Last night's loss to the Trailblazers really has me pissed. I've got to rant.
I'm pissed at Westbrook.
I'm pissed at Brooks.
I'm pissed at Sam Presti (OKC GM).
I've finally given up chasing pipe dreams. This is not a championship caliber team. Not as long as Scott Brooks is the coach. Too many things have to go absolutely perfect for the Thunder in order for them to win. We have to hope have everyone is completely 100% healthy otherwise we can't beat anyone.
OKC is missing ONE player and have to fight, scratch, and claw just to beat bad teams like the Lakers and Pistons. Beating a quality team w/o Durant......HA....forget about it. Circumstances have to be perfect in order for them to beat quality teams.
Meanwhile the Spurs can sit their 4 best players and still pull off wins against good teams. It's all about the coaching and frankly I'm surprised the Thunder have allowed Brooks to hang around this long.
Last night was a perfect example of the garbage OKC fans have to put up with. OKC leads Portland by 3 with 6 seconds to play. Portland draws up a nice play that instantly gets Lillard a clean look for the game-tying 3 pointer.
OKC gets the ball back with 3.5 seconds left. You think Brooks is capable of drawing up a play that will get one his players an open look. Nope.
As expected there's no movement or screens when the pass is inbounded to Westbrook. Westbrook gets the ball with a defender all on him so a bad 3 point shooter ends up taking a 30 foot, off-balanced shot.
I wish I can say that was an anomaly and that Brooks is usually more creative than that but that situation is par for the course for the Thunder coming out of timeouts. About 85% of the time when they call a timeout to "draw up" a play in late game situations we end up having to take some ridiculously difficult shot that looks like it belongs in that old Larry Bird-Michael Jordan McDonald's commercial.
So that' why I'm pissed at Brooks. He's incompetent and incapable of out-coaching the opposition. If he doesn't have the talent edge he doesn't have a shot.
Westbrook...I'm pissed at that dude because he's a hot head who puts his team in bad situations too many times with his temperament.
OKC is leading the Blazers by 7 points with about 1:15 to play and Westbrook ends up picking up a technical foul arguing a call. Just flat out dumb. Giving away a free point to a talented team like that. And of course that 1 point was the difference as OKC likely would have had a 4 point lead down the stretch rather than the 3 point lead.
It also didn't help that Westbrook missed a FT with 6 seconds left. He makes both FTs it's a 4 point game and the Thunder likely win. So ol' hot-head left 2 points on the floor, leaving the game wide open for the Portland.
Westbrook, Portland presents you a game ball for your efforts last night.
Finally, Sam Presti. There can no longer be any debate that he botched the Harden trade. That's the kind of trade that should get a GM fired.
I tried to put up a front and pretend that everything would work out for us. That the young guys we acquired in the trade would develop for us, etc., etc.
But no more.
Presti got bent over the barrel by the Rockets. This is right up there with the Herschel Walker trade, IMO, as dumbest trades of all time.
Presti, with his Spurs pedigree, got too cute and thought we could turn draft picks and fringe role players into quality NBA players and stars. Instead OKC has got a bunch of nothing out of that trade. When your best piece from the Harden trade is Steven Adams, yeah, I'd say you fucked up. Big time.
I still don't understand the rationale behind the move. OKC had a young team that was on the rise. Ibaka, Durant, Westbrook, and Harden were all 23 y/o and younger.
Why would you not give that group one more run at the title? Blowing that team up prematurely was one of the most idiotic moves in recent NBA history.
Just a dumb move by a GM who got full of himself and who thought he was still in San Antonio where there's a coach in place who can actually develop young talent.
So I'm done pretending that we're contenders because as I mentioned too many things have to go perfect in order for this team to compete. One rolled ankle and this team is incapable of beating teams over .500. Until we get a coach in place who has an actual system and who knows how to work around injuries we're not going anywhere.
Last year they got by w/o Westbrook because Reggie Jackson does a pretty decent Westbrook impersonation.
[/rant]