Friday Bolts – 2.6.15

Jason Concepcion of Grantland: “There have been key injuries, weird chemistry, an occasionally painful-to-watch carousel of isolation offense. No OKC player not named Russell or Kevin has made a consistent scoring impact, Andre Roberson is playing like a silent fart on a long road trip, and Reggie Jackson’s overall production is dwindling to famine levels. Kendrick Perkins outscored Jackson last night — six points to four, on one fewer attempt. These are troubling signs. But having the luxury of being able to dive face first into the fiery basketball megalomania of Russell Westbrook has a way of making a team’s problems disappear in a cannonade of finger guns.”

Adam Silver: “Ultimately we want to see your best teams in the playoffs. And there is an unbalance and a certain unfairness. There is a proposal (from one of the broadcasters)…  where the division winners would all automatically go into the playoffs and then you’d seed the next 10 best teams. I think that’s the kind of proposal we need to look at. There are travel issues of course, but in this day in age every team of course has their own plane, travels charter. I don’t think the discussion should end there. And as I’ve said, my first year I was studying a lot of these issues and year two is time to take action. It’s something I’m going to look at closely with the competition committee. I do think it’s an area where we need to make a change.”

Summarizing the season in pictures.

Oh good, Chris Palmer wrote about his “beef” with Kevin Durant: “In my opinion, Durant’s tweet, at its core, wasn’t about me or even Collison. I think it was frustration from a season spiraling beyond his control. The Thunder are in a tailspin, while he’s battled numerous injuries, and even when healthy, they haven’t been able to completely right the ship. The Thunder have to win 71 percent of their remaining games to reach 48 wins, which by no means guarantees them a playoff spot. Whether he simply got caught up in the moment or was just blowing off steam, tweeting insults at sportswriters is not what leaders do. You can hardly blame an athlete for his frustration. But you can hold him accountable for how he deals with it. Given the kind of person Durant is, I’m guessing it’s an aberration.”

Here’s what Palmer fails to mention in his article breaking down Twitter and what happened: He says a ton of stupid stuff, and when you consistently say stupid stuff, you get called on it.

Darnell Mayberry: “Russell Westbrook earned the bulk of the praise for the way he put together an eye-popping 45-point night that tied his career high. But the truth is the Thunder walked out of the Big Easy with a statement 11-point win only after effectively doing three things: using a total team effort to bounce out of a double-digit deficit in the third quarter, trusting each other offensively to mount that comeback when things looked bleak, and, of course, buckling down on defense and shutting out the Pelicans in the final five minutes. The Thunder did all those things on the road, without Kevin Durant, who missed his fourth game with a sprained toe, against a hot team it is staring directly up at in the Western Conference standings. Character wins can’t possibly be more complete.”

Presti disciple Rob Hennigan had to fire his coach yesterday.

Pretty sad you can play ESPN.com’s lotto game and potentially get the Thunder. I spun the thing like 200 times and never got them.