Peace, Love and Thunderstanding: Random Thoughts
November 12th, 2009
(Be sure to read Royce at The Lost Ogle.)
It was a bipolar week featuring the Thunder’s best performance of the season, and followed immediately by their most embarrassing loss to date. As a result, the article trying to make sense of this team that I had planned isn’t going to happen because I am having trouble figuring them out. So, instead, enjoy a bunch of random thoughts I’ve had this past week that couldn’t merit an article on their own:
- Has anyone noticed the Suns are 8 – 1. What happened to blowing that team up? There goes the significance of the pick we’re owed from them being “unprotected.”
- During my senior year in high school, my school beat the Booker T. Washington Hornets who featured Etan “Derrick” Thomas, Ryan Humphrey (who was also an NBA first round pick), and B.J. Tiger (who started at QB for OSU briefly–before getting busted for selling pot) in the Tournament of Champions in Tulsa. I was not on the team.
- Who wants to design a T-shirt fans can wear to the game that shames Nick Collison into growing the “Absolute Value Stache?”
- I love it when Russell Westbrook passes the ball…to our team.
- One of my favorite tweets of all time:
KevinDurant35: @jeff_green22 is the only person I kno that will text u and u sittin right next to him…wat a dweeb
- On the ESPN Rumor page, I read that J.J. Redick was talking about recording some rap songs. Now I know that every NBA player thinks they can be a rapper.
- Way # 2,312 Minnesota Timberwolves GM David Kahn botched the Ricky Rubio saga: He hired Kurt Rambis, a devotee of the triangle offense, to be the new coach while they were negotiating to get Rubio out of his DKV Joventut contract. The triangle offense minimizes the necessity of having a play-making point guard, instead favoring players at other positions who are good passers. Rubio would have been paying $5MM out of his own pocket (about what he’d make from his first four years in the NBA after taxes) to play in a system that would not showcase his talents and would have hurt his chances at getting a big second contract.
- If you look at the top of this article you can see who did the writing. So, in the comments section, please do not address your anger to Royce.
- What happened to all those 6′7″ guys who were going to play point guard for the Thunder? What’s that? They’re still on the roster? Just not playing? Nevermind.
- D.J. White could be the next Brandon Bass. And by that, I mean he could be an undersized power forward who gets no burn while playing in OKC only to become a rotation player for a team that is, technically, better.
- The easiest way for Kevin Ollie to not be portrayed as a dinosaur on the team would be for him to shave off his 1970’s inspired mustache. (Not that I am advocating this.)
- I hear Kobe Bryant licks trash can liners in hopes of contracting “flu-like symptoms.” He has been doing this ever since the 1997 Finals when Michael Jordan got all those accolades for playing with a stomach virus.
- There are way too many people buying tickets to the games and not showing up. If you want to donate $60/seat to the Thunder, go for it, but I’ll use the tickets if you don’t want them.
- At the opener against Sacramento, one of the Thunder Girls called me, “Cutie.” Just imagine what she would have called me if my two-year old hadn’t been blocking her view of my face.
- Speaking of my two-year, I think he enjoyed the Thunder experience. Since that game, he’s had a lot of exchanges like this:
Day-care teacher: (ClarkPupp), are you going to finish your chicken nuggets?
ClarkPupp: No. Hey, do you want to go to a Thunder game?_______________________________
Mrs. Matthews: Daddy is bringing home pizza for dinner.
ClarkPupp: Yay! Let’s eat pizza. And then, let’s go to a Thunder game.
- In the off-season, do you think the Ford Center would let me hook my Wii up to the scoreboard? You know, technically, I’m paying the taxes that funded that awesomeness.
- What’s the difference between this video and this video ? The guys in the former video aren’t wearing replica jerseys.
- If you play the music in this video backwards, it says “Westbrook is dead.”
- Were Vegas to put a spread on the variance in attendance between the D-League 66ers and the WNBA TBD’s, I’m thinking it would be 66ers (-10,000).
- A lot of people say that the Thunder could use a shot blocking/rebounding presence like Dwight Howard on the team. Uh, there are 28 other NBA teams whose fans say the same thing. It’s like when Shaq was Shaq and everyone wanted a 7′2″ 400-lb goliath with once in a generation offensive skills. Good luck finding that. I’m sure spending $100MM for Erick Dampier to get similar, but far inferior, play is a much better idea than trying to go at the dominant players weaknesses. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, there are only so many dominant players to go around. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be “dominant” players, they’d be ordinary players. The Thunder have a dominant player in Kevin Durant, so rather than being sad we don’t have a dominant player like Dwight Howard, we need to be happy about that while management figures out a way to maximize K.D.’s value into wins.
- Considering that Buzz Lightyear insisted that he wasn’t a toy, why did he, nevertheless, stop moving/talking whenever humans were present?
