Tuesday Bolts – 8.16.16

Erik Horne: “Antsy for a move? It’s getting late, you say? There’s still more than two months

before the Thunder tips off on Oct. 26 at Philadelphia. Harden was traded to Houston four days before the Thunder opened the 2012-13 season, so there’s precedent for the team waiting until much closer to the season to make a deal. There was special circumstance to the Harden deal. The Thunder had until 11 p.m. on Oct. 31, 2012, to re-sign Harden or else he would hit restricted free agency in the summer of 2013. The Thunder faces similar circumstances with Victor Oladipo, Steven Adams and Andre Roberson — each of which will become a restricted free agent in 2017 if they are not signed to extensions by Oct. 31 — but Oladipo and Adams, at the least, are expected to be core players who will be re-signed.”

Marc Stein of ESPN.com: “I came here to the land of sand, futebol and rhythm, on my maiden voyage to South America, expecting very little. But fear not. You aren’t about to be subjected to yet another foreigner’s rant about the accommodations, logistics, traffic, insects, crime or any of the other things jittery Americans such as myself railed about for months in advance of these Olympic Games and with inevitably greater volume since they started. I’m talking about the basketball. If I may borrow from Dick Vitale’s dictionary: Rio was supposed to be Blowout City.”

Vegas has Westbrook as the favorite for MVP.

Ananth Pandian of CBSSports.com: “If Westbrook actually wins the the award, it would mean that the Thunder were one of the top two or three teams in the Western Conference and among the best in the entire league. That could be quite tall task for Oklahoma City as the Warriors, Cavaliers, Spurs and Clippers are expected to be near the top of the standings. That said, the Thunder believe in Westbrook and so does Vegas, and at least based on these odds, it is his award to lose.”

KD is making friends in Rio like DeAndre Jordan: “If I were to get married today, he’d be in my wedding. That’s how it is. That’s my brother.”

Abrines played a little yesterday.

Sabonis didn’t play very well.

Neil Paine of 538: “My colleague Jim Pagels came to that conclusion in 2014 when comparing Team USA members’ per-minute production with what would be predicted by Basketball-Reference’s Simple Projection System, finding that players produced better NBA Player Efficiency Ratings and Win Shares per 48 minutes than expected after donning the Stars and Stripes. My own research backs this up; U.S. players tend to exceed their projected Box Plus/Minus (BPM) by about 0.4 points per 100 possessions the year after playing a major tournament1 for the United States, and they beat projections by nearly 0.7 points/100 possessions after playing in the Olympics specifically.”