Wednesday Bolts – 9.26.12
Henry Abbott of TrueHoop with an interesting thought: “A thought about running sports leagues, inspired by the NFL and the rage it is inspiring today. Yes, big business often demands tough decisions, and drawing hard lines. But it’s a great thing to treat people well, and chief among the people who ought to be treated well are the fans who are the lifeblood of the sport, the players who star in the sport, and the referees who keep it all working on the field. Sending out inferior referees, in a money making business … just seems indecent.”
The OKC Zoo has a newborn red panda and they named it “KayDee”: “She was born the night the Thunder won the Western Conference Championship so as a team we thought it was an appropriate name to have something Thunder related and KayDee just seemed to work,” said Chrislyn Newton, the zookeeper who works closest with the Red Pandas.”
New DT-Shirts are coming Oct. 20. Check out the first six designs.
Evidently there was a fake story yesterday that Kevin Durant had died. People are the worst.
Sam Presti has his preseason media availability today so get excited about some non-comments about James Harden.
Jonathan Tjarks of Real GM on Harden: Culture, more than even money, may have made the biggest difference in their decision-making processes. Johnson made the quintessentially American call: at the age of 24, he was eager to test the limits of his own game and prove that he could stand on his own. Ginobili, meanwhile, never left the proverbial nest, comfortable sharing the load with his friends, passing up individual accomplishments to pursue a greater communal goal. From the outside, there’s no way to say who made the right or the wrong decision, not on a choice that personal. As Harden will soon find out, there are trade-offs to every decision we make in life.”
Former Thunderer D.J. White has signed to play this season in China.
Tom Ziller of SB Nation on David Stern: “And that’s the difference between Goodell, Bettman and Stern, I think. Stern acts like he doesn’t care and comes off as an incredibly cold assassin during negotiations. He’s an excellent poker player — he had writers from coast to coast raging against him a year ago. Ultimately, he cut a deal and got back to the important work of administering the world’s best basketball league. Goodell and Bettman are seriously just incredibly cold assassins who either gladly do the bidding of their bosses or have little say in the matter. As an NBA fan, watching what loyal NHL fans and committed NFL fans are going through, in addition to the safety issues facing NFL players — it makes me glad that the NBA has Stern.”
