Daily Thunder.com

vs.

L.A. Lakers (55-14, 24-9 road) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (20-50, 14-22 home)

TV: FS Oklahoma HD (Cox 37, HD 722)
Radio: WWLS The Sports Animal (98.1 FM, 640 AM)
Time: 7:00 CST

Offensive Rating: Thunder: 103.4 (28th), Lakers: 113.6 (1st)
Defensive Rating: Thunder: 109.1 (20th), Lakers: 105.5 (6th)
Pace:Thunder: 93.6 (8th), Lakers: 94.7 (5th)

For OKC’s first matchup against Los Angeles, I looked at nine things the Thunder really needed to focus on in order just to hang close with the mighty Lakers. Among those were get to the line, hold the Lakers to under 105 points, turn it over fewer than 15 times and outrebound them. And OKC did six of the nine really well and stayed close deep into the fourth.

At home last time (a game I predicted stupidly that OKC would win), the Thunder got close to L.A. with Kobe on the bench but never seized the moment. Despite losing by 14, I really feel like the Thunder let something slip away. They played well all over but just didn’t make shots. So what can OKC do to actually beat the Lakers? Not just stay close, but beat probably the best team in the league?

1. Score 100. The Lakers have lost 14 games this season. Eleven of those games were lost when their opponent scored 100 points. Granted, L.A. is 25-11 when their opponent scores 100+, but that means they’re 30-3 when the opponent doesn’t. Keep Reading…

Chad Ford has a list of all the players he anticipates going pro, the 50/50 guys and the unlikelies: “Last year at this time, Derrick Rose said he’d definitely be returning to Memphis. He’s now finishing his rookie season with the Chicago Bulls. The general rule is that if a player is projected as a lottery pick, his chances of declaring for the draft are very high. Of course, nothing is a given. Most recently, Blake Griffin decided to stay in school last year even though he was projected as a top-three pick in the 2008 draft. This year could see similar decisions. The draft class is weak, and a number of the top prospects aren’t ready for the NBA and really could use another year of college basketball. College underclassmen and international players who will be 22 years old or younger at the end of this year have until April 26 to declare themselves eligible for the NBA draft. Last year, 69 underclassmen and 22 international players initially declared for the draft. But by the time of the draft in June, most of the players had withdrawn. In the end, 38 underclassmen and five international players kept their names in the draft.”

And he’s also got some comments about who’s hot in the tourney and who’s not: ”Not: Once again, Thabeet is proving that just because you’re 7-foot-3 and taller than anyone else in college basketball doesn’t mean you’ll be making a huge impact on the floor. UConn largely ignored him on offense during its rout of Texas A&M on Saturday. Against Texas A&M’s strong front line, Thabeet took two shots in the game, grabbed six boards and watched Jeff Adrien do all the work down low. That’s not the type of performance you really want to see in the tournament from a possible top-10 pick.”

Mickael Gelabale is about to sign with the LA D-Fenders of the D-League.

Bill Simmons writes about the statistical revolution and it’s deficiencies: “The Spurs won their past two titles by surrounding a Tim Duncan-Manu Ginobili-Tony Parker nucleus with role players who didn’t care about numbers, rarely made mistakes and wouldn’t dare challenge the pecking order. Yes, Carmelo Anthony was a significantly better basketball player than Bruce Bowen between 2005 and 2007; Bowen was a better fit for the Spurs. That team didn’t need another scorer. It needed a top-notch defender and agitator who knew his place. Our current batch of public numbers can’t measure Bowen’s impact in that role. Maybe those numbers exist somewhere, but who knows?” Keep Reading…

The best way to gauge team progress is to take a number and compare it to what the team had at the same time last year. Pretty straightforward and simple. And what better to use as a measure than wins and losses?

Last season, the Thunder (then the Sonics of course) didn’t win their 20th game until the final day of the season. The team was 16-54 on March 24th. Now, OKC has win No. 20 with 12 games to go. Barring a dozen-game skid (fingers crossed), we should see 21 wins. That’s progress any way you want to slice it.

When this season started, most everyone gave Oklahoma City one simple goal to shoot for: Do better than last year. Improve. Get better. Grow and give hope. And I think 20 wins in *just* 70 games is an improvement over 20 wins in 82 last year.

(One thing you’ve got to remember is that last year’s 20-win team was entirely different. Only five players remain on the roster that finished the year with the team last season. The reigns hadn’t been entirely handed to Kevin Durant and Jeff Green, and Russell Westbrook wasn’t even part of the equation. It was really more of a veteran led team with guys like a Luke Ridnour, Earl Watson, Kurt Thomas, Wally Szczerbiak and Delonte West shouldering most the load at different times. Durant only started to take on the “star” role about halfway through the season and Green only started 52 games and averaged 28 minutes a game. Last year’s team most certainly wasn’t the “core” that Sam Presti wanted to move forward with. So this season was almost an entirely separate rebuilding year in itself as now we’re starting to see a roster take shape.)

