Thursday Bolts – 4.30.15

Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com: “Donovan is now coming off a subpar season at Florida, in possession of a roster that won’t be ranked next preseason, and suddenly on the verge of being presented with an opportunity to, in Oklahoma City, coach two of the world’s elite talents in Kevin Durant and Russ Westbrook. For those reasons and more, a move to Oklahoma City seems more likely than not, sources told CBSSports.com, provided, of course, that OKC and Donovan can agree on financial terms. He makes $4 million per year at Florida.”

Pete Thamel of SI: “The drawback would be the fates of Durant and Westbrook in free agency, as Durant has one season left on his deal and Westbrook has two. The Wizards loom as anxious suitors for Durant and the Lakers for Westbrook. But the worst-case scenario for Donovan would be getting fired after a few seasons and having his choice of whatever plum college job is open at the time. If he did fail in the NBA, he’d return to an elite program and immediately begin winning again.”

Marc Stein reports: “Sources say that Durant, with signs increasingly pointing to Donovan as the Thunder’s inevitable top choice from the moment Connecticut coach Kevin Ollie withdrew from consideration last week, has been sending optimistic signals about playing for Donovan — despite his lack of NBA experience — after doing his own research on the Florida coach.”

Jenni Carlson: “One of the gripes about Scott Brooks heard most often over the years was his coaching late in games. Plays weren’t well-designed. Players in the game weren’t the best options. You might want to brace yourself, Thunder Nation. One of the biggest knocks on the prohibitive favorite to replace Brooks is poor coaching late in games. Yep, Florida coach Billy Donovan might have lots going for him — he apparently has enough that multiple reports have the Thunder in serious contract negotiations with him — but he definitely isn’t a late-game master. Over the past five years, his Gators were 20-21 (.488) in games decided by five points or less. By comparison, the Thunder was 70-65 (.519) over the same time period.”

Ethan Strauss of ESPN.com on Westbrook’s MVP case: “In an era in which isolation play has given way to a collectivist attack, Westbrook’s ball dominance (hello, usage rate!) was a throwback. Ever since Tom Thibodeau’s defenses popularized flooding the strong side, hero ball has been compromised, meaning his battering-ram attack shouldn’t have worked against modern D’s. But it did. OKC posted a fourth-best 109.3 ORtg during this stretch, which began with a Westbrook triple-double in Phoenix (39/14/11; 49 percent usage rate) and ended with a March 20 triple-double against Atlanta (36/10/14; 38 percent). Through it all, Westbrook averaged an Oscar Robertson-esque 35.1 points, 10.6 assists and 10.4 rebounds per game. And, oh yeah, he literally broke his face.”