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Is this where I talk about how I wish we could steal DeAndre Jordan off their bench?

Gordon was on fire the past three games, so it’s very fortunate that he is out right now. Hopefully Durant can shoot better from the floor, though 18/18 FT is pretty impressive

@Royce
Shoot, I’ll take an injured Eric Gordon off their bench too as long as we can keep him when he heals. What? I think Dunleavy would go for that if you held up a shiny object, like some keys, in front of him while making the deal in person.

I only wish Presti would call David Kahn with an offer of Kevin Ollie and Shaun Livingston for Al Jefferson. You know Kahn would give pause to consider that. He’d have to: “2 more point guards?!!! Hmmm…”

The game last might really showed the Thunder’s poor rebounding. If I were Presti, I’d get a new seven-footer in as soon as possible. Here are a few of the guys that might be available:

Andris Biedrins: This idea probably has zero chance of happening, but it is wroth mentioning. Biedrins has been one of the top young centers in the league for a few years now, and he is signed long term, so he would be a major part of the team for years, Ibaka/White/Mullens, Livingston/Weaver, Etan, and our first round pick might get a deal done, and if so, I would do it. Any more than that is too much when one considers that the Nellie system is probably inflating Biedrins’ stats, and his recent injuries. Another thing worth noting is the lack of minutes for Biedrins recently. I’m not sure if it is because he is in Nellie’s doghouse, or if it is precautionary because of his nagging injuries. It’s probably because of his injuries, but if he has indeed gotten on Nellie’s bad side, we might be able to get him for way less than what he is worth. (Jamal Crawford.)

Marcin Gortat: The PH is always one of the first names brought up when we are discussing big men available in a trade. I’m very skeptical. Sure he’s looked really good playing behind Dwight Howard, but it is hard to tell whether that will translate in to him being a productive center when given big minutes. The first guy that comes to mind for me is Jerome James. Played well in limiter minutes, had some good games in the playoffs, gets signed to a big contract, and proceeds to fall off the map. I’m not saying that the PH is going to be the next Big Snack. I’m just very cautious.

Marc Gasol: Dude’s gone beast mode this year. He’s grabbing rebounds, he’s blocking shots, and he’s putting that ball in the hoop. Not only is he making the Griz look stupid for drafting Thabeet with the second overall pick, he’s also earning himself a nice paycheck which the Grizz will probably be hesitant to pay when they already have Hasheem Thabustedjaw and the raw yet skilled Hamed Haddadi on the roster. Gasol might be available if we would be willing to take Marko Jaric’s contract. Personally, I wouldn’t mind taking Marko. Sure, he’d eat up our cap space for next year, but he does come off the books in ‘11, when KD and Uncle Jeff will be getting paid, and, let’s face it. We won’t have a shot at signing any of the top-tier free agents who will require lots of money, and there is also the possibility that Marko would accept a buyout. Even if we were stuck with Marko, I think it would be worth it to take a bad contract so that we could to get a rising young center like Marc Gasol.

Boots :
Gordon was on fire the past three games, so it’s very fortunate that he is out right now. Hopefully Durant can shoot better from the floor, though 18/18 FT is pretty impressive

A terrible team, missing their star shooting guard. Sounds familiar.

Oh that’s right, last night, when the Kings were missing Martin, and they still beat us because we don’t have a competent person running the offense along with the fact that we have zero ability to start games with energy or purpose

Hilarious Watson/Davis commentary.

Another hole gets added to my wall if we don’t win this one tonight. I don’t want to hear any excuses. If we lose back to back to kings and then the clips with both of them missing their stud starting shooting guards, then we are not that different from last year’s team. We can still be safely classified as a “garbage” team instead of an “up and coming” one.

dammit don, we already had to train crow to not be annoying, i dont know if we have time to train you, too.

Interesting note from that clippers’ blog

“How valuable has (Eric Gordon) been to the Clippers to start the season? The team scores 108.8 points per 100 possessions and allows only 100.9 when Eric is on the floor. When Eric’s on the bench, the Clippers are a basket case (94.0/125.4).”

@The DON

dang don… like royce said, i dig your passion but jeez… take it easy on the players… we have only played 7 games… and westbrook is showing some improvement

dylan :
dammit don, we already had to train crow to not be annoying, i dont know if we have time to train you, too.

The DON = an animal that can never be domesticated

how do i make a picture above my name

we only seem to bring out A game when we play good teams, if we play like we played orlando or the lakers we would easily win these games. Also if we go 16-25 on the road we still will have doubled out road wins.

