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Wednesday Bolts – 3.3.10

Help out a Thunder fan serving in Iraq. He has a ticket dilemma and is looking for help. He shares his season tickets with 2 other people (about 14 games each) and one of his friends can’t commit to next year. They are looking to find someone NEW to share the package. They have 2 lower level seats in Sec 110 that are $51 each seat per game. The season costs approximately $4284 for 42 home games but split 3 ways, it’s $1428 for 2 seats for 14 games. They are considering an upgrade to under the basket, but they won’t know about that until May. So if you’re interested in getting in on this, send me an email so I can hook you up with him.

Shaun Powell of NBA.com looks at if the Thunder are too young to win: ”They can win 50 games, make the playoffs, enjoy first-round home-court advantage and suit up the NBA’s leading scorer and MVP and still have zero chance at winning a championship. Such is life for the Oklahoma City Thunder, who must settle for a nice little run, a few playoff crumbs and a pat on the head for a job well done, all because the basketball gods have already declared them too weak, as in years, to carry the trophy.”

Kelly Dwyer, Behind the Box Score: ”Due to the slow night, I was able to see a goodly amount of this game, and Kevin Durant was as good as that 39 and 10-line would suggest. This goes along with a whole heap of shots that I was surprised to see rim out or fall short on. He was a few bounces and spins away from 45. The guy is an absolute offensive wunderkind, and it’s nice to see him do work alongside someone who deserves time alongside, like Russell Westbrook. RW worried us in the preseason and throughout the fall with iffy shot selection, but he remains the finest offensive rebounder the guard position knows these days (four on Tuesday, out of five total caroms), and he continually got to the basket in the win. 30 points and 13 assists for the second-year guard. A fabulous showing.”

Dime power rankings have OKC ninth: “Apparently Kevin Durant would be able score 30 against the Secret Service if President Obama were standing under the basket.”

The Pistons aren’t happy about KD’s Hyperizers: ”I’m not going to name the brand of shoe it was, but it has been banned from our locker room and the guys aren’t allowed to wear it,” Kander said. “These shoes had taken most of the support out of the sides and it was a lighter shoe. Most basketball shoes weigh between 1.4 and 1.7 pounds. These shoes were weighing 0.8 pounds, which was way too light as far as side support. Since we’ve banned the shoe, knock on wood, we haven’t had any ankle sprains. Hopefully, the good Lord willing, we won’t have any more and we can finish the season healthy and see what these guys can really do.”

From Elias: “Kevin Durant scored 39 points and pulled down 10 rebounds while Russell Westbrook had 30 points and 13 assists in Oklahoma City’s win against Sacramento. It’s the first game in NBA history in which teammates — each age 21 or younger — each had a 30/10 game.”

Zach Harper of Cowbell Kingdom: ”Kevin Durant. Wow. He’s good at his job. Really good. He’s so good. I feel like. I can’t type. In complete sentences. But I’ll give. It a try. Kevin Durant is just the quietest killer in the land. He’s a volume scorer that efficiently gets it done. He’s a high-powered machine that runs quieter than most hybrid cars. You blink and he has 10. You look away for a minute, check the box score and see he has 16. A minute goes by and you swear he’s only scored once but he has 22 points. He ended up with 39 points in this game and that’s after missing a few semi-clutch shots in a row. He could have easily pushed 45 against the Kings and it would have only felt like 20. He’s a ninja assassin in the night who swiftly kills his assignment without ever being noticed. He is IMPRESSIVE.”

Darnell Mayberry: “Russell Westbrook destroyed Beno Udrih. He blew by him, shot over him, passed around him and locked him up defensively. The Kings were forced to put Tyreke Evans on Westbrook in the second half, then Francisco Garcia. It was another stellar performance for the Thunder’s second-year point guard. That’s now eight double-doubles in his past 11 games.”

NBA.com’s Race to the MVP has KD second: “Into each MVP candidate’s life, some rain must fall: Durant’s streak of 25-point games ended at 29 when he shot 3-of-12 over the final three quarters at San Antonio on Wednesday, had a potentially pivotal attempt down the stretch blocked by Manu Ginobili and settled for 21 in the Thunder’s loss. The Race does not penalize for blips, though, not this deep into the season.”

ESPN’s Award Watch has Russell Westbrook in the Most Improved Discussion, KD second for MVP and Scott Brooks first for Coach of the Year. Life is good.

Durant and friends went to WWE Raw Monday at the Ford Center and he shares some thoughts: “And no lie, I was thinking about going onstage if the Undertaker came out. He showed up on the big screen, and you know when the Undertaker comes out everything goes black for a while. I was right by the ring so I was going to jump over the rail and jump in the ring and by the time they put the lights on I was going to be up there right beside the Undertaker. I was just going to do it spur of the moment! I was going to have fun with it. But he didn’t come out, so it never happened.”