There’s no denying the change from 2008 to 2009. OKC is 16-21 this year, compared to 4-29 in 2008. Last season, the team was 9-22 in 2007 and 11-40 in 2008. Other words: No striking improvement throughout the year. In fact, they got worse. This season the team has taken a major step ahead with its progress in 2009. Thabo Sefolosha was added to the roster and has made an immediate impact. Kevin Durant has begun to emerge as a bonafide megastar. Jeff Green has gone from possible liability to excellent sidekick. Russell Westbrook has progressed as a point guard and has gone from question mark to the potential Rookie of the Year. Keep Reading…

From NewsOK.com:

The Oklahoma City Thunder has recalled forward D.J. White from the Tulsa 66ers of the NBA Development League.

White was rather studly for the 66ers, averaging 17.3 points, 9.7 rebounds and 2.0 blocks in almost 38 minutes a game. I guess Sam Presti saw all he needed to see from White in Tulsa, and the numbers pretty much back that up.

I know that for these last 12 games I’d try and and get White at least 10-15 minutes a game. Malik Rose (likely) won’t be here next season so someone is going to have to fill the role of solid big guy off the bench. Nick Collison does a fantastic job with it right now, but it never hurts to have two of those especially since White has a little more skill and offensive ability. The Thunder bench is a relavtively obvious weakness to this team and White should shore that up a bit.

The major problem the OKC bench has is that there’s nobody on the pine to put the ball in the bucket. Collison is a glue guy that does little things. Kyle Weaver can knock down a jumper but he’s not going to give you much more than eight points or so in 20 minutes. Chucky Atkins can miss an open three with the best of them. And let us not speak of Earl Watson right now. I love the thought of having a physical big man that can come in grab some rebounds, knock down a 15-footer and score the ball.

Hope you enjoyed T-Town D.J., because hopefully you’re in OKC for a while.

Update: Marc Stein’s power rankings: “Best team in the league that has already been mathematically eliminated from playoff consideration? With the Thunder at 16-21 in 2009 and fresh off wins this month over the Mavs and Spurs, I don’t think it’s even close.” That’s good, right?

Alright Thunder management, what’ve you got? The Bulls just launched a campaign for Derrick Rose’s Rookie of the Year candidacy. I think the best campaign would be for Russell Westbrook to completely outplay him for the rest of the season, but that’s just me. That could do a lot more than some website with a couple quotes on it. But what do I know?

George Karl thinks “guys like Durant” get calls because they’re skinny: “It seems like skinny guys get more call than big guys or thick guys,” Karl observed. “Like when (Kevin) Durant goes in there he gets pushed off and you can see him get pushed off. Melo is so strong that he gets hit with the same hit — and I’m saying that all over the league — thick guys don’t get pushed off their spot where you can see a skinny guy get pushed off his spot so the whistle blows. I don’t think that’s fair. I think if there’s contact and there’s dislodging, if it’s only six inches instead of 16 inches it’s still a foul.”

Ball Don’t Lie, Behind the Box Score: “The Thunder had one turnover in the first half, and if that doesn’t speak to the type of players that Sam Presti has brought in, and the uncomplicated-but-efficient type of offensive sets that Scott Brooks has introduced, then we’re just going to have to talk about the Timberwolves. No? OK, Oklahoma City really seems to enjoy playing with its current roster. As soon as Thabo Sefolosha sat for Kyle Weaver in the first quarter, Thabo was immediately off the bench pointing things out to Weaver after a blown defensive assignment. And instead of acting insulted, or too sensitive, Weaver listened to the man who essentially stole his starting job a month ago. Very cool. And instead of worrying about their power being usurped by a guy in his mid-20s usurping their authority, the Thunder coaching staff let Thabo make his point. This team talks, on both ends, and it does selectively run, but most of the damage against the Timberwolves was done in the half court. I don’t think the Thunder are 18 points better than the Timberwolves over a 24-minute span, Minnesota’s lackadaisical play contributed to that early deficit, but taking down a team like Minnesota 57-39 in the first half is worth a nod in OKC’s direction.” Keep Reading…

Box Score

Is the glass half full or is it half empty?

