Moderators: Dadouv47, retrobro90
NaturalThunder wrote:dakomish23 wrote:
And yet we're not even 10 games above .500 because we've lost to pretty much every non-playoff team in the NBA, some of them more than once.
Jimmit79 wrote:Yea RJ played well he was definitely the x factor
Jimmit79 wrote:Yea RJ played well he was definitely the x factor
dakomish23 wrote:NaturalThunder wrote:dakomish23 wrote:
And yet we're not even 10 games above .500 because we've lost to pretty much every non-playoff team in the NBA, some of them more than once.
SAC
DAL 2x
ORL
BKN
CHA
NYK
PHX
LAL
Take care of business at least 2/3 of the time against the bottom 10 and they’d be tied for the 4th best record in the league.
Coxy wrote:I think with a PG like George Hill, they'd be better than current.
bisme37 wrote:If there were magnets in basketballs so strong they changed the path of the ball as it flew through the air, wouldn't the ball then stick magnetically to the rim when it got there?
MyUniBroDavis wrote: he was like YALL PEOPLE WHO DOUBT ME WILL SEE YALLS STATS ARE WRONG I HAVE THE BIG BRAIN PLAYS MUCHO NASTY BIG BRAIN BIG CHUNGUS BRAIN YOU BOYS ON UR BBALL REFERENCE NO UNDERSTANDO
bondom34 wrote:WCF went out with Dre. And they're barely the 5 seed. Likely tied for 6/7 after tomorrow.
Dadouv47 wrote:bondom34 wrote:WCF went out with Dre. And they're barely the 5 seed. Likely tied for 6/7 after tomorrow.
Still think we have a shot if we play against the Rockets in the second round (mainly because of Harden & CP3 chocking in the playoffs). But yeah if they play well it's over. II would be happy to win one game against Gs if we reach the WCF.
Dadouv47 wrote:Dadouv47 wrote:bondom34 wrote:WCF went out with Dre. And they're barely the 5 seed. Likely tied for 6/7 after tomorrow.
Still think we have a shot if we play against the Rockets in the second round (mainly because of Harden & CP3 chocking in the playoffs). But yeah if they play well it's over. II would be happy to win one game against Gs if we reach the WCF.
But yeah, Dre was a fundamental piece against both the rockets and Warriors so it sucks
MyUniBroDavis wrote: he was like YALL PEOPLE WHO DOUBT ME WILL SEE YALLS STATS ARE WRONG I HAVE THE BIG BRAIN PLAYS MUCHO NASTY BIG BRAIN BIG CHUNGUS BRAIN YOU BOYS ON UR BBALL REFERENCE NO UNDERSTANDO
NaturalThunder wrote:dakomish23 wrote:NaturalThunder wrote:And yet we're not even 10 games above .500 because we've lost to pretty much every non-playoff team in the NBA, some of them more than once.
SAC
DAL 2x
ORL
BKN
CHA
NYK
PHX
LAL
Take care of business at least 2/3 of the time against the bottom 10 and they’d be tied for the 4th best record in the league.
So I went ahead and did this for every non-playoff team:
Hawks: 1-0
Magic: 0-1
Nets: 1-1
Bulls: 2-0
Knicks: 1-1
Hornets: 1-1
Pistons: 1-1
Suns: 0-1
Mavericks: 1-2
Kings: 2-1
Grizzlies: 3-0
Lakers: 2-2
Jazz: 3-1
Clippers: 2-0
We're 20-12 against non-playoff teams which isn't bad, but elite or near-elite teams would be something like 24-8 or 25-7 against non-playoff teams. And, if you remove the Jazz and Clippers to limit it to teams below .500, our record is 15-11. Instead of being something like 20-6 or 21-5 against sub-.500 teams, we're bleeping 15-11!!! That's unacceptable and grounds for firing for Billy Donovan.
And, off the top of my head, we have a win over the Hawks that was a near-loss; a buzzer-beater win over the hapless Kings, and a narrow one-point come-from-behind win over the Nets. We're actually semi-fortunate our 15-11 record against sub-.500 teams isn't 12-14 instead of 15-11.
Jimmit79 wrote:Yea RJ played well he was definitely the x factor
bondom34 wrote:Teams like Boston and San Antonio and Houston and Toronto were all making moves with theirs too. What awful general managers they have.
CROklahoma wrote:Its not players fault they arent put in the situation where their strenghts would be shown.
Our bench offense is based on a give Felton the ball and let him shoot the **** out of it.
Getting Abrines in the game and thinking he'll be the next reincarnation of Dre is not gonna work.
And I'm thinking its actually all a disguise by our coaching staff till the playoffs, they cannot really be that stupid by ruining and destroying any potential our solid bench players like Abrines, Patterson have ...
CROklahoma wrote:And I'm thinking its actually all a disguise by our coaching staff till the playoffs
InTheSabonus wrote:We don't know the ins and outs of how we treated that trade period, and we know that nobody except the cavs gave up a first round pick.
But I just hope, probably unwisely so, that we didn't value Ferguson so highly that we refused to trade him in a move that would help us keep PG.
Pillendreher wrote:CROklahoma wrote:And I'm thinking its actually all a disguise by our coaching staff till the playoffs
No, it is not. When you're this stupid three seasons in a row, you're not disguising anything. Donovan's ineptitude is in fact quite obvious.
bisme37 wrote:If there were magnets in basketballs so strong they changed the path of the ball as it flew through the air, wouldn't the ball then stick magnetically to the rim when it got there?
Pillendreher wrote:bondom34 wrote:Teams like Boston and San Antonio and Houston and Toronto were all making moves with theirs too. What awful general managers they have.
