Tuesday Bolts – 7.12.16
Matt Moore of CBSSports.com: “It should be noted that Westbrook assisted on 255 of
Durant’s buckets last season, 37 percent of his total made field goals. The guy really is a playmaker, it’s just different from what Durant will have with Curry. Durant arrives in Golden State as one of the league’s best, ready to carry a team to an NBA title, just as he has been the past four years. But unlike many stars who land on super squads and have to make adjustments, Durant arrives ready to adapt his game to Curry’s because he’s already molded his game around another high-usage scoring machine.”
Erik Horne: “While Ilyasova isn’t the defender or rebounder he was at 22, he’s reuniting with an assistant he played his best defensive basketball for in Milwaukee. New Thunder assistant Adrian Griffin worked with Ilyasova in Milwaukee in 2009-10 when the Bucks posted the second-best defensive rating in the league. Ilyasova picked up the Orlando offense quickly too, hitting 40.9 percent (18-of-44) of his 3-point attempts. At 6-foot-10, Ilyasova is a career 37.0 percent 3-point shooter. With Durant gone, the Thunder’s starting lineup could be starving for perimeter shooting. Ilyasova could soften the blow.”
James Harden took a dig at KD’s Warriors.
Heather Koontz for Thunderous Intentions: “Maybe it’s our fault for turning you into the sort of community savior you were never intended to be. It’s entirely possible we held you to too high of a standard. You are only a few days older than me, and I can’t imagine the pressure of balancing all of that right now. You’re making important career decisions, and you’re only 27. Or, maybe you just didn’t spend enough time in Oklahoma to be drawn in forever, like the rest of us. I’m sure the Bay Area has its own local charm, but do they have Big Truck Tacos, Cheever’s, Cuppies & Joe, The Mule, Roxy’s, the Saucee Sicilian? I could go on forever.”
Zach Lowe of ESPN.com: “The Warriors will not be bad for basketball. They will be sublime to watch, and people will watch them in record numbers. Adversity will test them at some point, and though it’s likely they pass any such test, it will be fascinating to see how they problem solve. Sports media job-hoppers are the last people who should begrudge Durant choosing to work with new colleagues in a new city. But it’s OK to be sad Durant left, and worried he created an unbeatable juggernaut in doing so. He strengthened a 73-win team and gutted possibly the only long-term threat to its hegemony in the Western Conference. Rivalries and suspense make sports. The NBA has rarely felt so low on both.”
J.A. Adande of ESPN.com: “Every time there’s a dramatic free-agent shakeup, it reminds us there isn’t a parity scheme the players can’t subvert because of their willingness to take less money. It’s interesting when that is or isn’t considered noble. Notice how you rarely hear praise for stars taking less money to move to a new team, only when they take less than market value to help their current team bring in new players. Part of that is due to the NBA’s success in creating such a character-driven sport — “a superhero, comic-book world,” Durant called it at his Warriors news conference. So the analysis focused more on the reflections of Durant’s moral fiber for leaving Oklahoma City to join a superior rival than the actual logistics of how the new-look Warriors would function. As much as analytics have reshaped the methods of team construction and game strategies, storylines still sell the league to the public at large. A global sports and media business.”