Daily Thunder.com

@Alexfromgermany
WELL DONE! Very nice. Big time props to you.

These teams average 2.7 guys making $4-8 million and that might be the more important slot to focus on. The Lakers the leader with 6. Ordinarily I don't think this is good strategy but they made it work- with their huge market resources.

You are probably right Keith they'll spend if they feel it is paying off.

On $3 million guys, I think most are rookie contracts, bigs and PGs. Wings are probably the rarest to get that level money as there are so many semi-decent wings out there looking for work.

Looking at how many guys make $2.5-4 million on the best teams- Boston 5, Clev 4, Dallas 1, Houston 3, Lakers 0, New Orleans 1, Orlando 2, San Antonio 3, Utah 2, Denver 1. The average of these is 2.2 per team. Thunder have 3. But how many in the future? Maybe I made too much of it but it is a choice that was worth looking at and matters some.

Hollinger had an article that pointed out how signing Thabo now will save us cap space next year due to the cap holds. It made lots of sense.

@Crow
If the Thunder truly believe they are playoff and title contenders in the years to come, I can't imagine they stay at the bottom of the league spending list. That said, even if they do, it won't be Thabo needed to be pushed out, it will be Green, Durant, or Westbrook, guys who will be rolling in big contracts down the line.

$3 million for a big is more understandable than a wing but yeah you can afford one or a few of these. But not a lot, later. Especially if you stay at the very bottom of the league spending list. But he could eventually be a trade piece in a year or two.

@Crow
The new CBA may do a lot about 3.5 million per year guys, but I honestly doubt it. Right now, 3.5 million is nothing. Kwame Brown and Chris Wilcox (well below average players with zero upside)are making 4 and 3 million repectively. Pretty much everyone not playing on the league minimum with any shot of being useful makes 4 million. I'm not sold on him as a starter until he consistently can make open shots, but for an average of about 3.5 million, we can afford him on the bench easily.

alright this is what i got from the thunder tv broadcast

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Q-5oIQ4oQ

i guess you were looking for this second video, which is not complete unfortunately:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNZCFgtIesI

Better than nothing though for now. It was more of a hassle than i thought it would be so feel free to donate at a-klaas AT upb.de :-)

I agree with you Dylan, Dahntay Jones is overrated defensively. Defensive Adjusted +/- has him as a -2, below average defender.

The Sefolosha contract isn't a clear good thing or bad thing yet. But $3 million a year wings aren't that common really and will probably become rarer in this market and the next CBA. Most players who are good will get more. Run of the mill players will get a lot less. Thabo has to fit pretty well to make good sense.

Presti was simply unwilling to let him be the first out the door as he would have surely tried to be next summer for playing time (with Harden coming up) and other things. Would another team offer more than they did right now? I doubt it but that is hard to say right now. Only takes one. The next season does still matter as to who he is, what he can do. Maybe. Without a jump up though he isn't that special so far with his negative offensive impact bigger than his positive defensive impact on Adjusted not just for a season but for his career to date.

The Thabo deal is less than Presti offer CJ Miles last summer. Both actions suggest to me some concern abut the ability to compete for free agents.

In the end it is really just like paying a fairly high draft pick early on a rookie contract though.

Ultimately he has to fit somewhere. Whether it is with the starters or off the bench. I think it is still more likely the latter.

Of the player pairs that were –10 or worse on raw +/- last season only three remain possible, still have both players here necessary to field them. And guess what? Brooks' starting lineup has all three of them in it- Durant-Sefolosha, Green-Sefolosha and Durant-Krstic. When Brooks says he doesn’t use +/- much I believe him. But either he’ll be right or wrong to fly in the face of what those pairs did last season. Brooks made this one of the ten most used lineups in the league in game 1. It worked but against a weak opponent. Time will tell if it works better than it did last season.

i can try to grab it from the nba league pass broadcast, it was in there wasnt it?

@Royce
Oh yeah, another thing, if anyone ever wondered how Shakespeare wrote so well, he apparently just wrote things in French and then google translated it to English. "Are you condemned to shine?" Come on, that's literary, folks.

@Dylan@okcthunder
Twitter feed, maybe they'll get the media dept. to upload it?

@Dylan
I took video of it and planned on posting it, but the quality was poor. I'll try and get a better one Sunday.

But it was good. All coming together for the team picture with "RISE TOGETHER" was very nice.

I think Dahntay Jones is overrated defensively, but I'm only judging that on a handful of times I've seen him on TV and been unimpressed.

Hey, I know Royce talked about this the other day, but is anyone else reading Simmons' Book of Basketball? Holy crap, this thing is amazing. As a huge baseball fan, I liked "Now I can die in peace," but it was mainly just Red Sox anecdotes. This book covers the whole league and it's history. I don't know, I feel like I'm becoming a Simmons fan again.

