2019-20 OKC Thunder Regular Season Thread

[ThunderBolt]

Zach Lowe has Cp3 in & Russ out.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28483078/lowe-nba-all-stars-24-players-plus-biggest-debates

I agree also, I may sound like a homer but despite Westbrook sometimes being the guy on the Rockets, especially when Harden isn't great like Lowe mentioned, I think the fact they usually lose during this says a lot.

I also don't think Harden should be a starter for the All-Star team, but that just may be recency bias on my part.

Welcome to the boards. Russ has I been pretty good the last few games. We’ll see if it lasts.

[Pillendreher]

Read on Twitter

Serious question: Does nonsense like this happen in the other major sports leagues in the US as well? This obsession with social media and making a spectacle out of everything is repugnant. The fool has two guys filiming him with the sole purpose of him uploading a video of his "spontaneous" reaction. Ridiculous.

[ThunderBolt]

Trae Young has always struck me as a bit of a brat going back to his days in college.

[slick_watts]

diallo's tendencies on fast breaks really bug me. i have been collecting some clips from games i watched. there could be more. he is bizarrely stubborn.

Watch on YouTube

[ThunderBolt]

diallo's tendencies on fast breaks really bug me. i have been collecting some clips from games i watched. there could be more. he is bizarrely stubborn.

Watch on YouTube

I believe it was the Toronto game that he rushed the ball up court while surrounded by 3-4 Raptors and got picked clean from behind. I think it was Old Man Game that said it looks like he releases his shot on the way down from his jump. If he needs to be used as filler in a deal, I'm more than willing.

[Old Man Game]

Yeah something about diallo rubs me the wrong way. I love the energy he brings and the athleticism obviously. But I think he needs to get over himself to an extent. Sort of has the attitude of a marquee player when he clearly is not.

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[Old Man Game]

diallo's tendencies on fast breaks really bug me. i have been collecting some clips from games i watched. there could be more. he is bizarrely stubborn.

Watch on YouTube

That one against the Spurs is an all timer. 1 on 3 straight into the teeth of the defense.

Diallo is probably in the top 3-5% in the entire NBA in athletic ability and bottom 10-20% is almost any other category that one could look at.

[Pillendreher]

diallo's tendencies on fast breaks really bug me. i have been collecting some clips from games i watched. there could be more. he is bizarrely stubborn.

Watch on YouTube

The most relevant takeaway from this to me is: They didn't retire Melo's jersey and gave the rookie his number? That's a disgrace.

[ThunderBolt]

Diallo is a poor man's Derrick Jones Jr.

[slick_watts]

update. bpm 2.0.

[Thunder Up]

Trae is booty

[Kizz Fastfists]

[Serious question: Does nonsense like this happen in the other major sports leagues in the US as well? This obsession with social media and making a spectacle out of everything is repugnant. The fool has two guys filiming him with the sole purpose of him uploading a video of his "spontaneous" reaction. Ridiculous.

Some of the NFL kids do it. MLB doesn't have the problem because the minors beat that crap out of the kids so they are generally more mature when they get to the majors. I have no clue about the NHL.

[ThunderBolt]

[Serious question: Does nonsense like this happen in the other major sports leagues in the US as well? This obsession with social media and making a spectacle out of everything is repugnant. The fool has two guys filiming him with the sole purpose of him uploading a video of his "spontaneous" reaction. Ridiculous.

Some of the NFL kids do it. MLB doesn't have the problem because the minors beat that crap out of the kids so they are generally more mature when they get to the majors. I have no clue about the NHL.

Even in the nfl, I would say WR’s take the lead. Most successful QB aren’t infatuated with themselves on social media like Antonio Brown.

[slick_watts]

i think it's dumb but not necessarily a problem. these players are in their early 20's lol.

[spearsy23]

i think it's dumb but not necessarily a problem. these players are in their early 20's lol.

Also, like, why do we care? Guys don't have to obsessively be in the gym every waking minute. And if they wanna IG their workouts, it's not like I have to watch.

[ThunderBolt]

Yesterday was the two year anniversary since Dre’s injury.

