The Side Part: Week 10 – Resolutions and Westbrook

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I generally avoid making New Year’s resolutions. I have a week constitution and I tend to see goals as inevitable future failures that will get in the way of my television consumption. When I do make them, they’re small and allow for quite a bit of leeway. Do more pushups sometimes. Maybe wash my jeans more often if I get the chance. Don’t eat fast food as much unless it’s the easiest and quickest option.

But as the New Year is upon us and people begin to write up and subsequently break their New Year’s resolutions, I’ve compiled a list of a few Thunder and Thunder-related things I’d like to see the team — and myself — choose to do in 2014.

Kevin Durant resolves to start celebrating like this more often.

Russell Westbrook resolves to sing like no one is watching or listening.

Serge Ibaka resolves to start going with a more minimalistic approach when it comes to wrist jewelry.

Ibaka and Keri Hilson agree to help all of the Thunder couples with their Halloween costumes this year.

I will build a shrine to Russell Westbrook’s meniscus and pray for it thrice daily. It will look kind of like this.

The Thunder’s game ops staff decides to play more Vince Gill during the games. Mainly, if something bad happens, they need to play “The Reason Why”. Amy Grant must have been pissed at him.

Begin work on my buddy action comedy starring Brian Davis and Grant Long as an announcing duo that discovers someone is trying to rob the Thunder. The entire security staff and front office are being held hostage. They must work together to save the Thunder, and themselves. Obviously there will be a huge amount of player appearances and I’m seeing what I can do to potentially get some kind of John Holcombe cameo in there. He might be OKCPD’s resident techie who helps direct them on where to go/provides them with intel from the outside. I really just want Davis, right before he kills one of the robbers, to look at Long and say, “View discretion is advised.” Al Eschbach will play the main villain.

The Thunder organization resolves to start a program called Screen Your Fears, a self help program headed up by Nick Collison where he doles advice on how to best overcome your fears. He’ll wear a Dickies jumpsuit to go along with what will be his ultimate message: “Embrace the work”.

I will finally pull the trigger on my Thunder T-shirt ideas and get some of them made, even if it’s only for personal use:

• This face with the caption “You are getting very sleepy”.

• On the front: This. On the back in block lettering: No more questions for you, bro.

• The front of the shirt will have this picture on it with the caption below reading “Step outside your comfort zone.”

• On the front of the shirt we see a cartoon: Russell Westbrook is in front of three mirrors. He’s trying on clothes. There is a woman in a black dress to his left. She’s holding several shirts, each of them extremely bright. He is wearing a neon green button up shirt. On the shirt there are pictures of purple catfish varying in sizes. His pants are orange and on the right pant leg around the thigh there is a golden circle with the word “Transgressions” on the inside. Westbrook is talking to the woman. Talk bubble above his head reads: Do you have anything a little more adventurous?

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Watching games without Russell Westbrook is strange if only because whatever the outcome of the game may be, it feels incomplete. There’s less juice to the proceedings now, a fury brought forth by him that tends to shake the wood he runs on when he’s healthy. There are players with more power and more grace to their game, yes, but there are none with more candor.

Durant is most always the guy that slams the door shut. But Russ was the guy in the doorway right beforehand pushing everyone back, swinging on them if he had to, getting the doorway clear. He made sure Durant didn’t tire himself out. He was there to shoulder the load. Russ carries himself with the self assurance of a man who talked to God five minutes ago and God told him he wouldn’t die, not ever. A team will miss that kind of confidence. Westbrook is an open wound on the floor, feeling and reacting to everything, hiding nothing. What he feels is what you see. He is the basketball equivalent Joaquin Phoenix in that jail scene in The Master. He’s just trying to destroy everything.

If you want to read something good on Westbrook’s injury, what it means, and what he means, go read this by Bethlehem Shoals. Royce tweeted it out when it posted so most of you have already read it I’d imagine. On the off chance you haven’t, check it out. It’s the best.