Thursday Bolts – 9.8.16
Fred Katz of the Norman Transcript: “Last season’s Thunder chased the second-most offensive
rebound opportunities of any team (behind the Trail Blazers), per Nylon Calculus. And this year, with this roster, without a wing who can create, the Thunder need to find secondary ways to scavenge for buckets. Second-chance points will be one of the big ones. Relentlessly crashing the glass is inevitable, and there will be repercussions in transition. A team with strong halfcourt stoppers should keep the overall defense stingy, but no matter what, the Thunder coaching staff will be schooling the fine line between aggression and overzealousness on the offensive boards.”
Doc Rivers on Blake Griffin trade rumors: “We knew none of [the trade rumors were] true. We figured that was one of you guys starting these rumors here in Boston.” said Rivers. “It happens, unfortunately. Blake and [Chris Paul] are free agents [after this season]. Just like last year Oklahoma [City] had to deal with that, now it’s our turn.”
Jackie Mac on Shaq and the Magic: “Longtime commissioner David Stern kicked off the proceedings by taking the mic to declare, “The Orlando Magic is on the clock. You have five minutes to make your pick.” All Williams needed to do was call the Magic representative in Portland, who would relay the team’s selection to the commissioner. It should have been a matter of seconds. Yet a technical malfunction prevented the call from going through. One minute, then two, then three minutes went by. Engineers on site frantically tried to identify the problem, but the Magic had virtually no way to convey their Shaq selection to league officials in Portland.”
Jeremy Woo of SI.com: “I actually think this is going to get real pretty quickly, because we’re going to be completely oversaturated with awful Warriors takes for nine straight months and have no choice but to accept the state of things. Golden State is going to score a ton of points. The defense probably won’t be as good. After that bad Finals defeat and with a long season ahead, I don’t think this is a recipe for 73 wins again. They just need to pace themselves and get it right in June this time. Really, the hardest part of all of this is wrapping my head around what the Warriors are really going to look like, and I don’t feel like staring directly into the sun for another month.”
Zach Harper of CBSSports.com ranks OKC 29th on wide open 3s: “Durant and Ibaka are gone and guys like Ersan Ilyasova (50.9 percent on 108 attempts), Victor Oladipo (34.2 percent on 114 attempts) and Alex Abrines (coming over from Europe) are joining the Thunder. It probably won’t improve much but the Thunder just have to hope it doesn’t get worse.”