And secondly, I will paypal real money to anyone that can find me a high quality link to the Thunder's new intro video. That thing gave me goosebumps on Wednesday. I now forgive them for "Thunder up," because this intro is 100000000 times better than Thunderstruck (though I'll always have a soft spot for that song now.)

Jeff Green and LMA are comparable players offensively. Jeff Green's three point shooting actually makes him a similarly efficient offensive player, despite LMA's much higher FG%. LMA is a slightly better rebounder and they are similar passers. Jeff Green turns the ball over way more than LMA ever did, and that's a huge difference between them.

Defensively, Aldridge obviously has much more potential due to his length, but he's not a great defender.

I think if OKC does extend Jeff Green (big question, IMO with their other obligations and available PF's in the future) he'll get somewhere between what Bargnani and Aldridge got.

I wonder if Thabo ever brags about putting his money into a Swiss bank account?

Thabo's getting more than Dahntay Jones, obviously less than Trevor Ariza. Thabo's contract is okay for what he is; however, if he can continue to hit the corner three and be a factor on offense then you could probably say he's worth a bit more than what he's getting. If that happens the only difference between him and Ariza would be his handle and a load of money.

Thabos deal looks very affordable for what he gives us. He gets a lot of minutes each game and makes the opponents best weapon ineffective. And it looks like his offseason work on the corner 3-pointer has paid off! His role will probably lessen as Harden gets better, but that's still a cheap deal.

@Lefty
The way I look at it: he's not making much less under his current contract, and the yearly raises are reasonable, but substantial enough to make a difference. Sounds good to me, especially considering the kind of work ethic we've seen from him so far.

@Jax Raging Bile Duct
That may be true, but my statement was relevant to their comparative impact on the game. Considering that Jeff was in his second year (compared to LMA being in his third), his numbers compare quite favorably. LMA is better on the inside, and he takes lots of mid-range elbow jumpers (those shots are taken by KD and Krstic in our system), whereas Green's athleticism around the rim and perimeter shooting set him apart. One of the biggest challenges for our team going forward is to utilize these unique talents in a way that helps us win.

But you're right--I'm ready to see him assert himself more defensively against the likes of LMA and Odom, for sure.

Royce mentioned that Bowen's first contract like this was 3 years, a little over 11 million. This deal actually pays Thabo a little less per year than Bowen, which is huge. If Thabo can master the corner three, he might be looking at a Battier contract (7 million per year) in 3 years.

@Lefty

Just off the top of my head, Dhantey Jones and Jamario Moon would be comparable defenders at Thabo's level. When he improves, maybe Ariza level, and then to the Battier level.

I don't know all their contract amounts, only Ariza's, which is quite a nice contract for a defender without a previous history of efficient offense.

If I were any geekier, I'd look up the 82games info comparing them, but that would require effort, and I'm SOOO not into effort.

Well, you're absolutely right. Still, 3 mil a year feels a lot better than the 16 mil that Roy will be making. I definitely understand there is a difference in roles and expectations, but considering the difference Thabo has made on this team and that the Admin clearly wants him around a long time, I feel like we came out really good here. You always hear about people overpaying for players, but I don't feel like this is one of those instances.

I wonder who a comparable player to Thabo is (defensive specialist), and what kind of deal they signed at this point in their career? Just as a way to truly guage this extension.

@KingGondo

Last year LMA just abused Jeff. LMA and Lamar Odom, in my opinion, were the two players that exposed Jeff the most. It will be interesting to see if that will change any this year, starting this Sunday.

@Lefty
To be fair though--all we expect Thabo to do is defend and knock down open shots. Those other players are all expected to be featured players on their squads.

At this point, I'm just hoping we can lock down Uncle Jeff for 5 years/$50 million or so--he's just as good as LMA, in my opinion.

This was on Baseline, talking about the class of '06, and who will and won't get extensions:

Group 1: Those who got paid. (Pick number in parentheses)

Andrea Bargnani (1). Raptors gave five years, $50 million.
LaMarcus Aldridge (2). Blazers gave five years, $65 million.
Brandon Roy (6). Blazers gave five years, $80 million.
Thabo Sefolosha (13). Thunder gave four years, $15 million.

I know he's not quite seen as highly as those other guys (and probably shouldn't be), but that makes him look like an absolute steal.

Nice dig on Thabeet....

Thank you Royce, for linking the translated version of Thabo's interview. It provided the best line I've read all week...

Is this also true for your shoot, you had just played tricks this summer with Team Switzerland?
On this side, too, so good. The technical changes have been assimilated.

Thinking of Thabo as some sort of Cyborg or Terminator makes him even cooler than I thought. I now have a strong desire to put that line in some random techno song. Perfect!

KD already giving the scoring title to melo?? Hopefully he tries to win it himself. Melo did put on a show last nite though.

I bet Durant is stuck in the D-League's Dakota Wizards in 2k10. That is some motivation for ya.

I hope so badly that the Thunder Make a major championship too!