I almost forgot what it was like to be so frustrated watching your favorite team that you want jump naked through a pane of glass. So frustrated that you scream at the television, say you hate a player that you really love and then end up saying, “This is stupid. The NBA is stupid.”
But this game tonight was a nice reminder of those feelings. Ah, the ups and downs of being a hopeless, emotional fan. Because this Thunder team has gotten us all used to winning, closing out tight games and taking care of business, a loss like tonight just doesn’t feel right. It’s doesn’t feel like a “Oh well, it’s a long season” kind of loss. It feels like a kick in the nether region.
But here’s the reality: It’s OK. It’s really not a huge deal. The Thunder lost on the road to a playoff team that plays near .800 basketball at home. It’s the first loss in five games and this team is still 16 games above .500. It’s not fun to lose especially when you’re fighting for important playoff seeding, but this team wasn’t going to finish the year on a 22-game winning streak. Read more…
Thus starts an appealing, yet dangerous three-game road trip while March Madness engulfs the Ford Center. And tonight’s game in Charlotte, is probably the most difficult of the three. First, the Bobcats are playing extremely well. They’ve won six of seven and have been solid at home this season. They play excellent defense, have an All-Star in Gerald Wallace and a couple trades have really strengthened the team, most recently a deal that brought Theo Ratliff in.
Marc Spears of Yahoo! Sports talked to Brandon Roy about playing with KD: “Can me and Kevin Durant even coexist?” Roy said. “We’re similar. We’re both creators. We are both perimeter players. I don’t know if there is enough room for both of us. But that doesn’t say Kevin Durant isn’t a great player. He’s right there for the MVP, so not a knock to him at all. I think he is a great guy off the court. He’s cool. He’s humble. But as far as me having the career I wanted to and him having the career he wanted to, it was the right decision for him to be with Oklahoma City and for us to take Greg Oden.”
Comparing Portland’s rise to OKC’s: “Portland sat back and they got bit, and because of it they are another major piece away from being elite. OKC needs players to fit a role, and they need veteran leadership. Kevin Durant has a chance to be the greatest player of the 2010’s, Russell Westbrook has officially put his name in the hat for the throne of this decade’s best point guard, and Jeff Green leads the role players on a mission to not let KD down.” Read more…
“What I’ve talked about the entire series and throughout this playoffs is about intensity and effort, desire and will of our players.” — Bill Laimbeer
You can feel it in the pregame shoot-around before each game, the electricity permeating the stands. You can sense the anxious vibe in each individual seat as the fans file in. You can hear it in the voices echoing around you as the players make their way out of the tunnel for warm-ups, their pulse already picking up speed. You can see it on the players faces, especially their eyes, as the referee steps to center court with the ball in hand, ready to toss it up. And just as the ball soars into the air and the clock starts, you can feel it saturate an entire arena for the next 48 minutes from now until April 14th.
Shakur is a free agent call-up from the Tulsa 66ers, NBA Development League affiliate of the Oklahoma City Thunder. At the time of his call-up the 2010 D-League All-Star was averaging 20.7 points (9th in the D-League) while shooting 50.3% from the floor (295-587 FG), 7.2 assists (4th in D-League), 2.3 steals (3rd in D-League) and 39.4 minutes in 40 games (40 starts).
A 6-3, 190 pound guard who went undrafted out of the University of Arizona in 2007, Shakur spent the previous three seasons playing overseas with Prokom Trefl Sopot of the Polish League (2007-08), Tau Cerámica of ACB Spanish League (2008-09) and most recently with Panellinios BC of the Greek A1 League (2009). With his signing, Shakur becomes the 24th Gatorade Call-Up from the D-League this season. He will wear uniform #11.
I’m thrilled for two reasons: 1) What a cool name. Any time you can have a “Mustafa Shakur” on your roster, you’ve got to do it. And 2) Because he’s a really good dude. I talked to him in Dallas after the D-League All-Star Game and he was humble and just talked about how he thought he’d get his chance soon enough if he kept plugging away. I always like when it actually happens.
Another thing he said was that he felt like he has the ability to play both guard positions well. He played almost exclusively point guard in Tulsa, but when he played briefly in Minnesota, he played a lot off the ball. He’s a big guard and he’s found a good shooting touch. More than likely he’s just a practice player like Antonio Anderson was, but right now the Thunder has some depth issues, especially if Kyle Weaver’s shoulder were to get reaggravated or something.
Darnell Mayberry wondered yesterday if the young Thunder are ready for postseason play. Henry Abbott of TrueHoop on that topic: “I don’t really understand the point of asking whether or not the Thunder are ready for the playoffs. Does that matter? They’re going to the playoffs. When they get there, they will play basketball. If they play it well, they will win, and be happy. If they play it poorly, they will learn a lot, and fight another day.”
Oklahoma City is tied with Boston in the standings and Christopher Gasper of Boston.com looks back: “Watching Durant play alone is enough to erase the revisionist history about losing the lottery being some sort of stroke of fabled fortune for the Celtics because it beget the Big Three and another championship. Can you imagine how much fun it would be to watch Durant and Rondo play together, not to mention the fact that the Celtics, unlike Durant’s Thunder, would still have a legitimate power forward in Jefferson.” Read more…
The Western Conference playoff race is tight. Like super-tight. Like tight like Gabourey Sidibe walking through an average-sized doorway. Right now, 2.5 games separate fourth place from eighth place. There are four winning streaks going in the top eight of the West and every team is playing above .500 its last 10 games.
