Friday Bolts – 8.23.13

Slate with a positive review of The Lockout Musical: “Other standouts include “Win in Wichita,” an advanced analytics manifesto complete with lyrics that seem straight from a GM’s email: “A player’s value is easy to find/ divide salary by wins generated/ stats times coefficients adjusted for minutes/ in proportion to the team wins created.” “Sources,” is a passionate tune sung by LeBron himself about his infamous free agency saga. The finale, meanwhile, “I Am Basketball,” is sung by a rapping David Stern, and nicely encapsulates some of the most iconic NBA moments of last few decades.”

Rob Mahoney of SI.com: “While the Thunder deserve preference as the West favorite, I hesitate to embroider their logo on a “WESTERN CONFERENCE CHAMPIONS” T-shirt just yet. Losing Martin will hurt. It takes a very particular player to oscillate between acting as an ideal complement to two high-usage superstars and working as a primary creator when asked, but Martin filled that role beautifully for OKC and played a part in most of the team’s top lineups. With him gone, I’m not sure that I’m quite ready to trust Jeremy Lamb and Reggie Jackson to the degree to which coach Scott Brooks will now be required.”

Danny Green says KD is the toughest cover in the league.

The Lost Ogle on what the Oklahoma Gazette got wrong.

Darnell Mayberry looks at players that got away: “Who would you rather have now, Mullens or Roddy Beaubois? Come on now, be honest. Most would probably say Mullens. He’s a big man and he has a knack for scoring, even if 37 percent of his shot attempts came from behind the 3-point line last season. Still, the Thunder was all but crucified for drafting Mullens ahead of Beaubois in the 2009 draft. And those critics — the smart ones, anyway — have gone silent about that draft-night decision. That’s because Mullens, when given the opportunity in Charlotte, showed he had some game. He averaged a shade under 10 points and 5.6 rebounds in his two seasons with the Bobcats, who acquired him in a trade with the Thunder just before the start of the 2011-12 season. But in Oklahoma City, Mullens appeared in just 26 games. Twenty-six! He averaged 5.3 largely meaningless minutes in those contests and never got a chance to show what he could do.”

Cool infographic on the NBA and hip-hop.

Some info on the new Tyler Media sports talk radio station. Side note to that with more details to come later: I joined the Sports Animal.