Peace, Love and Thunderstanding: Random Thoughts

(Be sure to read Royce at The Lost Ogle.)

It was a bipolar week featuring the Thunder’s best performance of the season, and followed immediately by their most embarrassing loss to date.  As a result, the article trying to make sense of this team that I had planned isn’t going to happen because I am having trouble figuring them out.  So, instead, enjoy a bunch of random thoughts I’ve had this past week that couldn’t merit an article on their own:

• Has anyone noticed the Suns are 8 – 1.  What happened to blowing that team up?  There goes the significance of the pick we’re owed from them being “unprotected.”

• During my senior year in high school, my school beat the Booker T. Washington Hornets who featured Etan “Derrick” Thomas, Ryan Humphrey (who was also an NBA first round pick), and B.J. Tiger (who started at QB for OSU briefly–before getting busted for selling pot) in the Tournament of Champions in Tulsa.  I was not on the team.

• Who wants to design a T-shirt fans can wear to the game that shames Nick Collison into growing the “Absolute Value Stache?”

• I love it when Russell Westbrook passes the ball…to our team.

• One of my favorite tweets of all time:

KevinDurant35: @jeff_green22 is the only person I kno that will text u and u sittin right next to him…wat a dweeb

• On the ESPN Rumor page, I read that J.J. Redick was talking about recording some rap songs.  Now I know that every NBA player thinks they can be a rapper.

• Way # 2,312 Minnesota Timberwolves GM David Kahn botched the Ricky Rubio saga:  He hired Kurt Rambis, a devotee of the triangle offense, to be the new coach while they were negotiating to get Rubio out of his DKV Joventut contract.  The triangle offense minimizes the necessity of having a play-making point guard, instead favoring players at other positions who are good passers.  Rubio would have been paying $5MM out of his own pocket (about what he’d make from his first four years in the NBA after taxes) to play in a system that would not showcase his talents and would have hurt his chances at getting a big second contract.

• If you look at the top of this article you can see who did the writing.  So, in the comments section, please do not address your anger to Royce.

• What happened to all those 6’7″ guys who were going to play point guard for the Thunder?  What’s that?  They’re still on the roster?  Just not playing?  Nevermind.

• D.J. White could be the next Brandon Bass.  And by that, I mean he could be an undersized power forward who gets no burn while playing in OKC only to become a rotation player for a team that is, technically, better.

• The easiest way for Kevin Ollie to not be portrayed as a dinosaur on the team would be for him to shave off his 1970’s inspired mustache.  (Not that I am advocating this.)

• I hear Kobe Bryant licks trash can liners in hopes of contracting “flu-like symptoms.”  He has been doing this ever since the 1997 Finals when Michael Jordan got all those accolades for playing with a stomach virus.

• There are way too many people buying tickets to the games and not showing up.  If you want to donate $60/seat to the Thunder, go for it, but I’ll use the tickets if you don’t want them.

• At the opener against Sacramento, one of the Thunder Girls called me, “Cutie.”  Just imagine what she would have called me if my two-year old hadn’t been blocking her view of my face.

• Speaking of my two-year, I think he enjoyed the Thunder experience.  Since that game, he’s had a lot of exchanges like this:

Day-care teacher:  (ClarkPupp), are you going to finish your chicken nuggets?
ClarkPupp:  No.  Hey, do you want to go to a Thunder game?

_______________________________

Mrs. Matthews:  Daddy is bringing home pizza for dinner.
ClarkPupp:  Yay!  Let’s eat pizza.  And then, let’s go to a Thunder game.

• In the off-season, do you think the Ford Center would let me hook my Wii up to the scoreboard?  You know, technically, I’m paying the taxes that funded that awesomeness.

• What’s the difference between this video and this video ?  The guys in the former video aren’t wearing replica jerseys.

• If you play the music in this video backwards, it says “Westbrook is dead.”

• Were Vegas to put a spread on the variance in attendance between the D-League 66ers and the WNBA TBD’s, I’m thinking it would be 66ers (-10,000).

• A lot of people say that the Thunder could use a shot blocking/rebounding presence like Dwight Howard on the team.  Uh, there are 28 other NBA teams whose fans say the same thing.  It’s like when Shaq was Shaq and everyone wanted a 7’2″ 400-lb goliath with once in a generation offensive skills.  Good luck finding that.  I’m sure spending $100MM for Erick Dampier to get similar, but far inferior, play is a much better idea than trying to go at the dominant players weaknesses.  What was I talking about?  Oh yeah, there are only so many dominant players to go around.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t be “dominant” players, they’d be ordinary players.  The Thunder have a dominant player in Kevin Durant, so rather than being sad we don’t have a dominant player like Dwight Howard, we need to be happy about that while management figures out a way to maximize K.D.’s value into wins.

• Considering that Buzz Lightyear insisted that he wasn’t a toy, why did he, nevertheless, stop moving/talking whenever humans were present?

• My favorite moment of the season was when Kevin Durant dunked on the Pistons and was fouled.  He posed while giving the crowd a “look at me, I’m tough” glance for about 0.6 seconds, remembered that he was in the same place that Ron Artest started a melee, then quickly looked down at the floor with a frightened look on his face.

• You know how men are terrified of asking a woman when she’s “due” for fear that it will turn out she’s just overweight?  Women, particularly old women, are the complete opposite.  They’ll know a woman is pregnant, know that she’s supposed to be big, and then make cutting remarks to make the expectant mother self conscious.  The next church choir lady who asks my wife, “are you sure there aren’t twins in there?” is going to hear me ask them, “What time do you have to be back at the nursing home?”

• I heard “Mo Money, Mo Problems” the other day and it immediately took me back to heading to Gallagher-Iba back in 1998.  That was awesome.  Of course, then I heard Diddy busting out with, “Ten years from now, we still be on top.”  That made me sad.  Because it’s ten years later and all he does is an MTV show.

• Nenad Krstic needs to take a page from his buddy Marcin Gortat  and just give up by going with the buzz cut.

• Eating at P.F. Chang’s a few weeks ago, I saw Byron Mullens waiting for a table as I was leaving.  His eyebrows are just as glorious in person.

• I am shocked (SHOCKED!) that Hasheem Thabeet had his jaw broken while being out of place on offense.  On the bright side, it was probably the first time all season he wasn’t called for a foul.

• See you next week.