And you want to finish fourth because that means you get to play on your home floor for your first game of the postseason. That’s huge, especially to a young team like the Thunder. But a lot of what could decide it won’t necessarily be who’s hot at the right time, but the upcoming schedules for the teams in contention. I’m going to assume the top three in the West will go the Lakers, Dallas and Denver in some order, leaving Utah, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, San Antonio and Portland to battle it out for fourth. So who has the easiest path to that fourth spot? Let’s look: Read more…
All things being equal I think more defense is better than less defense in the NBA. Or put differently I think that playing more stout defense is better for your team goals than flimsy defense.
So far this season as we all know the Thunder have hung their hat on terrific defense and sort of average or middling offense. It’s been a good formula; turning a 23 win team into a 41 win team (thus GUARANTEEING a winning season) with 17 games to go. How cool is that?
But if you’ve been paying attention you’ve probably noticed that the defense has been slipping a bit lately. The team certainly still has a defensive mentality, and a defensive identity, but lately we haven’t seen the team get out and just stuff the opponent for 48 minutes. Instead what we’ve seen is the Thunder playing sort of “situational” defense, where for example in the New Jersey game the team played just good enough defense to keep them down 10 or so until a couple of big threes had them threatening. The Thunder then tightened up the defense for a couple of possessions to seal the win. Rather than play all out D every possession I think we are seeing the team play say 75% of it’s defensive intensity for a lot of the game and then really getting after it when the situation gets tense or out of a timeout when the Coach is imploring them to tighten it up. We’ve seen that a number of times lately. Read more…
Last week, Hollinger was explaining why he had the Mavs so low in his rankings and listed teams he thought would beat them in a playoff series: “Oklahoma City was the last team to beat Dallas, 99-86 on Feb. 16; the Mavs won the first two meetings, but one was by a single point on Jan. 15. Since that game, the Thunder are 18-6, and youngsters Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant are still improving. The Thunder also have a lot of length to throw at Nowitzki defensively and are a tough cover for Dallas’ wings with Durant. My theory will be tested on April 3, when the Mavs and Thunder meet again in Dallas.” Read more…
Oklahoma City has kind of gotten a reputation for being a good third quarter team this year. But coming out of the locker room 12-12 from the floor and shooting 88 percent for the quarter? That’s kind of sort of ridiculous.
Good thing too, because the Thunder didn’t bring their signature defense tonight, as the Jazz scored 111 points on 51 percent shooting, but OKC had the offense firing (60 percent from the floor) as Kevin Durant dropped 35 and Russell Westbrook had 30 points and 11 assists, leading the Thunder to their fifth straight win, 119-111 over Utah.
The last time the young Thunder came into a buzzworthy game where there was a real importance to it, they didn’t show up. They were blasted by the Nuggets and had a look to them that didn’t feel great. Overwhelmed, anxious, nervous – you pick the word. Tonight was the exact opposite. This team was focused. They were hungry. They were locked in and on a mission. If you’re not a believer yet, it’s time to start. This Thunder team is going places. Where exactly that is, I have no clue. But I put a ceiling on them before the season and the roof was blown completely off. I’m not making the same mistake again. Read more…
To this point, in my humble opinion, this is the most important, biggest game of the season. There really is no question in my mind. Currently, Oklahoma City sits 1.5 games back of Utah in the West for fourth. The Thunder already is 2-0 against the Jazz, so a win would lock away a season series win for the Thunder and a potential valuable tiebreaker. Plus, since the Jazz are possibly a playoff opponent, establishing some semblance of dominance over them would be excellent. Read more…
Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Scott Brooks paid a visit to Tulsa on Monday, March 8, to take a first-hand look at three of his players (Byron Mullens, Kyle Weaver, and DJ White) in action for the Tulsa 66ers. I had the chance to talk to Coach Brooks after the game to get his impressions on his players as well as the 66ers, a team that has won four straight and nine of its last 11 games to improve to 23-16.
Kevin Henry: After watching the game tonight (a Tulsa win over Fort Wayne), what were your overall impressions? Scott Brooks: I think they looked great. Nate (Tibbetts, Tulsa head coach) has done a terrific job. It’s never easy to integrate guys into your lineup during the season, but he’s done a great job. Watching tonight, you could tell it’s been a smooth transition and he has his team playing hard. Nate is a talented coach with a very bright future.
KH: What impressed you the most tonight? SB: The defense. I’m very impressed that Fort Wayne didn’t score for nearly eight minutes in the fourth quarter. Read more…
(Good Saturday friends and friends. Thank you for your support of Daily Thunder. Use today to bask in the glory of 40 wins.)
This was the halftime show for the Thunder a week ago against the Kings. And not that I go to games to see halftime shows or anything, but Jazzericize? Really? Nothing keeps me in my seat quite like middle-aged women stretching and exercising in front of me. But maybe that’s the goal – instead of keeping us planted with something entertaining, they force us out of our seats to go buy something on the concourse. Brilliant strategy. Though if you told me it’s this or the Chinese Bowl Lady for the five billionth time, I think I’d have to think about it for a second.
Boy am I glad this one is over and there’s a “W” in the good column instead of a “I want to bash my head in because I can’t believe they lost” in the bad column (what, there was a couple “L’s” in that sentence). This was one of the most anticlimactic games I can remember that I was waiting for the Thunder to blow open and they never did, letting the Nets hang around…and hang around…and then absolutely frighten me in the last few minutes.
The Thunder were in control from the get-go and never really looked like they might let this one slip through their fingers until there was, oh, about a minute and a half left to go, which is not exactly the time you want to be caught looking ahead to Sunday’s HUGE matchup with the Jazz.
When you’re up 15 points with 6:35 left in the fourth quarter and you only win by 2 points at the final buzzer, you know the old attention span waned a bit in the final period. Read more…
Feel free to make a dimissive comment about the Nets. But remember this: They beat the Celtics just two weeks ago. They can beat people. They haven’t done it a lot, but it certainly can happen. Read more…
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