Tuesday Bolts – America! Edition

First off, a big happy birthday to my little brother who turns 17 today. Oh, and go vote today.

• FreeDarko watched the Thunder’s first win and saw a flash of brilliance: “I’m hopped up on some ill green tea right now so I’m having a hard time gathering my thoughts, but let me keep it on the topic of guard dominance would like to point everybody’s attention to Russell Westbrook, who I had the pleasure of watching last night. If Westbrook isn’t starting over Earl Watson by December, I’m putting a bounty out on PJ Carlessimo who has been killing this team with his starting lineups since last year (PUT KD AT PF, and make Jeff Green sixth man!!!). I’m not sure I’m sold on Westbrook being as good as Derrick Rose, and it’s too early to put him on that CP3/Deron Williams level, but the kid is just sick at getting to the rim… (Just want to point out, that I said in early October that Westbrook would overtake Watson in the starting lineup as well. *pounds chest*)

• If the season ended today, the Thunder would be in the playoffs, Thunder8thSeed from OKC Thunder Fans points out.

• The Thunder moves up three spots in Marc Stein’s power poll: Progress? As a Seattle rook, Kevin Durant had to wait nine games for win No. 1. As an Okie, KD’s wait was only three games. P.J. Carlesimo spoke for everyone involved when he admitted, “Any win feels good, honestly.”

• Russell Westbrook is winning over the good folks of Fanhouse too: “Russell Westbrook is quickly becoming one of my favorite NBA Rookies. Sunday night he helped the Oklahoma City Thunder collect their first ever victory as an NBA franchise. Westbrook made his mark on the contest by pressuring the ball on defense and pushing the ball on offense. Westbrook finished the contest with 14 points, 2 assists, and 2 steals in 25 minutes of play and led an OKC second half comeback.”

• Mike Baldwin thinks the best way to beat the Celtics is to run, run and run some more: “We’d always like to run,” said coach P.J. Carlesimo. “We just want to run intelligently. We don’t necessarily want to come down and put up a jump shot the first three seconds of a clock.v”That’s not an easy line to walk. If you’re running and pushing it, and guys are open, they’re saying, ‘If you want to run, you want to shoot.’ But you can shoot yourself in and out of games. Do we want to run? Absolutely. But we need to make good decisions.”

• Joe has more, excellent statistical evaluation for us: “Three games are in the books now and each of the three have had a distinct flavor of their own. For the most part we’ve played the best defense this team has played in quite a few years, but our offense has been stagnant. Just one heartbeat above rigormortis. The team has it’s second day off in a row today before the Champion Celtics hit town for the second game of a back to back. We play again on Friday before we really get busy playing 5 games next week.”