[Dadouv47]

Yesterday was the two year anniversary since Dre’s injury.

It's so underrated how this injury changed a lot of our recent history...

Roberson was able to compensate Melo's trash defense. Don't think we would have won the title because Durant was in Gs but...we were really good before his injury

[psychpsych]

Serious question: Does nonsense like this happen in the other major sports leagues in the US as well? This obsession with social media and making a spectacle out of everything is repugnant. The fool has two guys filiming him with the sole purpose of him uploading a video of his "spontaneous" reaction. Ridiculous.

As the other person mentioned, it depends on the person for American Football players (see the Cleveland Browns last year with Baker, but generally they are complete nutjobs like Antonio Brown or former players using it as a job like Pat McAfee) and are often crapped on if they don't perform like the browns and even some Ravens, MLB has new players go through the meat grinder that is the minors where they learn the unwritten rules of Baseball and the NHL generally does not have this sort of thing given that the makeup of the players is far more European than North American and they bring the different sporting culture that European sports have outside of the top leagues of Football. See Doncic's and Antetokounmpo's twitter for this even in the NBA.

The only other American sport that markets players social media activities as heavily is probably the UFC, which has been criticized for it also. Interestingly, the CFL actually wants players to be like this given how they split screen and mic up fan favorites despite most of them just wanting to play Canadian Football. But, I do think that this is intentionally marketed, given how heavily social media users pay attention to player movement rather than actual regular season games and this may be to blame for some of the ratings issue, but there's obviously other factors for that.

Anyway, the Mavs game was obviously disappointing given how hot the team was but due to Kobe's death I didn't really care. Even if the refs were letting the Mavs getting away with murder. Our schedule is soft anyway so if Presti keeps/adds to this core they should be fine.

[jambalaya]

Recently on twitter:

@AndrewKSchlecht
Without Chris Paul this was always going to be a tough one to get.
The Thunder have 12 positive net rating 5 man lineups that have played at least 25 minutes
Chris Paul is in 8 of those.
He is crucial to the success of this team



My replies:

As of today on B-Ref SGA is in 5 of the 10 positive in the top 20 (over 24 minutes & change) and is in 10 of 10 of the non-positive. https://basketball-reference.com/teams/OKC/2020/lineups/ Crucial or no?
2019-20 Oklahoma City Thunder Team Lineups | Basketball-Reference.com
Team Season Lineups
basketball-reference.com

Paul also in 6 of 10 of the non-positive. They are lots of places, good and not. But there is some difference between them.

Schroder in 10 of 10 positive, 4 of 10 of the non-positive. Best of the 3. Crucial?

Ferguson 3 pos / 5 neg, Bazley 1 pos / 4 neg, Diallo 4/ 2. Gallinari 6 / 6. Noel 3 / 4. Adams 4 /4.

Nader 0 /3. Muscala 3/2. Minutes of lineups vary and are important of course.

Paul & SGA 3-6. Paul & Schroder 7-0. Schroder & SGA 7-4. All 3 4-0. Just one of them, not tried over 25 minutes.

So all of Schroder's and all of Paul's non-positives are with SGA.

So if / when Thunder move on from Paul and Schroder and rely on SGA without them...

Could say: SGA will improve and he may, but by this method he was in fewer positive 20 most used lineups and way more non-positive ones compared to last season with Clippers. I'd call that slippage.

Paul without Schroder 1-6.

"saddled" with SGA in those. But Paul crucial? Not without Schroder.

[slick_watts]

i'm not moved much by lu dort's shooting outburst, but he has been showing some interesting chops on defense. for someone as thicc as he is, he certainly moves his feet well. against the kings he was moving them too well a few times defending fox, giving up too much ground because he was just moving his feet too quickly. fox would just decelerate and make an easy six footer. after a few plays of this dort got his body on fox off the screen and he couldn't go anywhere. he's drawn 13 offensive fouls in 291 minutes-- a rate almost 3x greater than flopper extraordinaire marcus smart.

he's an interesting player. it might say more about the quality of our young guys that dort is so interesting than it does about dort himself but getting even a rotation guy as udfa would be a nice find.