2 will be all about basketball. Here’s an idea of how little of a factor the transition from Seattle will be for the Thunder players this preseason: Only Kevin Durant, Jeff Green and Nick Collison played for the franchise when it called Seattle home. Everyone else has had a clean start in Oklahoma City, whether through the draft, free agency or a trade.” Read more…
Honestly, not too much. It was a lot of your typical media-speak. Lots of stuff about working hard and taking it one day at a time and just getting better. But there were a few interesting things.
It was much different than any media day I’ve been to. I’ve been to two OU football media days and let me tell you, Thunder media day isn’t quite the same event. I counted maybe 30 media members there whereas at an OU football media day, you can’t count it. The huddles around Scott Brooks and Kevin Durant are nothing like the ones around Bob Stoops and Sam Bradford. I don’t say that as a bad thing but this franchise still has a ways to go in branding itself to the state. Thunder media day isn’t quite the full on EVENT that OU or even OSU media days are. Read more…
This one stung. It was a fantastic game from start to finish with explosive scoring and excellent play from the stars. And coming off a nice win New Year’s Eve against Golden State, a win against Denver would have meant two in a row, which meant winning streak, which was entirely unthinkable a month earlier. But Carmelo Anthony was having none of that. Read more…
A reminder: I’ll be at media day today so if you’ve got any last questions let them be known. The best so far: “Ask a player about health care. When he starts to answer, interrupt with ‘You lie!’”
Darnell Mayberry with an interesting point about keeping Kevin Durant: ”Familiarity alone certainly won’t get Durant’s signature on a long-term contract. But money won’t be an issue, as the Thunder already has cleared more than enough salary cap space to re-sign Durant to a max deal. The organization, in a short amount of time, also has proved to have ideal players in the front office and a supportive fan base in the Ford Center. And Durant has often said his laid-back personality meshes well with Oklahoma City’s low-key environment. But in roster continuity, Durant has a treasure few of his counterparts can lay claim to. Not LeBron James. Not Dwyane Wade. Not Chris Paul. Not Dwight Howard. Not Chris Bosh. Not Carmelo Anthony. Not Amare Stoudemire.”
Marc Stein’s first batch of power rankings are out and OKC checks in seven spots up from last year to No. 21: “Am I allowed to keep saying, even though I get their thinking, that I wish the Thunder had drafted Rubio? What about saying, high as I am on OKC’s future like everyone else, that playoff talk is still a tad premature?” Read more…
Programming note: I will be attending Thunder media day Monday afternoon so if there’s anything you’d love asked or something of the like, leave it in the comments. I’m not going to guarantee anything (I’m not about to ask Kevin Durant if he’s saving himself for marriage, so forget it), but I’ll do my best. You can count on lots of coverage of it and as many live updates as possible (most likely via Twitter).
(Waaaaaake up! Duh duh duhduh. I’m Danny Tanner and it’s time to watch a random video I’ve prepared to take up a couple minutes of your important life this morning. Thank you for your support of the DT and keep on livin’ like you were dyin’.)
It’s just a little 30 second commercial for 10 game packages, but I have to say, it’s pretty well done. And the drum music reminds me of those Ethan Allen ads that had the awesome drumming. Escalating piano music or tribal drums are always a winner in commercials if you ask me. But this got me fairly psyched for the season because HEY, we’re three days from training camp, 12 days from the first preseason game and 33 days from the season starting. And seeing this ad kind of slapped me in the face and said, “Hey you! Yeah you! The season is about to start. Have you given Mr. Bennett your money yet?”
Throughout the week some of you drop some brilliant or at least somewhat thoughtful comments and so this is a try at highlighting some of them. Disclaimer: It’s not that I necessarily agree with all of them, but they were interesting and for the most part, well put. Consider everything [sic’d].
“I read.” “Books Jerry. Books.” (Jax Raging Bile Duct): I read a lot of basketball articles, and I forget when and where I read what I read, if that makes sense. But, I do remember reading that it takes players about 5 seasons to establish themselves as a defender. Of course, there are always players that come into the league just for defense. Guys like Thabo and Ariza and D12.
It took Mello a trip to the Olympics to figure out that his colleagues were focusing their efforts on defense. But when he did, he got much, much better in one off-season. That was the start of his 5th year.
Kevin is ahead of the curve when it comes to offense, so he may be able to focus on defense sooner than other players, thus establish a defensive presence sooner than other players. Time will tell. But if not, then we’ve got this season and next to go before Kevin hits that magical 5th year of defensive growth. Read more…
So much happened on this day even before tip-off. Oklahoma City traded for Tyson Chandler. The new mascot was to be unveiled. The old team was in town with our first love, Chris Paul. Basically, it was a wannabe sportswriter’s dream setup for a moving, look-how-far-we’ve-come column. And that’s exactly what I planned on writing, especially if the Thunder could pull off a win. But wouldn’t you know it, things weren’t going well from the start. Read more…
Sporting News named their All-Decade team in their last issue and Kevin Durant was on the first team. As was Joakim Noah, over Blake Griffin, Shane Battier and Dwyane Wade. Hmm.
Shaun Powell of NBA.com says this is a make or break year for Greg Oden: “Can you imagine that, two years removed from a no-brainer draft decision, there are rumblings the Trail Blazers should’ve taken Kevin Durant instead? That says plenty about Durant, but also something about Oden, raw and hardly the impact player many expected him to be. Big men develop slowly, and Oden did suffer leg injuries, so patience, please. Still, Oden can make everyone in Portland exhale if he learns a pet move, elevates himself to third option on offense and grabs more than seven rebounds a game. Is that asking too much too soon? No, it isn’t.”
Real GM “honestly appraises” OKC’s championship chances: “Presti is manning an enviable battleship, easily one of the three or four best long-term outlooks in the NBA, but he still has a lot of work left and cannot simply set this current core out into orbit and expect a title to automatically return.” There’s a hefty amount of info about KD in there that’s pretty interesting.
Honestly, this was probably my favorite game from last season. The last time the two teams met, just two weeks prior, Oklahoma City stunned the Spurs 78-76 at the Ford Center for what was then, easily the Thunder’s best win of the season. OKC trailed by 17 at one point, turned it over a ton and shot only 36 percent. So up until March 31, it was OKC’s best win, albeit maybe coming in one of their worst played games. Read more…
The first single game ticket pre-sales start today at 10 a.m. with Ticketmaster. The password for the pre-sale is FORDCENTER or NBA. You can also pick up single game tickets at every Homeland in the metro area starting this Saturday. GOGOGOGOGOGOGO!
SI’s Britt Robson on Tyson Chandler: ”Now that Chandler, according to at least one doctor, is certifiably prone to another toe injury, was Charlotte unwise to pick him up? How can Chandler be too risky to warrant trading Wilcox, Smith and Hardin in February but, after another ankle aggravation in March, is suddenly able to fetch Okafor, Charlotte’s younger franchise cornerstone? The answer is that, along with the long-term payroll savings, the Bobcats obtained a player who has a larger upside and is more compatible with their personnel. And Charlotte had the guts to roll the dice on Chandler — imagine that, a group with Michael Jordan in it making a gamble — who had operations on both his ankle and his toe in May and then rested during a summer that didn’t even include pickup games.”
