Wednesday Bolts – 9.21.11

Over/unders for the Northwest Division at ESPN.com: “Zach Harper: Push. The Thunder had a great run last playoffs and put away two up-and-coming teams on their way to the Western Conference finals. They also seemed to realize they had a fantastic playmaker on the wing in Harden. But coach Scott Brooks still comes up with end-of-game offensive schemes that seem overmatched. No shame in pushing on this one.”

Someone called out KD on Twitter for wearing a Bulls hat. Durant’s response: “Dont i wear a thunder jersey 82 games a yr”Ken Berger of CBSSports.com on labor negotiations: “If the owners have moved off their initial demand for the players to take a 33 percent pay cut — down from 57 percent of BRI to 35-40 percent — and if they, as sources indicate, are willing to move off their proposal of a multi-year salary freeze, then what happens next? Presumably, the players will have to be willing to discuss what specific system changes they’d accept and which ones they wouldn’t. My guess is, that conversation doesn’t begin until the owners divulge at least some details of their plans to aggressively share more revenues among themselves. So it’s all separate, and yet it’s all tied together — whether in a neat package or tangled mess remains to be seen.”

Worlds colliding! My favorite movie blog wrote about KD’s new movie: “I pulled up IMDb to find more information on this film, and since the aforementioned Ellen Barkin film from 1991, there have been 19 movies made with the name Switch. And that’s not including last year’s The Switch, starring Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston. So this film couldn’t be any more unoriginal and contrived if it starred Nick Cannon and Bow Wow. But give it time. Switch still hasn’t been cast yet, but it already has a home run hitting director in John Whitesell, who has given us such classics as Malibu’s Most Wanted, Big Momma’s House 2, and Deck the Halls. This is going to make LeBron’s “Decision” look like Sophie’s Choice.”

Eric Maynor comes in at No. 157 in ESPN’s NBA Rank.

I’m going to have to question Darnell Mayberry’s movie tastes after this sentence in his story about the writers and director for KD’s new movie: “The three-man lineup looks to be a dream team of sorts for what is shaping up to be a family-friendly film.”

Tom Haberstroh of ESPN.com is back on the wagon for trading Steve Nash to OKC: “Let’s start with the Oklahoma City Thunder. During this past season, one executive who spoke to Insider pointed to Kevin Durant’s squad as the team that makes the most sense for Nash. And that’s with Russell Westbrook in the fold. Such a move would mean sliding Westbrook to the 2, which might seem risky at first, but consider that Westbrook already shoots the ball just as often as Dwyane Wade and Joe Johnson. If the Thunder and Suns were to engage in talks, youngsters Serge Ibaka and James Harden would probably be hot names in the conversation, but expect Oklahoma City to be leery of unloading a talented player under a rookie contract. Although, with Westbrook nearing a payday, they might not be able to lock down Ibaka or Harden to a big extension.”

Ziller explores team play: “Harden and back-up point guard Eric Maynor are the only two other Thunderers who create and use a combined 15 shots or more per 36 minutes; overall, this is a fairly unbalanced team, with two high-usage players and a number of roleplayers. Harden, interestingly enough, is a bit of a creator: he creates 1.3 shots for every one used, a mark slightly above the positional average of 1.2. You do wonder how Harden’s bench role – and the resultant fewer minutes on the court with Westbrook – affects that. If he replaced low-usage Thabo Sefolosha as the starting two-guard, would his created shot rate go down, or would he cut into Westbrook?”

Ian Levy of Hickory High on the black hole of creativity: “In looking at these numbers we can also see a more complete image of the balance with with each point guard creates offense. The elder statesman of the new point guard crop, Deron Williams and Chris Paul, each carry an Individual Creation Percentage right around 50%. Derrick Rose and Russell Westbrook are twice as likely to create a shot for themselves as for a teammate. Rajon Rondo is at the other end of the spectrum, twice as a likely to create a shot for a teammate as to create a shot for himself.”

SB Nation’s top 99 in 2015 has Westbrook at 13: “I’m not a Russell Westbrook fan, only because I love Kevin Durant. But Westbrook’s gifts are undeniable. Athletically, he’s one of the two or three most imposing guards in the NBA, and in 2015 he’ll be hitting his peak. Whether it all happens in Oklahoma City is another question, but if he can turn the corner and learn how to pick his spots better and take over at the right times, he and Durant could be the most dominant scoring duo of this generation, and he’ll be a perennial All-Star in the Western Conference. If not, and Westbrook gets traded, he’s still got enough talent to make his mark on his own. Ziller knows better than anyone that Westbrook’s stats are eerily similar to those of Derrick Rose, and in the right situation, he could be the anchor on a playoff team, and one of the leading scorers in the NBA.”