Why this picture? I don't know, I just kind of thought it was funny.
We’re 17 games in, which means roughly 20 percent of the NBA season is put away, which means some trends are starting to come to the surface. You know, like what’s working in wins versus losses. Those type of things.
Obviously, in wins, you play better. Everybody knows that. It’s why you won. You shot better or rebounded better or played better defense or your players played better. It’s no revelation that in losses your numbers go down and your best players probably didn’t play as well. Again, it’s why you lost.
But at the same time, it’s somewhat key to determine WHAT those things are you’re not doing as well. Because common sense says, correct those issues that are consistently rearing their heads in losses and you know, they turn to wins.
So here are a few developing themes:
In wins, Oklahoma City averages almost four assists more per game. The Thunder dish out almost 21 a game in Ws, and just 16.1 in losses. That’s most punctuated by Russell Westbrook who averages 7.9 helpers in wins and just five a game in losses. But here’s what that says to me: It’s not that Russ is necessarily worse in losses (though in some circumstances he has been), but more that he’s had to shoulder the load more because his teammates either weren’t knocking down shots or playing well. He’s averaged 16.6 points per game in Ws and 17.3 in Ls. Russ has had to pick up the scoring in some losses because things weren’t working (the first Houston game really sticks out in which Westbrook had 33). Read more…
The first four designs go on sale tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. CST sharp. Since the demand is pretty high and supplies are limited, it’s first come, first serve. But keep in mind, MORE WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON. The first run was just to gauge interest mainly and since it appears that it’s fairly good, we’ll make sure you get a shirt if you want one. You may just have to wait a week or two.
Interesting note from the Weekend Dime: “Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant became just the fourth player in league history, joining LeBron James (twice), Shaquille O’Neal and Michael Jordan, to score at least 400 points during the first 15 games of a season at age 21 or younger.”
The Thunder sits 13th in Dime’s power rankings: “Are they for real? Friday’s game against Boston will tell us something, but wait until the middle of December when OKC gets Cleveland, Denver, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, the Lakers and Phoenix over a 10-day stretch.”
NBA.com has KD in its MVP discussion: ”Now, there are two views of Durant: The first is that he is not that good a player or leader, a high-volume shooter whose 27 points per game is inflated because he averages more than 20 shots per, an argument augmented by his 3.1-3.2 assist-to-turnover ratio. The other view, to which The Race is beginning to ascribe, is that Durant is the future of the NBA, his young teammates’ success possible only because Durant’s undeniable talents garner so much attention.” Read more…
Some losses are frustrating because of who you lost to. Some are frustrating because of how you lost. And some are frustrating because of why you lost.
And tonight’s 100-91 to the Rockets is definitely the latter.
How does this sound? Twenty-three offensive rebounds and 19 more shot attempts. That’s what Houston had in their favor Sunday night. That’s the reason the Rockets won. The. Reason. Toss 19 Oklahoma City turnovers and 1-13 from 3 on top of that and you’ve got quite a recipe for a loss. The fact the Thunder only fell by nine is actually kind of impressive. The fact OKC hit almost 50 percent of its 75 shots is really the only reason it stayed close.
Here’s the thing: I’m not terribly upset about the loss. Sure, it’s an opportunity lost. Sure, it’s a game that when you look at the box score, you’ll see a glaring reason why the team lost. Sure, it’s a game that you feel like you should have and could have won. But the Rockets are no pushover team and Oklahoma City was playing with just nine healthy bodies. Key contributors missing: Nenad Krstic, Nick Collison and Kevin Ollie. And I have to think Krstic and Collison would have helped on the boards. Actually I don’t think, I know.Read more…
It’s a running theme – with each win, the next game feels bigger. Feels more important. Feels like a loss could be a setback. Especially when it’s at home.
And now at 9-7 and two games over .500 for the first time since 2-0, Oklahoma City has a chance to start a real winning streak and get things really cooking. I said it before the Milwaukee game, but with a five-game homestand, the Thunder could separate themselves from .500 by a decent amount. Read more…
The 66ers play tonight and currently, just one current player on the Thunder roster is in Tulsa. You can watch the game (and every game hereafter actually) for free on NBA.com. So if you’ve got absolutely NOTHING to do tonight, sit home and watch Byron Mullens hoist ill-advised 20-footers for a while.