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@Justin
All I know is there seemed to be a lot of Sonics fans who kept hoping Ridnour was the answer.

@MartzMimic

Ridnour's probably the best backup PG in the NBA right now..

Please tell me I didn't see a suggestion that we should have gotten Ridnour instead of Maynor. I didn't follow the Sonics, but I saw enough to figure out that he's Chris Wilcox made over: tons of potential, but maddeningly inconsistent.

@f5alcon

In a year or two Mullens will probably golf buddies with Swift...lol

@Durantula
right now he is, but in a year or two? it isnt like krstic sets the bar really high.

@f5alcon
I hope you're not being serious. Mullens is way worse than Nenad. Way worse.

are you using a proxy site?

Chad Ford's updated his draft board. Looks like Whiteside is officially out of reach unless we move up dramatically (go Phoenix collapse!)

"Whiteside continues to wow scouts. Whiteside posted his third triple-double of the season, going for 14 points, 11 rebounds and 13 blocks against Central Florida last week.
GMs have been flocking to Marshall games the past few weeks to get a good look at him before the draft. Given his age and his hot draft stock, the word is that he's likely to declare. While he's a bit of a project, it looks like he has a great chance of cracking the top 10. We've had him in the lottery for the past few weeks and he continues to climb."

Looks like Sanders might still be around, though.

Man, I wish we could edit our posts.

Perusing through <a href="http://www.blazersedge.com/2010/3/3/1334527/game-by-game-our-schedule-vs-the"this post on Blazersedge doing schedule breakdowns of the Western Conference. Go down to the comments for analysis of OKC, SAS, and PHO. Phoenix' schedule is pretty breezy; we our work cut out for us if we want to grab that 5th seed.

@morgan
None of the proxies allow me to log into nba.com though.

@andrew

If it goes by IP then you should be able to use a proxy....your IP will not be used it would be the IP of the server....maybe a combination of the
ip and physical address will work

nah i been reading up on it, it goes by the IP address.. i have been playing around with proxy servers and web accelerators to no avail..

@Sammy

I don't know i didn't think it would be that sophisticated. it's worth a shot. I used to do it with my satellite to get blacked out games

@morgan
"go to" i can't type

@morgan
I thought league pass worked via IP address. That not right?

@andrew

to to your account on league pass and change your address to some random state. Just a suggestion

i think if we added somebody who can play the PNR like david lee, both durant and westbrook would see their assist numbers jump a lot.

@f5alcon
Right, I always conflate assist% and assist rate.

Man i am sure glad league pass broadband considers me part of Denvers coverage area so that I will have to watch the game on a crappy stream tonight.. urgh.

@Sammy
I actually found a better stat for your point, assist rate, which is percentage of possessions ending in an assist. KD is 6th worst among SF this year averaging 25 mins+ 3rd worst amogn SF averaging 30 mins+.

But i still think it has to do with the rest of our team shooting horribly and him passing and them missing the shots. I wonder at what point in the shotclock his assists occur at. an attempted ast number would be good, where we can see how many shots are being missed when he tries to get assists.

@Heysloth

players show big jumps in both years, so some players are bigger between 1 and 2 and some between 2 and 3, really i wouldnt write off any player until year 3.

@justin
It is going into a savings account for Biedrins.. :)

@justin
Although you and I personally I think would be pretty interested to see Master Luke come off the bench, his addition would seem really counter-intuitive with what the organization is trying to build. DeAndre Jordan available, you think?

@Heysloth

Was Maynor worth the ~$6 million it took to acquire him, considering Bennett is pocketing the Harpring insurance dough? I dunno who else was available. Luke Ridnour maybe?

@MartzMimic

My thoughts exactly, and the most important point is that Maynor > Ollie or Watson, plus like someone said he is a rookie on a new team, lets at least give him a training camp to get familiar with everything.

Could someone tell me where players usually see the biggest improvement? Is it between year 1 and 2, or 2 and 3, some other time?

'Nique was an underrated playmaker.. more unwilling to pass than unable. Durant seems more willing, but throws the ball away a lot, or gets too cute.

@f5alcon
The point of the list was to show that the only non-low post players in the top 20 are Durant, Wilkins, Gervin, and John Drew.

@f5alcon

I hate to say this but Justin has a point with the turn overs...damn that really left a bad taste in my mouth...kinda like rotten milk or spam

Most of the players on that list were better passers than Durant. Malone, Shaq, and 'Nique all considerably better in my opinion. Durant's more in Iceman's league right now..

KD has decent vision he's just not a smart play maker..

