Tonight will probably decide if the Thunder will be finished for this season by Sunday or whether we will live to fight another week.
In the scheme of things it’s just a small blip in all things OKC and NBA. The Thunder has had an amazing run since coming to OKC. It’s been exciting, fun, frustrating and downright disappointing at one point or another. We’ve been season ticket holders since day one and have been to at least at 90% of the games each year. The golden days of Serge, Durant, Thabo, Nick and Westbrook are long gone and are remembered fondly. But I can say without equivocation that this year, the Durantless era, the Ibakaless era and Waitersless era has been the most exciting to me. We’ve gone from a vagabond team at the beginning to quickly becoming an elite team and now to what the pundits call a non-playoff team. Judging from the last two games, they are apparently right in theory. But according to Russell Westbrook, that’s just not so.
He has willed, fought, pushed and shot the team into the playoffs. Not the team, but Westbrook. Our team has shown such promise at times, that we’ve would become giddy with anticipation of what was in the future. And others times, we can look at them on the court and ask….who are these guys?
Westbrook gets criticized for taking too many shots, for not taking enough shots, for rebounding under the basket and for not rebounding under the basket. No matter what he does, according to some, it’s not enough. I just shake my head when I read the comments. But I guarantee that any real NBA fan, would love to have him on their team. He can “play team ball” but he has to have the team behind him in basketball ability, not in cute videos (although I admit I love them).
At times I’ve wanted to play general manager, but not this year. I don’t have a clue what Presti is going to do, actually we never do. But I don’t even have a clue what I think he should do. Blow up the fringes of the team and try to replace with better players? In that case who do you get rid of? Because I guarantee that most of the ones on the fringe will develop into strong players in the next few years and I for one, don’t want to sit and watch a Sabonis and Abrines killing it on another team, after we traded them away for yet another draft pick or B team player.
I don’t envy his job at all this year, but since everyone says he is brilliant, I’ll wait to see what magic he can cook up.
The above design can be ordered on a shirt:
