Daily Thunder.com

SLAM has five reasons Scott Brooks deserves an extension: “Either way, even when the Thunder were playing like your grandpa’s ’73 Sixers, Brooks was still encouraging, still clapping, still refusing to collect moral victories like he used to collect his team’s laundry when he was a coach in the ABA. Even the locker room, when things weren’t exactly humming, didn’t permeate a team dancing with futility. The players seem to genuinely like Brooks — some even call him “Scotty” — and when you like someone, you tend to play hard for them. Brooks perhaps draws strength from his own playing career. He was a short, white, undrafted and undersized guard, a CBA refugee who ended up sticking around for ten years and winning a title (with the ’94 Rockets). It’s entirely possible Brooks sees this Thunder team going through the same modus operandi as his own life in professional basketball: Success will eventually be born out of hardship, acquired through scrap and fight, where results and respect will be concurrently earned. Bottom line: He’s an upbeat guy, and his team is eating it up – 18-24 since their 3-29 start, with wins over San Antonio (twice), Utah, Dallas and Detroit since the second week of January.”

David Friedman of Pro Basketball News says give the RoY to Derrick Rose: “The Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook is averaging 17.3 ppg since the All-Star break but he is only shooting .395 from the field during that time. For the season, he is averaging 15.7 ppg (tied with Gordon for third among rookies) and 5.1 apg (second among rookies) for a team that started slowly but now has a marginally better winning percentage than last year.” That’s it. That’s all the mention Russell got in Friedman’s Rookie of the Year thing.

Brook Lopez was asked about Rookie of the Year: “Probably Derrick,” Lopez said. Give a different one. “I’d say Russell (Westbrook).” Keep going. What about Lopez? So he named Robin. ”Derrick’s changed his team so much. They’re definitely (in it) for the playoffs. Between (Kevin) Durant and Russ, Oklahoma City has obviously improved over the course of the season. He did too,” said Lopez, averaging 12.9 points, 7.9 rebounds and 1.79 blocks, who gave his All-Rookie team as Rose, Westbrook, O.J. Mayo, Eric Gordon and Marc Gasol.”

NBA Outsider has a prediction: “Let me make it clear that I am NOT saying the Oklahoma City Thunder will be title contenders, but instead that they will be threatening to make it into the playoffs in three years. I try to be bold, not borderline brain damaged.” Oh my. How bold. Will be threatening to make the playoffs in three years? Really going out there on a limb with that one. Three years is a long time. That means you’re saying they stink in 2009-10. They’re bad in 2010-2011. But in 2011-12, look out! They might make the playoffs that year. NBA teams are the easiest to turn around. If OKC’s doesn’t contend for the playoffs until 2011-12, then something is seriously wrong. Keep Reading…

Box score…if you can stomach it.

It’s tough to win in the NBA when you can’t shoot and you can’t defend. The Thunder found it out…again tonight against the Pacers in a  second straight trip to the woodshed.

There really isn’t much to say about this game that isn’t just summed up by that first paragraph; we just didn’t score enough points or in any way efficiently, meanwhile the Pacers ripped us a new one.  We allowed the Pacers, who shoot  49.7% eFG on the season to bomb away at 54.5% tonight. Our guys in blue, who are already fairly dreadful shooting on the season at a dead last in the NBA 47% eFG shot 44.5%.  Add to that, we got into a running game with the third fastest team in the NBA and if you’ve been watching this season, you can imagine how well that has worked for us this season. Tonight each team used 104 possessions, one of the fastest games of the season for us, and were never really in the contest.  We are 0-9 in games with a pace over 100, and have only won one game all season with a pace in the high 90′s, and that was a one point win against the lowly Kings. Keep Reading…

 vs.

Indiana Pacers (32-44, 10-29 road) vs. Thunder (21-54, 14-24 home)

TV: KSBI (Cox 15)
Radio: WWLS The Sports Animal (98.1 FM, 640 AM)
Time: 6:00 CST

Offensive Rating: Thunder: 103.0 (29th), Indiana: 107.3 (20th)
Defensive Rating: Thunder: 109.5 (20th), Indiana: 109.2 (19th)
Pace:Thunder: 93.4 (8th), Indiana: 96.3 (3rd)

Can I just take a moment to say, what the crap weather? Snow last weekend, then sunny with highs of 75 through the week and now back to low 40s and 200 mile per hour wind. Oh yeah, I live in Oklahoma. Nevermind.

For tonight’s game against Indiana, I’m really expecting a solid effort. After Friday, ahem, “poor” performance against Portland, I think this team comes out with a lot of fire tonight. They may only have 21 wins, but they have an awful lot of pride. In fact, in games OKC lost by 20 more (under Scott Brooks) the Thunder’s 0-4 in the following game with a pair of two point losses and overtime loss. So while that’s not exactly an encouraging bit of information, it does say that the team doesn’t really sulk and get their rears handed to them on consecutive nights.

Brooks hinted that D.J. White may see action for the first time tonight. I’m really anxious to see what he adds. I don’t expect big minutes or big production, but I’m looking forward to at least getting a look at him. At Indiana he was a terrific low post scorer and physical rebounder – something OKC really needs. (Kind of ironic he makes his debut in the NBA against Indiana, huh?) Keep Reading…

Reader Kev was at the 66ers game last night and had some great comments about D.J. White and Kyle Weaver’s performances. I thought it needed to be bumped up to maybe catch some more eyeballs.

Actually, White was not that good on the boards – he had seven boards – four were offensive and three of those were attempted tip ins – come on, if you’re 6-9 you should be able to get more than 3 defensive rebounds in 36 minutes of action. I didn’t see the aggressiveness from White that you need at THAT level to warrant time in the NBA. He was very good at jump shots, as he put in at least four of those from 15 to 19 feet. Sadly, he did very little post up work. In fact, he got the ball in the post TWICE all game. The first time he turned and faced immediately after catching it (he hit a jumper from about 12). The last time he fumbled the ball after starting to dribble, and almost turned it over in the process. He offered little defensive resistance inside all night, so (based off of one game I know) it doesn’t look promising.

Weaver looked okay at the point. He registered 11 assists, but when you play in a game in which transition and rotating defense is almost non existent, you can rack up the assists if you are a willing passer (which he is). He did okay at ball handling, even though he had two bad passes out of traps. With Livingston on hand, I don’t think he will be seeing the point with the Thunder anytime soon. Still, it was fun to see him take his “demotion” in stride – he was in a good mood the whole game, and even gave a fist pound to all the statisticans before gametime.

Great stuff. I’m a little disappointed about White’s post game. At Indiana he was lethal in the post. I hope he’s not trying to be a jump shooting big man. Been there, done that (Johan Petro). Also, you can check out last night’s 66ers box score here. Weaver played all 48 minutes and had 24 points (11-17 shooting), 11 assists and seven rebounds. White had 28 points and seven rebounds in 37 minutes of run.

Both players have been recalled and that’s the last time White is going down for the season. Under league rules, a player can only make three trips down and up between D-League and NBA. Hopefully White can get a little burn in these next seven games.

Also, Darnell Mayberry had an explanation as to why Weaver was sent down:

“He’s going to be able to play there two games and only miss one game here,” said Brooks, indicating Weaver is likely to be recalled prior to Sunday’s game against Indiana. ”I like what he has done for us, and he will continue to improve because he is a great worker. But he’s getting minutes down there and it helps when you get minutes. I know he was getting 16, 17 minutes up here, but he’s getting 40 minutes down there. I thought he did a good job. He was filling up the stat sheet. They didn’t win the game, but I thought his numbers and his play was pretty good. So he’s just getting an opportunity to play extra minutes.”

Box score (take a good look at it – it’s a good one)

You know what kind of quotes you see after a game like that?

“We just didn’t have any intensity tonight. We have to come out with better energy than that.”

“Shots just weren’t falling. Some nights that happens.”

“This one is on us – we just didn’t play with any fire tonight.”

“We got out-hustled. No excuses. That was just terrible effort on our part.”

“Give credit to the Blazers. They weren’t giving us any easy looks.”

Blah, blah, blah. I mean, what else are you supposed to say? “You know, other than the getting beat by 37 and shooting 36 percent, I thought things went pretty well.”

But let me tell you, that was a poor effort. They stunk. Big time. Sure, it was an “off night” if you want to call it that. I think a better description would be “so far off that I actually wonder if someone would hit the shot clock with a jumper night.” Oklahoma City shot just 36 percent for the game and it took a lot to get there after the Thunder shot just 23 percent in the first half. Yes, that’s right. Twenty-three percent. Eleven made field goals. Pathetic.

Here’s some numbers from the first half: Kevin Durant 2-9, eight points. Russell Westbrook 1-8, seven points. Jeff Green 3-7, nine points. Nenad Krstic 1-7, two points. And it’s not like it really picked up in the second half. after 35 first half points, OKC put up 37 in the second for a whopping 72 points. Too bad Portland had 107. You know how many points the leading man for OKC had? Thirteen. Thirteen points. The Thunder had three guys in double figures. As a result of all that *stellar shooting, Brian Davis probably said some variation of his little “lid on the basket” cliche 2,000 times. It got pretty old pretty fast. Keep Reading…