Tuesday Bolts – 11.5.14
Kevin Pelton of ESPN Insider on OKC’s unprecedented injury situation: “Since it’s so difficult to find similar cases, it’s tough to draw any conclusions about how Oklahoma City will play without Durant and Westbrook. Surprisingly, the Thunder have won both games they’ve played without their two stars, having pulled out at a win at Boston last season. Over the tiny sample of the last two games, Oklahoma City has offset the expected offensive decline with stout defense, allowing less than one point per possession. That offers some hope the Thunder might be better without Durant and Westbrook than feared, especially once Reggie Jackson returns to the lineup. At worst, the notion that Oklahoma City should consider tanking the season — whatever that might entail — is woefully premature. My SCHOENE projection system pegs the Thunder as a 25-win team without their stars, probably a worst-case scenario. If we assume Oklahoma City plays at a 60-win clip when Durant and Westbrook return (about where the Thunder have been the last two seasons), that would translate to 52 wins if the stars are back on an optimistic four-week timetable. That would have put Oklahoma City sixth in the West a year ago.”
Danny Chau of Grantland on Perry Jones: “In his two years at Baylor, and during his first two seasons with the Thunder, Jones was docile and regularly out of sorts. He was a top-10 recruit heading into college, and as far as talent went, was a top-five NBA prospect. But teams weren’t convinced Jones had the desire or personality to be great, and his inconsistent play didn’t inspire any confidence, either. A medical red flag on his knees just before the 2012 NBA draft made the decision much easier for front offices — he plummeted to the 28th overall pick. In interviews, he’d say all the right things about his lack of assertiveness on the floor, but any changes he’d promise seldom materialized. These days, it’s more or less the same — he’s exceedingly polite, and still very much a mouthpiece for team rhetoric, emphasizing the team’s family dynamic on numerous occasions. But when he has produced as well as he has, it’s a lot harder to be cynical about it. Standing in the media scrum last Thursday night, I wondered if Perry himself realized the impact of what he’d done.”
Marc Stein has OKC 19th in power rankings: “Didn’t even have the chance to share how I’ve never really been curious to see what the Thunder would look like with Russ piloting them solo before he stunningly joined KD on the sideline too. OKC’s only solace: Just six of its 15 games this month come against .500+ teams from last season.”
KD in a photo booth at a wedding? KD in a photo booth at a wedding.
Billy Haisley of Deadspin teed off on Kevin Durant: “When you’re an incredibly rich and incredibly famous basketball star, though, monuments to one’s self-importance aren’t called narcissistic flotsam; they’re called branding opportunities. When a brand films itself staring at its own face in the mirror for an hour, pretending that this is a private look into the brand while it’s off-duty even though the brand and its associates produced said film, the brand is able to sell the resulting footage to the adoring public, so that the next time the public sees this brand existing as a brand, they will think they have a more intimate relationship with the brand, burnishing the brand as brand. It’s the same fake intimacy of all celebrity reality shows, and it’s the same thing that makes Kevin Durant such a detestable phony.”
Last night’s Nets-Thunder game had some HYPE.
A review from Variety on KD’s HBO doc: “All told, it’s clearly a grueling schedule, if hard to muster much in the way of sympathy. And while that’s not the goal, necessarily, about all one can glean from the hour is the realization — if it wasn’t obvious already — that when you’re young, rich and trying to maximize a career with a built-in expiration date, playing basketball is just the tip of the iceberg. In that sense, this real-life special simply feels like an adjunct to “Survivor’s Remorse,” the Starz comedy produced by LeBron James, which also offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse at an NBA star’s life, albeit in fictionalized form. At 6’10” with virtually unlimited shooting range, Durant is a player with a near-unique set of skills. Yet as much fun as he is to watch on the court, there’s nothing really unique about “The Offseason,” which at a cursory glance could easily be confused with his commercials, except in this context, it’s the viewers who are paying for the time.”
I did a podcast yesterday talking about, well, you know what I was talking about.
Anthony Slater on last night’s game: “Wasn’t Reggie Jackson’s best night. He overdribbled at times, didn’t play great defense (nobody did) and seemed a bit disengaged from the rest of the offense. But it was his first game back. And despite his flaws and some obvious rust, Jackson’s unique ability to get to and finish at the rim is desperately needed right now. He had seven turnovers and shot a somewhat inefficient 8-of-20. But he led the team with 23 points, finishing a variety of acrobatic lay-ins (like the finger roll below). Moving forward, he needs to be much better. But at least he’s back and looking relatively healthy. For this Thunder team, that’s half the battle right now.”