A little about the current 66er roster: Former Sooner Keith Clark, former Cowboy Byron Eaton and former ORU Golden Eagles Larry Owens, Yemi Ogunoye, Marcus Lewis and Moses Ehambe are the locals on the roster. Always nice to keep some recognizable faces on the D-League rosters to help with interest. So if you’re an ORU fan, tune in.
So far Tulsa is 0-2 with losses against Iowa and the Utah Flash. Tulsa takes on Utah again tonight. Latavious Williams scored 17 in the opener, but followed that up with a none spot last night. Mustafa Shakur scored 14 and 13 in the 66ers first two games. Byron Mullens scored 14 points and pulled down 10 rebounds in his only game with the club.
(Morning DTers. It’s Bedlam Saturday but who cares? We’ve got a winning basketball team to watch! Thanks for your support of Daily Thunder.)
I couldn’t help but think about this last night as I watched Oklahoma City roll to its ninth victory: Remember how last year there were worries that the Thunder might not win nine at all and set the new bar for NBA futility? Well I don’t think we’re worrying about that now. Two games over, nine wins and currently in the playoffs. Plus with four more home games left on this stand with a chance to put some distance from that .500 level. So things are good. Oh, and listen to this song. I have no idea what it is or why someone would make it. The unintentional comedy is high.
Just to uphold tradition, the Thunder won their 9th game last season in GAME 43 on January 21st. How refreshing to win our 9th game in just 17 contests this season. Box Score.
We all know that ESPN decided to pick up this contest tonight because rookie Brandon Jennings is the big story so far this year. Ok, well, I guess the Thunder are “sort of” interesting being over .500 and all, with the second youngest roster in the NBA, and the top 5 scorer in the league, and a butt load of top 5 picks and yada yada yada. Whatever. It was all about Brandon Jennings and his 55 points the other night.
Mr. Jennings, I know you are sort of a rookie phenom, but I’d like to introduce you to one of last years rookie phenoms: Mr Westbrook!
Russell Westbrook is a carnivore! 20 points on 6/15 shooting; 7/8 from the line. 6 boards, 7 assists and only 2 turns and 1 personal foul while showing the rook a little something about playing point in the NBA. Hello young fella. Jennings in the mean time went 3/11 from the field (12 points), 1 board, 3 assists and 3 steals in 29 minutes. It was sublime to see RW dominate. But this game was about so much more than this little matchup. This game to me was about efficient offense and solid defense.
The Thunder repeatedly got to the rim and the Bucks jacked up jumpshots. Plain and simple. How nice to see some OTHER team fall into the trap of settling for jumpers. We are usually the guilty ones. Tonight the Thunder got to the rim and got to the line and as basketball fans we know that one thing usually leads to another. The Thunder attempted 35 free thow attempts and the Bucks attempted only 22. The Thunder also dominated a slender and skinny Bucks front line to the tune of a +12 rebounding advantage. (Note: shameless plug for Daily Thunder T-shirts) Read more…
Hellllllo America! Just like we thought, the Thunder has gotten picked up for a nationally televised game and as a result, the franchise and those close to it are going berserk over it. And rightfully so. This is a big one for this team. It’s a good chance to get people on the Kevin Durant bandwagon early this year. Get people talking about Russell Westbrook’s improvement. Maybe alert people to James Harden’s complete game. And most of all, show everyone this isn’t your 2008-09 Thunder team. It’s new and very much improved. Read more…
Darnell Mayberry on Brandon Jennings: “But it’s Jennings’ pioneering path to the NBA that has been the biggest shock regarding his success. Last year, Jennings became the first player to bypass college and play professional overseas as a result of the NBA’s age limit, which took effect in 2006 and shut off high school players from jumping directly to the NBA.”
