Friday Bolts – 10.21.16
Zach Lowe of ESPN.com: “It isn’t going to be pretty. The Thunder are poor on shooting, and they
just don’t have the personnel to whip the ball around in artful passing sequences that build to an orgasmic crescendo. Their offense post-Durant is a straight-ahead battering ram heading toward walls of defenders. And on a lot of nights, they will run right through those freaking walls. You think Russell Westbrook is worried about those three defenders waiting at the dotted line? When he misses at the rim, the league’s best offensive rebounding team is ready to pounce. The Thunder no longer have the luxury of taking nights off on defense, but they have the goods to play into late April.”
Tim Cato of SB Nation: “As it turns out, this is just Westbrook’s basket. He’s always there after practice, well before talk of Durant joining the Warriors reached its highest swell. There’s no visible burden or sense that he feels abandoned, at least not at this practice. If anything, he looks and sounds more carefree than usual. His visits with the media actually border on pleasant — even a viral moment last week about a question involving Durant didn’t include a surly line back at the reporter himself. Westbrook’s solitude isn’t about this summer at all, then, is it? Maybe it shows more about him.”
Westbrook on the Thunder’s transactional approach: “No, man. Honestly, the part with trades and all that stuff is a part of basketball. That’s a part of the NBA. That’s a part of how things go in this league.”
The Warriors’ Draymond Green problem.
Colin McGowan of RealGM: “This season, first and finally, will be about a man and his limits: the limits of Russ’s ability, the limits placed on his id, the limits of taste, the limits of vengeance and mania as a fuel source. This is going to be a brutal 82-game slog into anti-heroicity. As a character study, it’s intriguing. As the premise for a basketball team, it’s worryingly thin. We’re pretty sure we’ve accepted Russell Westbrook’s flaws. He’s going to test that acceptance, continually, for six months, until we break or he does.”
Brett Dawson: “Three Thunder preseason games were televised in the more traditional method. Oklahoma City’s first two games, in Spain, aired on NBA TV. Its third preseason game, in Dallas, aired on Fox Sports Oklahoma. But the Thunder wanted to air its remaining games. So it got permission from Fox Sports, its broadcast partner, and from the NBA, to live stream the remaining three games — one in Tulsa and two in Oklahoma City — with a caveat. The NBA requires the streams be geo-targeted to Oklahoma, Mahoney said. The live streams aren’t available outside the state. Mostly.”
