Tuesday Bolts: 02.25.20

DT sat down with Danilo Gallinari. If you haven’t already, you can listen to Brandon’s interview with Gallo here.

Logan Meyer made his DT debut with a fun and sentimental look at how this year’s team compares to those of Thunder past. “Oklahoma City has been truly blessed with incredible basketball since its inception in 2008. We’ve been to the NBA Finals, four Western Conference Finals, had two MVPs, eleven straight years with a roster featuring an All Star, and had six Hall of Fame players suit up for the Thunder (Durant, Westbrook, Harden, George, Carmelo Anthony, and Paul.”

“With the present fun and full of promise, the future looks even brighter. SGA is poised to become the face of the franchise, an heir apparent superstar and icon to go along with a ludicrous number of draft assets acquired by Presti. OKC is set up beautifully to continue its successful NBA adventure.”

Not the biggest shock given some of Presti’s comments during his exit interview (below), but still… woah.

“We anticipate Billy being back. If anything would have changed on that, we would have let you know. For me personally, I always think that it’s important to give the coach of the team time to reflect and decompress. These jobs are really hard. Before you can get into, ‘What did we do well? What could we do better? What could we do differently? How do you see the team? What did you hear in exit interviews? What did I hear in exit interviews?’

“I think you gotta get away from it. Otherwise, you are just being drenched with the end result, which matters, but how you got to that point is equally important when you’re making assessments to inform the future. We’ll do that as we always do and we’ll inform our offseason planning from there.“

Speaking of Sam, how about Lu Dort?? That double on Aldridge, the steal, the save. woo boy… the guy’s everywhere.

Maddie Lee on the sometimes thankless nature of being an NBA scout.

Erik Horne (The Athletic) highlights Dort’s impact on OKC’s win against Aldridge and the Spurs.

So when will OKC sign Lu Dort to an NBA contract? Enter Hamm-man… yea that’s bad, sorry. Jon Hamm, everybody.

Zach Harper’s (The Athletic) released a fresh batch of power rankings slotting OKC 12th. “I love the three-point guard lineup the Oklahoma City Thunder have dominated with all season long. With this lineup, they legitimately have four guys who can attack any situation. Chris Paul is obviously using his mastery all over the floor, but any time Dennis Schroder, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Danilo Gallinari catch a pass, they’re ready to attack the closing defender. All of them can run pick-and-roll plays with Steven Adams, and this lineup doesn’t struggle defensively with the smaller guards defending. In 159 minutes, this lineup outscores opponents by 30.2 points per 100 possessions. That is an insane level of ass-kicking that nobody expected out of this lineup. It’s the biggest reason the Thunder are where they are this season.”

Steven Adams continues to flourish since the All-Star break averaging 20 points and 15.5 rebounds (5 offensive rebounds).

Happy game day… see y’all in the Primer.