Thursday Bolts – 11.19.08
Kevin Durant on his childhood hero Vince Carter: “When I was growing up, I always thought Vince was the best. I 
still look up to him, and I’m still a big fan,” Durant said. “I used to watch his highlights as a kid. When I was about 11, my mom bought me a Vince Carter jersey and shorts, his Raptors uniform, and I wore it to every game. I guess that’s a little embarrassing to say now, but it’s something I’ll never forget.” Durant’s innocence was refreshing. It made him and everyone around him smile. But it’s probably not the kind of competitive edge that the Thunder needed from him. He is on the verge of becoming an NBA All-Star, but he sure didn’t play like one Wednesday night, sinking to his worst performance of the season.”
FanHouse’s power rankings: “Don’t look now, but the Thunder are still above .500 in the middle of November. Not exactly the biggest feat, but considering wins over the Spurs, Heat, and the Magic, the potential is there for this team to make a playoff run. But they’ve got to get better consistency from the Big 3 (Durant, Green, Westbrook), and quit losing silly games like Sunday’s banana-peel blooper against the Clippers.”
Kevin Durant on competing for the scoring title: “I doubt it. There are too many good scorers in the league,” Durant said. “That’s not what I’m focused on is getting a scoring title … You have guys like LeBron (James) and D-Wade, Kevin Martin, Carmelo (Anthony) and Kobe Bryant. I’m nowhere near that company. I’m just trying to do what I need to do for Oklahoma City.”
David Thorpe has James Harden 11th in his rookie rankings: “Harden has been a big disappointment as a shooter/scorer thus far, shooting just 33 percent from the field. However, no one is panicking in OKC, nor should they be. He looks good shooting the ball, and he is such a great passer and ball mover that fans and executives in Oklahoma City just know he’ll end up being fine.”
The 66ers are holding a free intrasquad scrimmage.
Third Quarter Collapse on last night’s game: “Speaking about Pietrus, he played well in the period. He was able to get things going offensively, attacking the basket in the fast break or in the half-court, as well as making his patented three-pointer from the corner. Likewise, Mickael’s defense on Kevin Durant was outstanding. Time after time, Pietrus forced Durant to put up a tough shot with a hand in his face. By the end of the evening, Kevin’s stat-line was as followed: 12 points (4-12 FG, 0-4 FT), 1 assist, and 5 turnovers.”
The fan that won KD’s “prize pack” posted a Youtube video showing it all off.
The Orlando Sentinal: “The play of the night epitomized the Orlando Magic’s energy, effort and economy of movement against a rising team that’s Thunder the radar. It began against Oklahoma City in the opening quarter with a save by Vince Carter, who flipped the ball to Jason Williams, who was ready to run his tattoos off. Williams threw a perfect bounce pass to Rashard Lewis, who tossed another bull’s-eye bounce-pass to Mickael Pietrus, who dunked it home. It wasn’t exactly Tinker to Evers to Chance, the old baseball poem about a vaunted double-play combination, but the fastbreak connection grew contagious.”
Pietrus is a good defender, but I am beginning to feel a little worried by KD’s up and down performances. As much as I love what we’ve done this year, the team needs him to be a star every night. If everyone else is playing down to their opponent, he has to step up. When we go against other good teams, he has to give a reason for those teams to worry. He’s not doing a poor job by an objective measure, but it makes you wonder if he isn’t a slow starter in general. The position change last year came a decent way into the season, and it could have been that he just takes a month or so to get back into the groove every year.
If KD hasn’t found his groove yet, I can’t wait to see what he does when he finally finds it.
DizzyDai here…
Does anyone think we should try to sign Will Bynum next summer? I’m not sure what other pg’s are available, but I’d be highly interested in Bynum. Thoughts?
Joe Alexander wants out of Milwaukee. I’d happily take him in exchange for a conditional 2019 second-round pick.
@Anonymous
Absolutely. I didn’t know that he was going to be a free agent. I would most certainly consider him, although I think that Detroit will probably do everything in their power to keep him.
@Vega
I feel he would get more playing time here instead of being stuck behind Stuckey, Hamilton, and Gordon.
@Anonymous
Right now, he’s looking good enough to be a starter somewhere.
@Vega
At the momement he is earning the same as Ollie. He should get paid much better next year. I’m not sure if the Piston can accomodate a pay increase with the contracts they gave Gordon and Charlie V.
@DizzyDai
The Pistons have a bit more money to spend before they hit the luxury tax. They can probably afford to keep Bynum.
@Lefty
So true, if fourth in the league in scoring for a pup is a slow start, can’t wait to see what full-blown is.
By the way, could that twitter-contest winner be any more boring and out of it? I only lasted 2 minutes.
I was a Mavericks fan (like some of you I suspect) for a long time before I converted. Nowitzki went through the same thing. Jumpshooters like KD and Nowitzki are going to have off nights. It’s up to Green, Thabo, RW, and Krstic, and Harden, etc. to pick up the slack on those nights – Jordan didn’t win until he had Pippen, and Grant, and BJ Armstrong, and Paxson, and blah blah blah . . .
where and when would he play? Isn’t he a small forward?
Joe Alexander is only good for banging his head on the rim.
Dirk is my homeboy!
– Dresden Dragons
@ Kev – fellow convert as well.
