As Nick Collison wrote recently on his GQ blog, NBA teams travel in style. There may be a lot of miles logged over the course of a season, but it involves chartered luxury jets, upscale hotels and lots of pampering. So it’s hard for most of us to feel a lot of sympathy for “road weary” NBA teams when we’re subjected to the TSA cattle call, middle seats in coach and roadside motels.
But a lot of it is late-night travel to far-flung airports. And with the Thunder wrapping up their second of three three-game road trips in quick succession, the first three lengthy trips of the season, OKC is taking tours of each coast in chunks.
In a season when teams are looking for every shred of an advantage as they combat the compressed schedule, Oklahoma City is enjoying one just because of its location. OKC’s central spot on the U.S. map is a travel advantage for the team in any season, but it could be an even bigger edge as the NBA crams in 66 regular season games per squad in just 123 days. Read more…
A win on the road against Dallas is probably cathartic enough for this Thunder team, no matter how it comes. And that’s good, because OKC’s 95-86 win Wednesday over the Mavericks was pretty ugly for long stretches.
But chalk up some of that to some fantastic interior defense by the Thunder, who used a record-setting performance from Serge Ibaka to bring the kind of intimidating defending that can lead to some discombobulated, ragged offense. Ibaka had 10 blocks, the most by a Thunder player since the franchise arrived in Oklahoma City, and OKC harassed Dallas into 36 percent shooting on the night.
The power forward position dominated the night for the Thunder. Ibaka had an off shooting night, but paired 11 rebounds with his blocks for a double-double and was a force all night. Nick Collison was his usual active self in relief. Kevin Durant played a lot of four when the Thunder went small, and he’s Kevin Durant. But both Ibaka and Collison made the difference for Oklahoma City by playing Dirk Nowtizki tough. Dirk shot a miserable 2-15 and got to the line only four times for eight points on the night. Read more…
So you’re telling me the Thunder, at 12-2, have the NBA’s best record and are on a seven-game winning streak? And the next five games would be major upsets if Oklahoma City doesn’t win?
What exactly are we dealing with here?
Let’s be real. The Thunder can’t keep winning at this rate for 66 games, especially a 17-2 clip or better if it turns into that. We aren’t dealing with the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, who won an NBA-record 72 games. Those Bulls had a .878 win percentage, which is slightly higher than the .857 win percentage that the Thunder owns now. Oklahoma City will far exceed that if it can win the next five games, which it should considering those games are at Washington, at New Jersey, Detroit, New Orleans and at Golden State. But it ain’t happening over the course of an entire season — not this team, not this season for any team and maybe not ever.
And ripping off a lengthy winning streak, especially this early in the season, is not necessarily a sign of a team that’s going to make a similar dominating run through the playoffs. Things can happen. The Houston Rockets won 22 straight games five years ago and flamed out in the first round, for example. Read more…
With 10 games under their belt going into Tuesday’s game in Memphis, there’s enough of a sample size to have gotten a pretty good feel for how the Thunder has evolved as a team. The unfolding process of replacing Eric Maynor is obviously still mostly an unknown, but there has been enough time to see some trends, good and bad.
It’s too early to tell for sure whether the good trends will happily keep going or the disappointing ones will sadly continue. But there’s nothing wrong with being excited or annoyed with how things are shaking out. Let’s take a look. Read more…
Trying to catch a Thunder road game is a convenient excuse to visit some of the coolest cities in America — and Canada, during seasons unlike this one when Oklahoma City visits the Raptors.
So here’s a guide of some of the games in the compressed NBA schedule in 2012 that could make for some cool road trips. The general guideline here is that the game should be one where a Monday-to-Friday working stiff or student could see the game by only skipping out on one or two weekdays. All airfare estimates and driving distances are based on Oklahoma City, and hotel price estimates are based on ballpark final cost estimates of well-located, three-star national chain properties for two double or queen beds. Read more…
After all the lockout drama and compressed preseason with rushed training camps, it’s finally at the point where the next time the Thunder tips off, it’s for real. But there are still developments from the prolonged offseason that need more discussion. Not Russell Westbrook’s extension or James Harden’s development or any of those trivial things — they’ve been well-covered. I’m talking about the important stuff, like what people’s hair or facial hair looks like, changes in physical appearance and things like that.
