Wednesday Bolts – 9.23.09
As we said yesterday, Ryan Bowen and Michael Ruffin will be at the Thunder’s camp, but two more players are 
coming along. Point guard Tre Kelley from South Carolina and Michael Harris, a power forward from Rice who played briefly with Houston last year.
The New York Times with a cool feature on Kevin Durant: ”Some of it is based on where he is. Oklahoma City is the league’s smallest market. And although this city may have accepted its professional basketball team — the Ford Center had 18 sellouts last season, the franchise’s first after a move from Seattle — it is still discovering the players. Most of it, though, is based on who Durant is, a person with a quiet sense of humor and a demeanor so modest that it is as if he is a star who does not quite realize he is one.”
The Orlando Sentinal has a preview/power poll out and OKC comes in No. 24: “The status of the Oklahoma City Thunder is perhaps best explained by a comment Kevin Durant posted on his Twitter account this summer. He said while in Hong Kong, when he told people he played for Oklahoma City, they’d say maybe if he worked hard, he’d someday make the pros. Durant is pretty sure he’ll show them, and the Thunder probably have the most exciting young corps of players with Durant, Russell Westbrook and draft pick James Harden. As those guys progress, so will the team.”
TSN with a Thunder preview: “Of course, the most perplexingly enjoyable aspect of getting hyped up to watch this club is that they haven’t proven they are capable of doing anything of substance in the league yet. This is that brief moment when no one knows if they’re going to continue their upwards climb to respectability or if they are going to stall at the bottom of the hill. People look at the talent reserves and drool at the possibility, and to a certain degree that allows excitement and anticipation to override common sense. However, in this age of unending statistical metrics designed to take all of the unpredictability out of professional sports, a little bit of unsupportable optimism is a desperately-needed distraction.”
That was fast. The Timberwolves waived Chucky Atkins yesterday. What team is next for the Chuckster I wonder…
Well didn’t this get old fast. SLAM has Kanye interrupt every franchise: “I’m very pleased like that second piece of pie hitting the spot, Thunder, and I’ma let you grow together as the season goes along, but the cast of “Mean Girls” are a better collection of young talent than you. No one end up like Lindsay Lohan, please.”
I’ve got the Daily Thunder fantasy league set up. If you want in email me (first come first serve). And if do you want in, I need a committment to keep your team updated and active. Otherwise, it’s no good.
Also, I’ve added a few pages at the top under TEAM. I’m pretty excited about the Schedule and Events tab (Google is unreal with all their features). That calendar will have all results, the schedule and also any and every Thunder related event you can think of.
The Utah Flash’s owner is quickly becoming the coolest guy in school. He’s putting up $100,000 to try and get MJ and Bryon Russell to square off at halftime of his home opener.
Hey you guys! Just 35 freaking days until the season starts. 35… hmm… what’s 35….
should be …”was” claiming… at end of first paragraph
and … I “didn’t” feel like mentioning… at the end of the second
But in the end it is the ideas that matter. Take what you think are reasonable and let the rest go.
Here another way to go at it, instead of retrospective critique, prospective recommendation. I took an hour or so awhile ago and put together a list of a dozen lineups I think probably should be among the most used and probably many of the best lineups will come from. Out of the hundreds of possibilities and out of the hundreds than Brooks will actually use. Here is my dozen to emphasize:
Westbrook-Harden-Durant-Green-Collison
Westbrook-Harden-Durant-Green-Krstic
Westbrook-Harden-Durant-White-Collison
Westbrook-Harden-Green-White-Collison
Westbrook-Harden-Green-Collison-Krstic
Westbrook-Harden-Sefolosha-Collison=Kristic
Westbrook-Weaver-Sefolosha-White-Collison
Westbrook-Harden-Durant-Green=White
Westbrook-Weaver-Green-White-Collison
Westbrook-Weaver-Durant-Green=Kristic
Westbrook-Weaver-Durant-Green=Krstic
Harden-Weaver-Durant-Collison-Krstic
I’ll check to see how it compares to Brooks’ top dozen at some point in the season on adjusted +/- performances.
If the pictures were normal pictures with faces and emotions they’d do their job probably better than without so why without? Maybe so they don’t have to replaced (but that is a weak reason) or maybe it was consciously or unconsciously to be different enough that the players would ask what’s up and who did it that way and come to learn it was the boss man. You can say Presti’s low-profile and he is in many ways but I think he wanted the players to know these photos were picked by the boss, that he cares about that modeled behavior a lot, more than most. Visitors too. It creates a story, a mystique. Maybe not nearly as blatantly as requiring your college teammates to sign written contracts to play hard and not quit instead of just having a huddle or locker room talk but it still creates a trail, advertisement of the one doing these things. Lots of leaders do these things. It is not that big a deal but there is a bit a self-promotion to it.
The lineups above were picked with some attention to the
4 Factors, Adjusted, Player Pairs, last season’s lineup results, role fulfillment, etc. It is not just picking them out of the air. Many of the hundreds of lineups used last season had flaws that could be identified in such a review that probably should have discouraged their use or at least discouraged their greater use.