@Sammy
your list shows the same scheme thing that i was talking about, malone had a high win shares and low ast% but was playing with stockton who ran the offense.
Also they won 55, 51 and 55 games in those top 3 seasons on your list, so its not like it is a losing formula. Really considering we have no post player and no great shooters aside from durant, his ast% doesnt seem so bad

@f5alcon
Seems like wishful thinking to me to think that Durant would suddenly be a stellar playmaker and passer if RW was replaced by an average point guard. He hasn't shown at any point in his career that he has better than average playmaking ability, with or without RW.

@justin
no just the ones i listed

Are you counting turnovers in these comparisons? Both Westbrook and Durant are top 10 in the league in turnovers.

@Sammy
yeah i was just comparing the players that had been listed, and i know it was not your opinion, nor am i really arguing, just putting up numbers to show strengths and weaknesses. but yeah scheme matters, if we didnt have RW and had durant run the floor, he would be a better playmaker.

as for pierce rondo, and pierces better ast% some of that is simply better shooters for him to pass to, boston starting lineup shoots 53.3%, ours shoots 44.5%, how many more assists would durant have if when he kicked it out we made the shots 9% more often?

PPG 31.0 RPG: 7.8 APG: 13.2

So durant/westbrook is better then that.

billups/melo PPG 48.6 RPG 9.3 APG 9.4

So durant/westbrook is a better combo then that too overall and are the 2nd best Pg/swingman combo in the NBA.

I still believe Weaver will wind up as the Thunder's third point guard/shooting guard. They're not likely to re-sign Ollie, and I can't see them spending money on someone else behind Maynor.

Kyle is one of my favorites. He didn't set the world on fire as a rookie, but he had a solid year. At some point, we're going to need someone like him who you can trust to fill-in somewhere.

same list but only counting players who averaged over 30mpg here

@Sammy

thats a short list...

I'm still very skeptical about Weaver as a PG.. but he has a lot of other skills and if he can shoot the three he could possibly be more valuable than Thabo..

Here's the complete list of players that turned in seasons of <14% assist ratio with a usage rate of greater than 30%, sorted by win shares.

@GAP

Agreed on Weaver.

Also, what browser are you using? Are you always on the same computer?

I could give you a hint/trick to help you remember to log in each time.

@Sammy
whoops, "I don't think it holds much water..."

@f5alcon
That wasn't my judgment, that was Thorpe's. I don't think it's really debatable that Durant isn't much more than an average playmaker, though.

The argument about Westbrook/scheme is interesting, but digging further, I think it holds much water. Your comps are disingenuous because none of those other PGs are anywhere close to Westbrook in skill. The better comp, I think, would be Paul Pierce, who played with a ton of poor to middling PGs before the emergence of Rajon Rondo. Pierce's Ast% peaked at 25% in 02-03, then hovered in the low 20's for the most of the decade. Although Pierce's assist rate has dipped in the last two years – 16.3% and 15.1%, both still higher than anything Durant's done – that correlates pretty well with a similar drop in usage rate.

PNT :
Front office has released the basics of playoff ticket sales.
http://www.newsok.com/article/3443431

$5-$15 more isnt bad at all, though 2nd rd will be more. But still that increase is less then i expected, i was expecting a 50% increase in price. Which would be a $67 increase for lower bowl.

I love the article about the Pistons not allowing KD's shoes. Yeah ... its the shoes. That's why their team sucks. Totally the shoes. HA HA HA!

@Sammy
I think durant is closer then you might think to the upper tier, its just how he is used in the game, out of those players he has the lowest usage%(% of possessions a player is used on the court) at 32.1% kobe was next at 32.5% but that is way off from his dominate years where he was as high as 38%. Lebron is used 33.6% and wade is used 35.1%.

Also he plays a traditional SF role, he isnt for the most part bringing the ball up the floor and the offense being run through him. Kobe is similiar in their AST% is about 14%. Wade and lebron have much more offense going through them 36% and 41% respectively, they have more assists then their PGs do. This inflates their assist numbers and make them look more well rounded, but limits their PGs. So we could the same with durant but his TOV numbers would go up and RW would see a big drop off in his assists.

So the question is more of scheme then anything else. Is durant/westbrook a better combo then wade/alston, kobe/fisher or lebron/williams?

Dur/Wes PPG 45.6 RPG 12.7 APG 10.7
wad/als PPG 33.1 RPG 6.8 APG 9.4
kob/fis PPG 34.8 RPG 7.5 APG 7.3
leb/wil PPG 46.0 RPG 10.2 APG 13.5

@Anonymous
Me again....Dang it!

@justin

Statistically he's been ordinary. I see flashes from him though. He makes some passes that prove he has excellent court vision. He doesn't have an offensive game yet and I'm not sure if it's because he's a pass-only type of guard, or if it's because he needs a system first. And I really like his man defense.

It will be interesting to see how well he does next year.

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