Also in our wins we shot at least 43.4% from the field, hence RW getting a lot of assists, in our losses we either shot below 40% or the opponent shot better then 52% so to win we cant give up easy baskets and we need to shoot better, really one of those 2 would do, we were close enogh in our losses then a 4-6% increase in baskets or a 10% reduction in opponents baskets would have won us all our games.

Yes, this is where having an undersized four hurts . . . we are starting Krstic and Green , both are average (at best) rebounding for their respective postiions . . . this won’t cut it . . .

Last night stunk because all the penetration we were allowing – this forced the big men to leave their boxout assignments to oontest shots – this gave up EASY offensive rebounds . . .

Come on guys, cut DON some slack –

we should have beaten that team last night , so he was upset . . . I hope the whole team and coaching staff was upset . . .

I like DON’s posts – we all are different, if all of us posted the same thing with the same type of emotion we’d all be robots . . . and the posts would be redundant . . .

The DON :
Another hole gets added to my wall if we don’t win this one tonight. I don’t want to hear any excuses. If we lose back to back to kings and then the clips with both of them missing their stud starting shooting guards, then we are not that different from last year’s team. We can still be safely classified as a “garbage” team instead of an “up and coming” one.

You are one of those annoying fans I see. 2 losses in a row on the road regardless of the competition is never something to freak out about. Especially the way you are ranting about in your post. Step back from the ledge and join us in reality. This a super young team that will have some growing pains this year. They wont even approach last years team in terms of losses regardless of what happens tonight in LA. They are clearly more talented and playing with more of a purpose especially defensively. Thats all for now

f5alcon :we only seem to bring out A game when we play good teams, if we play like we played orlando or the lakers we would easily win these games. Also if we go 16-25 on the road we still will have doubled out road wins.
Also in our wins we shot at least 43.4% from the field, hence RW getting a lot of assists, in our losses we either shot below 40% or the opponent shot better then 52% so to win we cant give up easy baskets and we need to shoot better, really one of those 2 would do, we were close enogh in our losses then a 4-6% increase in baskets or a 10% reduction in opponents baskets would have won us all our games.

good point, but remember that both the Lakers and Orlando games were at home . . . we need to see how we play against a playoff teams away from home . . . we already laid an egg at Houston . . .

JG also brought up a good point in another thread – a focused BD is the kind of guard that will mess with RW and potentially take Westbrook out of his game (see Blake, Steve) . . . RW needs to remain composed . . .

Kev :

f5alcon :we only seem to bring out A game when we play good teams, if we play like we played orlando or the lakers we would easily win these games. Also if we go 16-25 on the road we still will have doubled out road wins.
Also in our wins we shot at least 43.4% from the field, hence RW getting a lot of assists, in our losses we either shot below 40% or the opponent shot better then 52% so to win we cant give up easy baskets and we need to shoot better, really one of those 2 would do, we were close enogh in our losses then a 4-6% increase in baskets or a 10% reduction in opponents baskets would have won us all our games.

good point, but remember that both the Lakers and Orlando games were at home . . . we need to see how we play against a playoff teams away from home . . . we already laid an egg at Houston . . .

detroit is a potential 8th seed playoff team, and in addition we havnt even faced a full strength team in most of our games, magic were missing carter and lewis, lakers were missing gasol, kings, kevin martin, clippers gordon, griffin, spurs may be mising parker and duncan.

@Vega

I’d take any of those guys you mentioned, in that order too. Of course, I’ve always been a Brook Lopez guy, so I’d have him at #1 on my list, but there’s just no way NJ lets him go right now.

Here are a few lesser bigs that we could also go after:

JaVale McGee: There were rumors connecting him to the Thunder around the draft, but nothing materialized. I’m only bringing him up because he is getting pretty much no playing time in Washington behind Brendan Haywood, Fabricio Oberto, and Andray Blatche. The Wizards are an older team that is trying to win now. They literally don’t have time to wait for McGee to develop. But we most certainly do. The problem is that we don’t have anything to offer them in return. They won’t want a draft pick, and we don’t have any veteran guys other than maybe Livingston who could have an impact, and Livingston straight up for McGee isn’t nearly enough. So while I would love to have JaVale, I heavily doubt that we could get him.