Kendrick Perkins’ weight loss and Kevin Durant’s tattoos have already garnered a bit of attention. But there are still some matters that have slipped through the cracks of media coverage. Two preseason games’ worth of television coverage has put some of these issues into the forefront, and it’s time to discuss them. Read more…
In the same spirit as last year’s look at five things I wanted to see, on-and-off-the-court, from the Thunder last season, let’s look at five things that would be nice to see from the standpoint of the Thunder fan experience and also “for basketball reasons.”
Of last year’s five things, a buzzer beater, ended up being a rather memorable part of the 2010-11 season. Some other wishes remain, first and foremost a wish to see the Thunder wear black socks and shoes with the home whites sometimes, are still out there. And I’ll definitely still take more variety on commercials for local games.
But 2011-12 is a new season with new challenges and frontiers. Here’s five more for this year: Read more…
My “The lockout is over!” moment came when I woke up Saturday morning and saw a Facebook notification on my phone. A wall post from a friend gave me the news.
I feel like a guy whose girlfriend unreasonably started a fight and then went off the grid for a couple of days before coming back and acting like nothing happened. You’re a little mad. You’re not quite sure what happened over those couple days, and you probably don’t really want to know, but at least she came back. You’re willing to overlook a relatively large bump in the road just because you love her, and just dropping it seems pretty reasonable.
And, of course, when it’s “where the magic happens” time again … it’s pretty amazing, and all is definitely forgiven. I can say with certainty that’s exactly how I’ll be feeling on Christmas Day when the NBA finally tips off. Read more…
If you had trouble buying the tickets you wanted Monday to the Kevin Durant-Blake Griffin charity basketball game, you weren’t the only one. Ticketmaster issues — surprise! — made ticket sales for the Sunday’s U.S. Fleet Tracking Basketball Invitational a crazy endeavor early Monday afternoon.
“It was out of hand,” said former Thunder player Desmond Mason, who is helping to organize the game. “I had some high-profile friends calling me saying they couldn’t get them.”
Dozens of people were lined up at the Cox Convention Center box office by 11 a.m., but workers there later created a lottery system that gave no preference to those who arrived early. Some people lined up at Homeland stores in the Oklahoma City area to get tickets there. Others spent time in Ticketmaster’s online waiting room.
Many people were told that only the $39 tickets were available after a few short minutes, but that was not the case. Single tickets in all but the courtside price level were still available late Monday, which stood in direct contrast to what many customers were told by the Ticketmaster website and Homeland employees as early as 12:05 p.m. Pairs of tickets remained available in the $89 price level late Monday. Read more…
Blame for the NBA labor impasse is being passed around like mashed potatoes during Thanksgiving dinner. There’s more than enough for everybody, even though everyone is taking a lot. But don’t forget that there’s some on your own plate, too.
The NBA and its players are able to take us for suckers because we are suckers, as long as you realize that “we” in the short term means hardcore NBA fans and in the long term means all sports fans. I include myself in both groups. The NBA and the players know they can get away with canceling games, even an entire season, because they know that the hardcore fans will be back in their seats no matter when the next NBA game is, and with even a little bit of luck, the game will eventually recover some of the legions of casual fans it is losing with every minute the lockout drags on.
I know I’ll be in my usual seat in Loud City whenever the next NBA game is, whether it’s in November 2011 or November 2012 or somewhere in between (which is and always has been my uneducated guess). I’ll probably even buy a new Thunder T-shirt in between now and then — an officially licensed version and a Tree and Leaf version both, most likely. I might even stop for a beer on my way to the seat, too. I’ll keep spending my hard-earned money as long as there’s a product I would pay to see, and the Thunder as currently constituted certainly is that, for this year and for years to come. So that remains a primary reason why the NBA and the players will ultimately get away with this. Read more…
Rex Tillerson. Jeffrey Immelt. Alan Mulally. W. James McNerny. James Skinner.
Mark Cuban. Jerry Buss. Jerry Jones. Robert Kraft. Hal Steinbrenner.
