You remember how pissed we were when the national media was making drama up about our team during the Thunder’s playoff run? Is it at all possible that local Miami fans could be feeling the same frustration? This week’s episode takes a look at the Heat from a local perspective as we talk to Surya Fernandez of Hothothoops.com. Agree or disagree but at least after this you’ll have heard both sides.
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Happy summer/Saturday everyone. Thank you for your support of DT. Go Mavs?
Due to a number of things — delays, bad luck, more delays, more bad luck — I spent the night at the Atlanta airport last night. A lovely experience I would wish upon everyone. So as you might imagine, I spent quite a bit of time YouTubeing the crap out of everything. And in the wormhole that is related videos, I stumbled across this gem of a video from last season. It’s the Thunder’s FS Oklahoma intro and somehow, despite it being only a year old, this video feels like it’s from 1974. And I can’t help but completely love it.
Scott Brooks was on the Dan Patrick Show this morning and talked with guest host Chris Mannix of SI.
Brooks went over a lot of stuff including the NBA Finals, how LeBron needs to be more involved and of course, Russell Westbrook.
One other thing too: Brooks said the Thunder would’ve absolutely beaten the Heat in The Finals. “In five or six games,” he said. I can get behind that.
Nenad Krstic is going back to Europe. His NBA career might not be over, but it kind of feels like it is. So he’s sort of getting a little retirement treatment. Berry Tramel wrote that Krstic gave Thunder fans a little bit of hope during a dark time. And he’s absolutely, 100 percent right.
Krstic arrived in OKC the same day defensive guru Ron Adams did. Without Krstic and Adams, the Thunder were 3-29. With them, 20-30. Krstic was a big part of the second half surge that gave the Thunder a little momentum and the fan base a serious jolt of optimism. Krstic might as well been Dwight Howard because he was something.
I remember writing about how much Krstic’s signing was more of a symbol of hope than it was anything else. Finally, reinforcements were coming. Here’s what I wrote the day Krstic signed with OKC: Read more…
Mo Cheeks is a candidate for the Raptors job. Last season the Thunder lost their top assistant to Chicago and nearly lost Cheeks to the Bulls as well. He has been quite the mentor to Russell Westbrook, so it would be a bummer to lose him.
Berry Tramel on the rescinded Tyson Chandler trade: “The rescinded trade still worked out for OKC. With Chandler on board, there would have been no trade with Chicago that landed Thabo and eventually Eric Maynor. With Chandler on board, there would have been no cap room to sign Nick Collison to the kind of contract he signed. So this deal had a lot of moving parts. It worked out well for OKC. And remember, two teams after the rescinded trade dealt away Chandler. The Hornets for something, the Bobcats for nothing.” Read more…
The Thunder have some cap room to play with this summer. First things first is Russell Westbrook’s extension and then settling on the futures of Daequan Cook and Nazr Mohammed with the team.
But if Sam Presti wanted to target a free agent or two, he’s going to have a little money to do it — of course depending on the new collective bargaining agreement.
It’s pretty unlikely that the Thunder will really look to sign anyone substantial this summer, instead deferring to development. The team is pretty much set in its rotation already from one to ten. As Presti would say, there’s always room to get better though and he’s going to look at options to do that.
One player that’s intrigued a lot of people? Shane Battier. Yeah, the guy that we all wanted to knee in the forehead during the Western Conference Semifinals. Read more…
OKC isn’t just into the Thunder, but the whole NBA now: “That increased interest in the NBA — and not just the hometown Thunder — can be seen in KOCO-5’s record ratings for the NBA Finals. Through the first four games, the station is averaging a 13.3 rating (percentage of TV households), a 102 percent increase from the same period for last year’s Lakers-Celtics series. Tuesday night’s Game 4 produced a 14.4 rating, including a 21.1 for the final quarter-hour.”
Breaking: KD has changed his Twitter name to @KDTrey5. Adjust accordingly. Read more…
One of my best friends lives in Washington DC and he told me that he was going to go over to Barry Farms to watch Kevin Durant play in the Goodman League. I asked him if he’d be willing to give a little recap of the night and he sent me this.
WASHINGTON DC — I grew up in Oklahoma, and now I live and work in Washington, DC. I also happen to have been roommates with Royce during our formative years in Norman. So naturally, when I heard that Kevin Durant occasionally plays summer league ball in DC, I took it as my moral duty to find out the details and attend.
After learning from twitter (@Inside_da_Gates) that KD would be playing in DC this week, I was able to clock out of work a bit early yesterday and attend last night’s session (Tuesday, June 7) of the George Goodman Basketball League. If you do not know, the Goodman League is a summer basketball league in the southeast Washington D.C. neighborhood of Anacostia/Barry Farms (to learn more about the league and its history – it is sponsored by Nike and is regularly billed as one of the nation’s top spots for summer ball – check out their website).