Former voice of the Sonics, Kevin Calabro is calling tonight’s game: “Kevin Calabro, the voice of the Seattle SuperSonics for 21 seasons, will revisit his former franchise when he calls the Thunder’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks at 8:30 tonight on ESPN. Jon Barry will be the analyst. The flex telecast replaces the originally scheduled Phoenix at Minnesota game.” Read more…
Due to unlucky scheduling conflicts, I happened to be out of town when the t-shirt stuff went up. And evidently there were some questions/concerns/comments about them. So I’m going to cover a few things right quick.
The Oklahoma City Thunder will sign free agent guard Mike Wilks, InsideHoops.com has learned.
Wilks’ agent Bill Neff confirmed to InsideHoops.com editor Jeff Lenchiner that the team will soon add the 30-year-old veteran, who has career averages of 2.5 points and 1.2 assists per game.
Wilkes is a 5-10, 180-pound point guard and played for three different teams in the 2007-08 season and was not in the NBA in 2008-09. Obviously this is just a short term fix while Kevin Ollie and Shaun Livingston get healthy.
Hola campers. I’m back. I’m glad we all survived the Royce sabbatical. It was rough on all involved. Where was I? Fulfilling my duty as a Young and deer hunting with my family. This was year 62 for the Young’s to trek off to the woods of Southeastern Oklahoma and shoot at animals.Much thanks to Joe, J.G., Mrs. DT and everyone else for holding down the fort. I won’t leave you again. Well, not any time soon at least.
David Thorpe’s rookie rankings has Harden on the move up to four: “Thunder GM Sam Presti had the opportunity to draft Ricky Rubio or Tyreke Evans with the No. 3 pick. But Rubio had the buyout hanging over his head and wasn’t a sure thing to come play in OKC. And Evans, who needs the ball in his hands a lot to be effective, would be a tough fit with Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, who have similar needs. Harden, meanwhile, was the rare scorer who had terrific passing skills and could impact games without taking lots of shots or dribbles. And so far in his rookie season, he has been true to that evaluation. He has an assist rate that puts him in the top 10 of the class, making him the only non-point guard in that group. He’s been a solid defender on a top-10 defensive team. And although his shooting numbers are down, he has the mechanics to get that back up soon.” Read more…
Dave Berri, author of “The Wages of Wins” and the winner of the 2009 Truehoop Stat Geek Smackdown has some encouraging words for and about the Thunder today on his W. of W. blog. His “wins produced” metric and “win score” have been debated over and over and have proven to be as good as anything out there for measuring players and teams. Over the last couple of years Berri and his metric have been a little tough on Kevin Durant, especially in his rookie season. He did admit to big improvement for KD in year two.
Today on the blog he tells us what the final season win totals might look like for the Thunder according to wins produced.
…This quartet are on pace to produce 39.0 wins. As a team, Oklahoma City has an efficiency differential (offensive efficiency minus defensive efficiency) of 2.4, a mark that projects to about 47 wins across an 82 game season. So the four players listed above are responsible for about 83% of the team’s wins.
Missing from this list is any player at power forward or center. Jeff Green remains a below average player. And Nick Collison and Etan Thomas have yet to produce much in 2009-10. D.J. White, though, has posted a 0.423 WP48. Before Thunder fans get too excited, White has only played 44 minutes and has yet to play more than 15 minutes in a game (or more than two games in a row). Read the whole article. Discuss away.
OKLAHOMACITY, November 25, 2009 – Oklahoma City Thunder Executive Vice President and General Manager Sam Presti announced today that the team has waived forward Ryan Bowen. Bowen appeared in one game for the Thunder scoring four points to go along with two rebounds and one steal in eight minutes of action against the Los Angeles Lakers on November 22nd. The Thunder roster now stands at 14.
We all know that ESPN decided to pick up this contest tonight because rookie Brandon Jennings is the big story so far this year. Ok, well, I guess the Thunder are “sort of” interesting being over .500 and all, with the second youngest roster in the NBA, and the top 5 scorer in the league, and a butt load of top 5 picks and yada yada yada. Whatever. It was all about Brandon Jennings and his 55 points the other night.