Hamed Haddadi: Assuming that the Grizz are happy with Gasol and Thabust as their centers, the big Iranian becomes expendable. He’s really raw, but from what I’ve heard, he’s got skills. He simply needs time. His skills, however, are not my main concern. My concern is how he would be treated in Oklahoma. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but would the Oklahoma fans treat him poorly because he is Middle Eastern?

Yiannis Bouroussis: An intriguing option that wouldn’t require us to give up anything. He’s already said that he plans to come over in couple years and play for the Spurs, but by that time, the Spurs will be even older than they already are, and the Thunder will be primed and ready to become a perennial playoff team. This option is also probably not very realistic, but you never know.

We all know that our backup point guard situation isn’t very good. Kevin Ollie simply won’t cut it. I’ve been trying to think of any possible options, and one that I keep coming back to is Yotam Halperin. We already own his rights. so we wouldn’t have to give up anything, and he’s got to be at least as good as Ollie, right?

Kev :
Come on guys, cut DON some slack –
we should have beaten that team last night , so he was upset . . . I hope the whole team and coaching staff was upset . . .
I like DON’s posts – we all are different, if all of us posted the same thing with the same type of emotion we’d all be robots . . . and the posts would be redundant . . .

Thanks Kev!

Chase :

The DON :
Another hole gets added to my wall if we don’t win this one tonight. I don’t want to hear any excuses. If we lose back to back to kings and then the clips with both of them missing their stud starting shooting guards, then we are not that different from last year’s team. We can still be safely classified as a “garbage” team instead of an “up and coming” one.

You are one of those annoying fans I see. 2 losses in a row on the road regardless of the competition is never something to freak out about. Especially the way you are ranting about in your post. Step back from the ledge and join us in reality. This a super young team that will have some growing pains this year. They wont even approach last years team in terms of losses regardless of what happens tonight in LA. They are clearly more talented and playing with more of a purpose especially defensively. Thats all for now

Look, I’m sorry I can’t be a robot like you and that instead I am a slave to my emotions….sue me

If you look past my style you will see that my emotional posts are grounded in valid points

@Vega
LOL! I don’t think an Iranian would have a tough time here… as long as he’s good. Really, the only pariah here are atheists and gays.

Chas :
@Vega
LOL! I don’t think an Iranian would have a tough time here… as long as he’s good. Really, the only pariah here are atheists and gays.

OKC sounds like heaven to me then

*plots move to OKC*

If we shoot decent we win. Westbrook and Green both missed layups down the stretch. Westbrook shot bad, Sef shot bad and krstic didn’t shoot well either. Any of those shoot decent and we win.

@The DON
Sally Kern, baby! (please note that I detest her)

The shooting is important but with our defense, we keep ourselves in any game. We have got to secure the boards. Since we don’t have a go-to rebounder, someone has to fill the low down box out if Krstic and Green are away from the basket. Sefolosha and Durant can definitely rebound if they truly want to (and if Krstic has lured his man away). I just worry that Camby and Kaman will dominate the boards but I’m sure Brooks is thinking about that too.

For a young athletic team, why do we always start games lethargic and without any sort of spark?

@Vega
I too have been pondering Gasol on this squad. It facilitates my one starting white man desire. He is ripping it up this year. Good luck at the moment with Thabeet down for a while with a broken face.

@The DON
What, you’all don’t like atheists down there? No MENSA candidates allowed then.

Brooks needs to really start stressing ball movement on offense

make a layup Westbrook – please . . .

@Kev

not only that, but he needs to NEVER bring the ball down and shoot before aking a single pass like he just did a few possessions ago. He does this a lot

@Brew
Nah. They don’t like us, but it’s not all that bad.

Thabo giving up baseline – come on people . . .

I love Kaman shootin’ the ball so much

@Chas
Durant is almost enough to make a believer out of me!

i feel so much better and at easy when Harden’s running the offense

Right as I typed my last comment Harden hits a J then comes down and finds kristic for the free throw J

Harden’s game looks mature beyond his years.

@The DON

Don your really starting to irritate me with some of your comments… and ive got a feelin im not the only one…

@Brew

Just imagine how great he will be with an entire season’s worth of experience under his belt

Russell has me talking to myself again. Really like what I am seeing with Ollie and Harden as our backcourt.

@grant phillips

Uh, pardon me? Exactly WTH are you talking about? You are annoyed by my love of Harden’s poise on offense?

How many times are we going to foul from behind when there is a defender between the shooter and the rim?

Was somebody bad-mouthing Kevin Ollie earlier? This guy plays SMART.