- My favorite moment of the season was when Kevin Durant dunked on the Pistons and was fouled. He posed while giving the crowd a “look at me, I’m tough” glance for about 0.6 seconds, remembered that he was in the same place that Ron Artest started a melee, then quickly looked down at the floor with a frightened look on his face.
- You know how men are terrified of asking a woman when she’s “due” for fear that it will turn out she’s just overweight? Women, particularly old women, are the complete opposite. They’ll know a woman is pregnant, know that she’s supposed to be big, and then make cutting remarks to make the expectant mother self conscious. The next church choir lady who asks my wife, “are you sure there aren’t twins in there?” is going to hear me ask them, “What time do you have to be back at the nursing home?”
- I heard “Mo Money, Mo Problems” the other day and it immediately took me back to heading to Gallagher-Iba back in 1998. That was awesome. Of course, then I heard Diddy busting out with, “Ten years from now, we still be on top.” That made me sad. Because it’s ten years later and all he does is an MTV show.
- Nenad Krstic needs to take a page from his buddy Marcin Gortat and just give up by going with the buzz cut.
- Eating at P.F. Chang’s a few weeks ago, I saw Byron Mullens waiting for a table as I was leaving. His eyebrows are just as glorious in person.
- I am shocked (SHOCKED!) that Hasheem Thabeet had his jaw broken while being out of place on offense. On the bright side, it was probably the first time all season he wasn’t called for a foul.
- See you next week.
@andrew
He could turn him into Shawn Kemp
Jax, Bower was an assistant a couple places in college too. All told it looks like he has between 5-10 years as an assistant.
I wondered about it too. Not sure is Shinn it saying you assembled the cast you fix it or you’re gone next or I don’t want to pay anybody else or both. Or maybe it will be a short interim thing.
haha, gotta love barkley’s take on the hornets situation: “cp3 is like michael jackson…he plays with kids”
@Big Stew
I’m not overly concerned about Harden possibly being tighter with KD and Green. Westbrook and Harden are old friends from Cali. I’d throw in Ibaka, just to make it the fab 5.
At the moment, I feel Westbrook is just paying too much attention to his critics. One day will he blossom into a Rondo/D-Wade-like hybrid that will dominate this league. Just watch.
You obviously have not watched CP3 and Bosh. Bosh is a jump shooting soft big man who makes a living on the perimeter. He is horrible on D as every Raptor fan will tell you. He is what Vin Baker used to be when Vin Baker was good. He fills no need we have other than scoring from a big man…unfortunately the way he scores will mean he will intrude on green and KD’s turf: the perimeter.
On the other hand there is CP3, who would turn our biggest weakness into the biggest strength. We would finally have a person running our offense who not only will do it well, but do it better than anyone else we could ever have, as he is the best PG in the game. His impact would go beyond what he will do, him being on our team automatically makes EVERYONE on the team more efficient and better. So with CP3 not only do we get an amazing PG, but everyone on the team gets better.
@The DON
Bosh is a little better than the Thunder bigs, though; he is not as good on defense as Collison, but better than all of them on offense by so much it isn’t even close.
Agreed.
Don’t get me wrong, Bosh would make this team better, but I just think that relative to CP3 he wouldn’t make this team as better.
PG is not our biggest weakness. Also not Bosh then, how about Okafor a double double machine who plays defense. Would a lineup of westbrook durant and okafor be better then cp3, durant and krstic? We can afford 2 max contracts durants and somebody else, wouldnt you rather that go to an established big rather then a PG which is an upgrade right now but maybe not in 5 years, or 10 years, westbrook is 4 years younger, will have that much more career in him. We really dont know what westbrook’s ceiling is, he could end up being great. CP3 has reached his potential, he is not going to get much better, RW will get a lot better. CP3 benefited from having chandler and west, who shoot 62% and 48% thats a lot of extra assists and more wide open shots because of opposing defenses needing to double team in the post. In the 2 years the CP3/Chandler duo dominated, CP3 averaged 3 more APG then the 2 years+ that he didnt, he shot 5.5% lower from the floor.
So put CP3 on our team, that lacks a big and his assists will go down and his scoring will be less, down to a mere 1.5 assists and 2 points better the RW, so tell me again why thats better then getting a real center that can do for westbrook what chandler did for paul.
I like Chris Paul, but without a dominate big he ceases to be great. 8.3APG 16.7PPG. compared to RW 7.3 and 15 this season. Thats about equal to deron williams, 8.7, 16.3 numbers.
Interestingly, all the “great bigs” that keep getting mentioned in this back and forth, have never been very successful…particularly when not paired up with a pass-first point guard. Bosh’s Raptors did pretty well when T.J. Ford was on the team, and Chandler had some good seasons with CP3 throwing him alley-oops, but Okafor hasn’t been on a winner since Taliek Brown was setting him up in the National Championship game.