I arrived to the Barry Farms neighborhood around 6:50 p.m. (it’s a 4 minute walk, at most, from the Anacostia metro station), just in time to catch the tipoff of the first game – but there was no sign of KD. The scene was what you would imagine for a high intensity summer league – good basketball players, a standing room only crowd inside the caged basketball court, Gatorade and bottled water available for $2 a bottle, and a DJ spinning great music (opening song was the full length version of Rick James’ “Mary Jane”). In addition, the best part of the Goodman League is Commissioner Miles Rawls, who commentates on the games over a PA in real time. Read more…
Trey Kerby of TBJ on Perk: “I really love the idea that Kendrick Perkins, a professional basketball player, will not talk about basketball with anyone for fear of breaking up his team’s locker room. His wife, his kids, the guy who sells him tanktops and plaid shorts, Eric at the diner, the girl who brought him his buffalo wings, his parents, his teammates — none of them get basketball talk from Kendrick Perkins because he knows what that can do to a team’s chemistry. Just a very Kendrick Perkins way of life.”
Kendrick Perkins appeared on “Rome Is Burning” today and talked about a bunch of stuff — verrrrrry slowwwwllly — including Russell Westbrook, how experience played a factor, what his offseason plans are and his health.
Perk made it a point to say he was “playing on one leg” last season and mentioned that he was the only player in the league wearing two knee braces. But Perk is clearly excited about this team’s future and where they can go. Especially once it has a healthy Perk in the middle.
Kevin Durant returned inside the gates last night to play in the Goodman League. He’s had some pretty crazy performances there in the past, dropping 60 one night and 52 another. He said last night was the first time he’s touch a ball since Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals and in typical KD-ness, he looked pretty awesome. He finished with 41 points last night.
John Rohde on OKC’s draft plans: “Possibly stash, or perhaps trade away the pick. The Thunder is in a great position to do what it did when it took Serge Ibaka and Tibor Pleiss – draft them, then stash them. Pleiss likely is at least another year away. Ibaka is a freak and made the jump quickly. If someone of quality is available, the Thunder might go international. If not, they could trade the No. 24 pick along with a player or two at the end of the bench (Nate Robinson and/or Byron Mullens perhaps) to get something in return.”
Ken Berger of CBSSports.com with a great column on LeBron: “To paraphrase Carmelo Anthony, who spoke this season of tipping his hat to himself, Doyel promptly congratulated LeBron for a praiseworthy zinger. If the LeBron apologists and see-no-evil statistical devotees would stop breaking down screen grabs and Synergy clips long enough, they’d tip their hat to Doyel, too. They’d credit him for being one of the only media members with the cojones to confront LeBron publicly — even though he was wrong. Much easier to limit that dialogue to the fingertips and the laptop, which is the way of the world now.” Read more…
“I hate the Yankees because they just buy championships.”
Unless you actually are a Yankee fan, you’ve probably said those words. I used to always say I hated the Yankees and when people would ask why, I’d say exactly that. They just buy their trophies.
For whatever reason, most of us saw something far more admirable in the way a team like the Marlins won their two World Series championships. By drafting smart, building from within, developing talent and managing money wisely. They didn’t have a blank check to buy every big name on the free agent market so they had to plan more carefully.
And with the Heat now being two games away from winning an NBA championship the same year that LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh decided to form a super-team of sorts, I’m hearing that same explanation as a reason to hate the Heat. And to make it better, the counter-argument all year has always been the Thunder.
On one hand you have a franchise that basically turned things around in one year because they had money and three players that wanted to play together. On the other, you have a franchise that has succeeded by managing the salary cap brilliantly, by drafting and by developing. Because of those two different models — to go along with humility, market size, market style and a number of other things — the Thunder were painted as the anti-Heat. As if that’s some badge of honor to wear while trying to win one for the little guys.
It’s something that I talked about on this week’s podcast, but I’ve been thinking more about it: Is there something more honorable in the way the Thunder are winning than the Heat? Read more…
Darnell Mayberry on how the criticism of Westbrook could help: “Ironically, Kendrick Perkins had a front-row seat to similar scrutiny that landed on another point guard’s front stoop three years ago. His name was Rajon Rondo, then in his second season with Boston. The Celtics had just acquired Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to team up with Paul Pierce, and Rondo became a giant question mark to the team’s title hopes. Eventually, Rondo silenced the critics that season. “Rondo’s (criticism) lasted for a little bit. Russ’ lasted throughout the whole playoffs, no matter if he played good or bad,” Perkins said. “He still was getting criticized on something. And I thought he handled that, as I say, like a G.” Perkins, who joined the Thunder in mid-February, was impressed with how a much younger Thunder team avoided the perils of outside noise. In Boston, one of the league’s biggest pressure cookers, Perkins had quickly learned to tune out most of it. “I don’t even talk basketball with my own wife; seriously, because it can break up a locker room,” Perkins said. “It can break up a team.” Read more…
Hope your hungry cause here comes a double helping of the best Thunder coverage anywhere. We’re double dipping so you can have a double portion of blessing as you listen. There are two guys that every Thunder fan must follow, and we got ‘em both in this two part episode.
Part 1 – Darnell Mayberry from The Oklahoman joins us to talk the Thunder playoff run and a look into the offseason.
Part 2 – Royce The Godfather from DailyThunder.com joins us to talk about his trip to Miami to cover The Finals.
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PART II
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You remember how pissed we were when the national media was making drama up about our team during the Thunder’s playoff run? Is it at all possible that local Miami fans could be feeling the same frustration? This week’s episode takes a look at the Heat from a local perspective as we talk to Surya Fernandez of Hothothoops.com. Agree or disagree but at least after this you’ll have heard both sides.
