Thanksgiving Bolts: Center Stage

The Thunder are making their way to center stage. They followed up a thrilling overtime win against the Warriors--featuring clutch, star-level play from Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander--with easy victories over the Blazers and Bulls bringing their record to 11-4.

In addition to climbing the standings, Oklahoma City is rising in all the meaningless-but-exciting power rankings, be it team-wide, the MVP ladder, or the Rookie of the Year race:

The Thunder fan base has reached an consensus mood early in the season: thankful. I've been looking for an on-court moment I could shoehorn into a corny Thanksgiving post, and I got it in the second quarter of the Bulls game.

SGA was once again having little issue scoring opposite the other team's best perimeter stopper, drawing a double-team 12-points into his 40-piece against Alex Caruso and Chicago's helpless defenders. I'm guessing that when he kicked out the pass, Shai–after all the consternation about whether he could really tolerate a dramatic roster teardown, with more handwringing and gutchecking from vultures rivals and OKC fans alike as he got better and better at decoding the league and making himself into an MVP-level force–felt something different than he had in recent years of kickouts to okayish shooting options like Dort, or Poku, or Bazley, or JRE.

He instead found the NBA's second-most lethal three-point shooter, Isaiah Joe, ready to bury another possession.

Ivan White (FanSided) on the recent Poku sighting, and whether there's any hope for the folk hero to earn his way back into the rotation: "While he has not had much opportunity to play this season, his performance in Portland on Sunday helped his case. Pokusevski played the final 8:43 and shined. Pokusevski filled the stat sheet in his limited minutes with five points, three rebounds and four assists. All of his assists set up 3-pointers in the Thunder’s 43-point win."

I'll add my name to the list of media members too out of touch with the youths to provide any commentary on recent social media happenings involving Thunder twentysomethings. But my generation survived doodoo jump, and will hang on for Thunder 2.0.

Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you for your support of Daily Thunder.