I asked my wife that question (without any real context, since she doesn’t really like basketball on TV that much) and she replied sweetly “half full of course”.  Ok, there it is. Instead of looking at this game as a game where the Thunder were up 32 points with 1:32 left in the third, only to allow the Minnesota bench mob run the score back into single digits, I am instead going to mostly ignore all that and write about how we dominated all facets of the game with our starters in and built up the big lead and “got even” for the whoopin’  they gave us here a few months back.

In the first quarter it was just simple execution; the Thunder executed it’s offense and defense and the T-Wolves did not.  The Wolves are basically running a three guard lineup with Foye, Telfair and Miller, a tweener forward in Gomes and rookie Kevin Love at center.  While that group did a good job on the boards (backed up by Sonic/Thunder killer Craig Smith), it had very little inside presence on offense. They took a lot of jumpers and just weren’t hitting them. The Thunder were smooth offensively hitting their jumpers, cutting for back-door’s, and driving the lane.  We had a 14-8 advantage in points in the paint in the first and opened up a 10 point lead shooting 48% to the Wolves’ 30%.  The Thunder also had zero turns in the opening quarter. Keep Reading…

 vs.

Thunder (19-50, 5-28 road) at Minnesota Timberwolves (20-49, 10-25 home)

TV: FS Oklahoma HD (Cox 37, HD 722)
Radio: WWLS The Sports Animal (98.1 FM, 640 AM)
Time: 2:30 CST

Offensive Rating: Thunder: 103.4 (28th), Minnesota: 106.3 (23rd)
Defensive Rating: Thunder: 109.2 (20th), Minnesota: 111.3 (26th)
Pace:Thunder: 93.6 (8th), Minnesota: 92.0 (14th)

What a big game – loser takes last place in the division, winner takes second to last place. Woowee, intense. The last time the Thunder visited Minnesota, they took a pretty good drubbing. The kind of drubbing where the game was over basically in the first eight minutes and you were just left watching to see how many threes Randy Foye might hit. It was a rough night for OKC as Minny rolled 129-87. And it wasn’t even that close.

But the Wolves are still without big man Al Jefferson and while Kevin Love has played well in his place, he’s no Al Jefferson. The Wolves aren’t great at home (10-25) but they have won two of three at the Target Center and OKC is tied for the league’s worst road record at 5-25. But hey, we’ve won two of five on the road. So it’s the league’s worst home record against one of the worst road records. Should be fun!

Last time these two teams tangled, the Wolves were having their best month of the season and the Thunder caught them in their hottest stretch. It seemed like it was an endless barrage of threes and the Thunder offense never got even close to getting on track. And while the Thunder defense has slipped a bit since Kevin Durant has returned (not really that much in all reality though), the offense hasn’t clicked that well. KD went a very un-KD-like 10-24 from the field against Utah and the supporting cast didn’t do a very good job to pick up the slack.

Tough to place any kind of expectations on this game because you never know what you’re going to get with the Thunder on the road. Heck, kind of hard to say what you’ll get any given night. I feel like it should be a win, but who knows. And plus, add in the fact that nobody will be watching so that takes the importance of this game to even a lower level. But I’ll still be watching… during commercials.

Tip is in, oh crap, an hour! Go Thunder.

The Thunder have been nothing if not a team in transition all season. I’m not sure what version we are on but change has been constant. First we had a coaching change after game 13. During P.J.’s little sip of water with the Thunder this season the team was absolutely anemic on offense (92.5 offensive rating) and a bit above average defensively, using a lot of gimmicky zone defense (105.7 defensive rating).  The offense was beyond terrible, running and gunning but inefficient and only scoring more than 90 points 4 times in those thirteen games, and only going over 100 once. Blowouts were the norm.  I guess that was Thunder version 1.0.

Next came version 2.0 with Scotty Brooks in charge. The offense immediately took a huge jump in efficiency. Spacing was improved and the team began to attack the basket and get a bit slower and more deliberate. The defense meanwhile was completely destructed. The zone defense was sent to the shelf, double teaming was rare, and man to man was the order of the day.  The results were pretty spotty. In Brooks’ first dozen or so games the defense performed terribly, but it was sort of overshadowed by so much offensive improvement. The team began to get blown out a lot less frequently.

Brooks also was tweaking the lineup. Out of the rotation were Johan Petro, Chris Wilcox and Damien Wilkins. Durant went to the small forward position, Green the starter at the 3, and Collison manned the post. Desmond Mason finally solidified himself as our best defensive two, and Westbrook moved in as the starting 1. Things began to gel.

The team lit fire around the coming of the New Year and began to play .500 ball, which is saying something when you start the season 3-29. The team also plucked Nenad Krstic from Euro purgatory and began working him in. Brooks brought in assistant Ron Adams to help with defense. Keep Reading…