Friday Bolts – 7.19.13
Joe Goodman of the Miami Herald: “Here’s the globalization of the NBA in all its wonderful fury: A man born and raised in Soviet Russia is now the most aggressive spender in the league, which has socialized itself with a new collective bargaining agreement. For better or worse, it doesn’t get any more American than that in this contemporary age of economic outsourcing, foreign investing and supposed redistribution of wealth. As outgoing NBA commissioner David Stern sails into the sunset, the fruits of arguably his greatest accomplishments — spreading the game beyond North America, getting the Nets out of New Jersey and a new CBA — have somehow converged in a borough across the bridge and given rise to another kind of invasive tree in Brooklyn.”
Berry Tramel: “If Miller doesn’t mind that kind of role — long bouts of sitting, then be ready at a moment’s notice to provide instant offense — he’s perfect for the Thunder. OKC doesn’t need Miller to play 24 minutes a game and fill the James Harden/Kevin Martin role. The Thunder needs a veteran shooter who can spread the floor and occasionally give Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook driving room. If Miller needs to sit out 10 games in a row to heal up, fine. If he needs to avoid back-to-backs, fine. So long as he can give Jeremy Lamb and Reggie Jackson a little relief, and be ready to go in the playoffs, he’s perfect.”
Tom Ziller of SB Nation: “At the end of the day, the NBA owners picking up the tab approved this. But the whole situation is bizarre, and it’s pretty amazing that with all of the lawyers and interested parties in the room working out the finer details of the lockout deal no one thought to explicitly address the issue of Durant’s already signed early extension. I’m really not sure how this could have been handled any more messily. At the very least, the Thunder shouldn’t have been allowed to offer Westbrook a Designated Player contract. But there’s nothing the league can do about that now, though giving the Thunder $15 million doesn’t seem like an especially fair or sensible solution.”
Yaron Weitzman of SLAM: “That Jackson is a person who’d rather watch an episode of Tom and Jerry instead of going out to a party—“In high school, he and my son would go out and be back and asleep by 9,” Hawkins says—meant that there was more time to do so. Even to this day Jackson would rather do, well, almost anything other than go to a club. ‘The last time I went out to visit him in Oklahoma City, we played Jeopardy on Xbox all night,’ Zach Hawkins says. ‘I didn’t even know that existed.’ And a month ago, the majority of the sports world didn’t know that another Reggie Jackson did. Jackson’s team might not have known that this type of player existed on their roster, either. Now, though, everyone—the Thunder, its fans and the NBA—is on the verge of getting acquainted.”
Russell Westbrook is the fourth most stylist celebrity under 25 according to Complex: “Russell is easily one of the few celebrities who takes plenty of style risks. The NBA player really got people’s attention last year when he started showing up to press conferences in all-over prints and red thick framed glasses. Not much has changed since. If anything, he’s just taken even more risks and tried new looks. What’s also impressive about Westbrook, though, is that he’s actually really, really into fashion, as we learned in March. He’s just a jack of all trades, isn’t he?”
