Tuesday Bolts – 9.23.14
Blake Griffin in an excellent GQ interview on playing in Oklahoma: “Like, waving his Thunder flag. Like, ‘Go home, pussy!’ ‘All right! Thanks, man! Good to see you, Mr. Johnson!’ He’s the guy who gave me Popsicles. Yeah, it’s funny, because Kevin Durant went to Texas. Texas and Oklahoma are huge rivals. Oklahomans supposedly hate people that go to UT. So now he’s on the Thunder, and everybody in Oklahoma—along with everybody else—loves him. And now people from Oklahoma hate me because I play for the Clippers! It’s interesting what sports do to people.”
Matt Moore of CBSSports.com ranks Scott Brooks as the 10th best coach in the league: “But the thought has formed in the zeitgeist that Brooks has taken them as far as he can, and that’s evolved in the worse ends of fandom and league analysis into ‘Brooks is a bad coach.’ That’s patently false. Brooks has kept egos out of the locker room dynamic when there are quite a few, has overseen the development of Durant, Westbrook, James Harden, Serge Ibaka, Jeff Green, and there are promising signs for the youngsters. He’s won playoff series vs. great opponents and been within reach of the title. He’s here because if the Thunder win 65 games and the West, it will be ‘because of Durant’ and everyone’s response will still be ‘let’s see what they do in the playoffs.’ But that’s probably not fair. It’s just the way it is.”
SI.com ranked Westbrook fourth and Durant second: “The go-to critiques of Westbrook have centered on his shot selection, over-assertiveness, turnover problems, lack of three-point range, and occasional emotional outbursts. All of those issues remained part of Westbrook’s story last season to one degree or another, and yet he managed to render most of them moot through sheer force of will during the postseason. Indeed, it was Westbrook’s overall excellence in the playoffs that sealed his top-five status on the list: he saved the Thunder from elimination by the Grizzlies, he prevailed in a head-to-heat match-up with Chris Paul’s Clippers, and he put a real scare into the Spurs before ultimately falling in six games.”
Adam Silver says the NBA is going to look into domestic violence policies.
Zach Lowe of Grantland on NBA economics: “This one-year-blip theory might not play out. Several teams could yank free agents off the market by signing them to extensions, and guys with player options might anticipate this scenario and opt in for 2015-16 — avoiding the crowd and leaping back into free agency when the cap really soars in July 2016. And the cap for 2015-16 might be higher than $66.5 million. We’ll know more after the board of governors meets next month, but some teams are already operating under the assumption the cap will leap north of $70 million in 2015-16, as the league bakes in some of the national TV money early.”
Matt Bonner talking about Game 6 against OKC: “As a fan of basketball, that was simply a great game. So many different people made so many huge plays on both teams, and we hadn’t won there in I don’t know how many years. But the play that sticks out in my mind most was Timmy’s [Duncan] spin move into a fadeaway jumper with two seconds left on the shot clock and 20 seconds left in OT to put us up three points. We were running on fumes and I had this gut feeling that if we didn’t get a bucket on that possession, we were going to be in trouble. Timmy had a defender in front of him and behind him yet still found a way to turn a dead possession into a huge bucket. Just look at our bench’s reaction. Pure poetry.”