I’m guessing that, unless you’re a total business geek, you at most know only one or two of the names in the first group. But you probably know all of the names in the second group, and even non-sports fans (who at least are minimally aware of current events and have a pulse) know three or four of them.
Nonetheless, those 10 men have something in common. They’re all filthy rich. The big difference that separates the famous rich guys from the non-famous rich guys is that the famous ones own sports teams. The non-famous ones are chairmen and/or CEOs of some of the world’s biggest companies (in order, Exxon Mobil, GE, Ford, Boeing, McDonalds), each of which is worth more than every NBA franchise put together. Read more…
Chesapeake Energy Arena. I don’t think anyone around here was really surprised, and I think a lot of us were relieved because it could have been worse. I’m not really a big fan of Energy Solutions Arena or Quicken Loans Arena or any of the other pretty lame NBA building names out there. At least we’re lucky in that the big corporations headquartered in Oklahoma City (Chesapeake, Devon, SandRidge, MidFirst Bank, Sonic, etc.) don’t have horrible names.
Still, the Ford Center was a solid name. In the era of sponsored building names, that’s about as traditional, institutional and majestic as it gets. And it didn’t really need a nickname. “It’s at the Ford Center” rolled off the tongue pretty easily. It still does, really, for people like me who have been calling it that even when it was officially known as Oklahoma City Arena.
But the new arena name isn’t nearly as compact. It’s not as natural to say, “I’m headed to Chesapeake Energy Arena for the game.” This arena needs a nickname. Let’s get the ball rolling so we can have a nickname picked out for the next NBA season (which hopefully starts sooner than October 2012). Here are my top choices so far. Please submit your own in the comment section. This is important. Read more…
(Editor’s note: Last year we honored Shark Week, and the doldrums even of a lockout-less NBA August, by comparing sharks to the Thunder. So we’re revisiting that theme again in 2011 with the new roster. Perk deserves his own shark too, basically. Some of these are re-runs or slightly modified re-runs from last year, and some are brand new.)
It’s Shark Week again! And it’s still 142 degrees in Oklahoma. Let’s compare members of the Thunder family to sharks.
I know, that was pretty predictable. When you saw where this column was going, you instantly thought, “Kevin Durant is JUST like a porbeagle shark.” Or maybe not.
While most sharks prefer more glamorous and warmer climates, the porbeagle shark is home in the quieter, cool waters further away from the coast. He can heat up all on his own. Porbeagles’ tendency to seemingly play, tossing around bits of debris in groups of up to 20, is like Durant’s propensity to play basketball all the time. They just enjoy being sharks, like he just enjoys playing basketball. Read more…
The Thunder will play in one of the most-changed divisions in basketball next season (please, God, let there be a next season). If the Thunder’s makeup changes at all before the first game, it will be at the end of the rotation and the end of the bench. The Thunder is betting, probably wisely, that improvement will continue to come annually from its young players.
But the rest of the Northwest Division has been anything but stable this offseason. It was one of the most changed divisions during the season as well, with the Thunder, Nuggets, Jazz and Blazers all making trades that impacted the playoff race (and, in three cases, the future of the franchises). But the pace didn’t really slow during the draft. All of the Thunder’s division rivals added, and in some cases gave away, important pieces.
So how do those changed teams match up specifically with the same old Thunder? (Note: The following lists aren’t meant to be comprehensive. They only mention the most significant changes.) Read more…
Don’t forget to call your dad Sunday for Father’s Day. Your dad may be cool, but he’s not as cool as my dad. That’s no slight on your father, though. Just goes to show how awesome mine is. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
Anyway, this seems like an appropriate time to explore the best “Who’s your daddy?!” moments from the 2010-11 Thunder season. Oklahoma City may be one of the youngest teams in the league, but that doesn’t stop Thunder players from occasionally physically dominating opponents to the point of embarrassment. And the run to the Western Conference Finals shows only Dallas has regional bragging rights over the Thunder. Everyone else is looking up to the Thunder, hoping to ascend to the same height next season — but also fearing, one might think, that OKC is set up for a potentially long run as the West’s daddy.
So let’s take a look at the top five moments from the season when a Thunder player made an opponent look like a helpless child. Read more…