Anyone watch the Mavs/Spurs OT game last night? They’ve been going at it all decade and I can’t wait for the Thunder to be competitive enough to face off against another team multiple times in the playoffs. You know the Mavs/Spurs rivalry is solid when a regular season game in november feels like a playoff game.
sorry – I watched Thunder and Suns/Rockets
Unfortunately had to listen to Thunder on the radio while at work. Much nicer being able to watch on tv.
@Keith
I’m not too worried. KD was lights out the night before against Miami. 6 games in 9 days – three sets of back to backs – from west coast to east coast – will take it’s toll on anyone.
I thought that maybe he could be a benefit to us but looking at his stats im not so sure. He shoots 35% from deep but only averages 2 boards a game. But he only get 12 min a gm. So I guess all that could change with more min. But I honestly dont see him gettin more than that with us either.
http://www.nba.com/playerfile/joe_alexander/career_stats.html
Thats kinda wierd my comment got posted at the top hmm.
@Blake
Yeah everything is off because the server update reset the time settings.
@Royce
Thats kinda what I figured. No biggie.
Really the only bad stat per minute for Alexander in a brief rookie season was his FG%, from his jumper. If you liked his tape (NBA or NBA plus college) the time to try to steal him is before he fixes his stats or specifically the main bad stat, which is not that bad for a rookie.
The Bucks played him some at both SF and PF and in limited minutes he was a bit better overall at PF.
It comes down to the tape, the price tag, what you think of what you already have. But they should of course at least look at him and lots of others.
Etan Thomas doesn’t have an assist yet this season. The only player in the league who has played 200+ minutes you can say that about. Krstic and Collison are bottom 10 in that group for assists % and assist per minute too. Jeff Green is bottom 15%. They simply aren’t get much inside-kick out- outside shooting yet. More Harden would help but the bigs they have aren’t either aren’t very capable of valuable passing or aren’t in situations were they can facilitate that. Green was supposed to be able to do that but his assist rate is not much more than half what it was last season.
Even a rookie Joe Alexander’s assist rate was almost double what Green’s is so far this year.
@Crow
Oh I like him I just dont know how many minutes he would get. What do you think?
Blake, they could chisel out 15-20 minutes for another forward if they moved Collison back to Center and changed nothing else.
If you cut Green back to 20-25 minutes you could in the future potentially add a starting level minutes PF or handle 1 or 2 regular substitute PFs. Ideally guys that bring something different and I’d prefer better rebounding / defense or inside scoring.
So far Ibaka has done a few good things but he hasn’t made an outside jumper yet and his man is really attacking him with great frequency, 50-100% more than normal. To his credit though the FG% allowed is less than normal.
White is very different from Ibaka on offense in that he has yet to even attempt an inside shot (all jumpers). Similar on defense in that opponents are also attacking him very frequently. He is giving up about average FG%.
But it is small minutes so hard to say much yet.
Right now some things are turning down on Green but if he is somewhat injured I’ll defer making too much of it right away.
I don’t know enough Alexander to say more than what I did which was that you’d want to check him out and guess on his potential vs the cost. Alexander wouldn’t be near the top of my list but if it mainly about 2-3 years from now you’d check him out if you need another ensemble guy. If you need a star you look elsewhere.
Right now the Thunder are at just a touch above 102 Offensive Rating per 100 possessions and a touch above 100 Defensive Rating. In the last 10 years the average wins for all teams with less than a 102 Offensive Rating for the season is about 31 wins. The average for those with that Offensive Rating and less than a 100 Defensive Rating is 49. Relax the Defensive Rating to 103 and those teams win an average of 40. The defense is a powerful factor in determining wins for weak offensive teams.
The average wins for all teams in the period with less than a 102 Offensive Rating for the season and a Defense that is anything worse than 103 is 24 wins. For those which end up just between 103-105 on Defense it is about 30 wins.
Of course the Offense might improve but if it doesn’t then the Defensive Rating will be very important.
Last season the Defense ended up at 109.3. Split the difference between where they are right now and where they were and the Defense would be at almost 105. They will want to do better than that to win more than 30.
I like the idea of picking up Alexander if we could get him at a bargain price, but I wouldn’t trade anything more valuable than a second round pick (not T-Wolve’s) or rights to Hardin to get him. A little more depth at the tree spot would be nice if somebody went down with injury, but he would pretty much be just an injury reserve.
My buddy that I split season tickets with just called and said we were given an up-grade for tomorrow night’s game 4 rows up from the visitor’s bench (nice improvement from our front-row loud city tickets). Is this a great organization or what?
@Steve H
Thats cool they did that for me last yr when I was in Loud City. I got seats on the 1st floor this yr and they havent upgraded me yet. So maybe they do that for the season tkt holders in LC in hopes that you will upgrade your seats for the next season.
@Blake
I’m sure the idea is to sell us on an upgrade- but short of hitting the powerball, that ain’t gonna happen. Still, I’m grateful for the nice seats- and apparently a free buffet- and looking forward to being in quality heckeling range.
What is up with this site today? Post a comment, and then see it put in the middle of the stack. ???
To complete the check on history- the most wins for a team in the 10 year period with less than a 102 Offensive Rating for the season and a Defense worse than 103 is 42 wins. And that takes good coaching and / or good luck.
i want us to keep our original picks from now on.
rocky B. is tearing it up in dallas. while b.j. (pause) mullens is tulsa playing in d league.
presti -dont get cute with the picks plz.