Boston and San Antonio are not going anywhere this season. That is very obvious. Both of them don't have their best player for the rest of the season. Of course they are not hell bent on making a move.
Toronto and Houston both have a +8 NetRtG. That's good for 60 win seasons. Both teams are close to 10 deep. What moves were they supposed to make?
Meanwhile, we lost our best defender and are now trying to replace him with Huestis (a guy who's Semaj Christon level bad on offense and slightly above average defensively), Abrines (his only skill is shooting and we're not getting him shots) and Ferguson (our NetRtG with him on the floor is so bad, it's equal to the Suns' with Booker or the Mavericks' with Smith Jr). While we still don't have a secondary creator off the bench or a backup Center.
If there's a team that HAD to make a move, it's us. Teams who are already very deep not making one does not excuse Presti failing in that regard.
You be you. Through training camp and the first six weeks of the season, that was the unofficial mantra of the Oklahoma City Thunder, or at least its three headliners, Russell Westbrook, Paul George and Anthony. Whenever a problem arose with the Thunder's offense, and there were many, one of the three would tell another, "You be you." It sounded cordial, even magnanimous, and it was delivered in a conciliatory, we're-all-good-here kind of way. But as far as solutions go, it was pretty thin. What it lacked in specificity it made up for in confusion.
By Dec. 1, it was clear you be you wasn't working. The Thunder were 8-12 and ranked 24th in the NBA in offense. This grand and unexpected experiment -- the trades for George from Indiana and Anthony from New York to team with the NBA MVP Westbrook -- was in danger of collapsing under the weight of everyone being themselves. You be you meant nobody was really anybody, and it was obvious that somebody needed to be someone else.
"I think starting the year by letting them work through some things was the way to go," says Thunder coach Billy Donovan. "I wanted to see how some of this stuff played out. Well, everybody being them wasn't going to work. 'You just be you, you be you, you be you' -- no, it just wasn't going to work. Russell is this great transitional player. Paul is so great at flowing, cutting, moving. And sometimes Carmelo wants to say, 'Let's slow it down; let's grind in the half court.' Well, we can't come down and say, 'OK, let's run and cut and move, and let's get out on the break, and let's slow it down.' It can't happen."
It was natural for the revamped Thunder to need some time to process and adapt. During a training-camp news conference, general manager Sam Presti, with his trademark loftiness, said, "The vision for our team and the way we've gone about our business has always been to see things for what they can be, not for what they are." They were built for June, for one seven-game series after another, with a tightened court and a shorter rotation and a predictable succession of days off. But at 8-12, with the season threatening to dissolve into an indecipherable and sclerotic mess -- one night a blowout loss to the Mavericks, another a rousing win over the Warriors -- Anthony approached Donovan after a practice and asked to talk.
Carmelo opened with a question:
What do you need from me?
[...]
What do you need from me?
Donovan absorbed the question -- one he couldn't have been expecting -- and thought it over. He tends to give long, involved and enlightening answers that often include "So, to answer your question ..." somewhere around the midpoint. His eyes narrow as he goes, and the lines in his forehead deepen as he makes his point. He is almost never glib.
What do I need?
Well, here goes.
"Carmelo," he said, "I think for our team, we're going to need you to fill a role. You're going to have to stretch the floor, and you're going to have to recognize mismatches. We're going to need to create space for Russ and Paul to play downhill and be creators for us. There might be times when you go four or five or six possessions and you don't get the ball. You might get missed on the break. Those are all adjustments, but we can't be the full team we're capable of being unless you're playing well."
Never in his career -- not in his eight years in Denver nor his seven in New York -- had Anthony been open to the idea of reducing or even altering his role. But as Donovan spoke, he nodded along and said, "OK, Coach. I've got it."
Without saying it, Donovan was asking him to be Olympic Melo, the guy who holds nearly every offensive record for Team USA and is the only men's player with three gold medals. Will Donovan get that guy? Again, it's complicated. In the Olympics, playing against inferior competition and with the world's best players, Anthony was willing to sublimate his ego, and his isolation game, for the greater good. But NBA coaches have pined for Olympic Melo before, notably Mike D'Antoni, who created the Olympic offense that created Olympic Melo, only to watch his tenure as Knicks coach end after he and Anthony clashed over the deployment of that very same offense.
"I had to tell myself, 'OK, this is different,'" Anthony says. "Russ did things his way here. Paul did things his way in Indiana. I did things my way in New York. We were all solo artists. So now the question is, how do you bring your solo artistry to this band? We all bring something different to this band. I think once we realized and appreciated what we bring to this band, that's when things started to click for us.
"The hard part is adjusting to having this opportunity. You have to sacrifice and change your game for the sake of what works for this team. Early on, it was like, 'Damn, it's not going to be the same game no more.' I had to get a grip on that and realize it's for the better. It took a little bit for me to understand -- 'Oh, wow, we've got Russ, Paul, Steve. I got guys now.' Takes a lot off me. Takes the burden off me to go out there and have to be a superhero night in and night out."
The conversation with Donovan allowed Anthony to voice what was already growing inside him: He would be the one who would try to be somebody else. He had agreed with everything Donovan said. He had nodded along when his coach told him he needed to cut down the isolation plays and keep the ball moving and shoot more 3s. He kept reminding himself: I've got guys now. Without saying the words, he said he would make every effort to bring Olympic Melo to OKC.
The next day, Anthony called Westbrook and George together and told them the new plan. "I'm gonna accept this role," he told them. "Until we accept that things are going to be different, we're just going to be this average team."
Return to Oklahoma City Thunder