My opinion is that if we had a great passing point guard, CP3 is among the best, the bigs we have on the roster now are more than adequate.
CP3 is the best point guard in the league – the only think RW has on him is age – even suggesting that RW could be better in 5 or 10 years makes no sense – yes, it COULD happen, but it’s highly unlikely . . .
Bosh is averaging 29 PPG more then durant and lebron, i dont see how that is saying he is doing poorly.
Yes CP3 would allow for our bigs to score more, but that doesnt help their rebounding or defense. bosh is averaging 11.5 rebs per game and okafor 9.8, thats a lot better then the 4.8 krstic gives us and even better then krstic+thomas combined. okafor is also averaging 2.0 blocks per game and bosh 1, krstic gives us 0.4 BPG.
So chris paul gives us better outside defense, more steals, but we still give up size inside, okafor or bosh gives us better interior defense and rebounding and a post presence, chris paul wont magically give krstic a post game.
@kev
yes CP3 is the best PG in the league but he isnt that much better then nash or deron williams or even RW. he isnt going to defend inside get us rebounds. Would you trade durant for lebron straight up for slightly better production at SF?
We have a bigger need for interior defense and post scoring then we do of a playmaking point guard. Its not that i wouldnt take chris paul, but his 13MM a year salary vs 3MM for RW and taking up all our salary cap room is not worth it.
Im not arguing pure skill, im arguing relative skill and need for the team. the difference between CP3 and Rw is smaller then Bosh/okafor and krstic. And we wouldnt have to give up krstic to get them, probably draft picks and weaver/white/thomas some mix of that.
I disagree – anytime you can get a truly elite player at a position (Paul), you take that over acquiring a non-elite player on a losing team (Bosh)
basketball is about MUCH more than acquiring guys that can score – scoring is overrated – before Iverson left, the Grizzlies had four legitimate 20 ppg players – and their record is horrible . . .
There are so many blasphemous statements in this post my head is spinning
REPENT!
Bosh is 29/12 guy all star player, okafor is a 12/12 guy neither are bench warming scrubs. and paul is on a losing team also, Toronto is a better team then the hornets. Which basically proves paul cant win if there isnt good talent around him.
Also if you look at past NBA champions, having a great post player was more important then an elite PG. The last elite PG to win a chamionship was magic johnson.
lakers won with Shaq/fisher heat won with Shaq/jason williams spurs won with duncan/avery johnson or tony parker, out of those parker is the best PG but isnt chris paul.
bulls didnt excel in either PG or C.
rockets had kenny smith/olajuwon.
So basically a great big man is the key to a championship not an elite PG.
So as much as you can sit there and be like take the elite player, neither his stats or NBA history, shows that making that choice makes us a contender.
Yeah basketball is more then getting guys who can score, but isnt that all chris paul brings, points and assists=points, okafor/bosh would bring defense, post presence, rebounding.
Bosh plays outside alot – he’s not a true post player – and he’s never won, Chris Paul has . . .
and Bosh isn’t a GREAT BIG MAN – please quit making inaccurate statements -
Bosh has more 10+ RPG seasons then paul has 10+ APG seasons. But id rather have okafor then bosh. Who is a post player and who gets more blocks+steals then paul does. has averaged 10+ RPG every season he has played. He is a difference maker on the inside, probably the best all around Center right now, can score, can block, can rebound.
So ok Bosh isnt a GREAT big man(but 29/11.5 isnt exactly bad), but paul isnt he best PG this year either, Steve Nash is, he also has 2 MVPs, where are pauls mvps?
if you poll the 29 GMs in the NBA (Chris Wallace from Memphis doesnt count), and ask them who they would take (without regard to team needs, salary cap, contract issues, etc),
I am quite confident that all of them would take Paul . . .
i agree, id take paul in that situation too. but i am taking into account team needs, salary cap, thats the whole point of who WE should take if we had the option. really we wont, the hornets wont trade paul, but bosh and okafor are possible.
Oh and this season in 9 games CP3 has 3 10+ assist games, and its against bad teams, clippers, kincks and raptors. nash has 6 in 10 games, westbrook has 3, against Detroit and orlando, kings.
Justin,
The most logical team for having interest in Krstic that I could think of is Phoenix. I assume Krstic’s agent will want to talk to them, perhaps use them to try to get Krstic a bigger extension this summer or next.
Of your list of non-lottery centers Perkins is probably the most valuable so far. Gasol and Hibbert might be in the long run.
7 foot isn’t enough. 7 foot and mobile and tough is pretty good. That and can score some, better. That and score mostly inside best.