Blue Blitz on SI.com

The Sports Illustrated Oklahoma City Thunder Preview

We were recently emailed by Paul Forrester of SI.com and he asked for a quick preview of the Thunder. We answered the call, and now our preview is up on the website. Look down in the corner to see the "Bloggers Take", and it shows my name. Ben was inadvertently left out, and we emailed them about that, since we did collab on it.

Here's what we originally sent them. Looking back on it, it's pretty bad. Actually, it's really bad. For some reason, we wanted to get it in as fast as possible and spend no time proofreading. Bad idea. It came out with bad grammar and a really bad flow, and we have to give a huge thanks to the guys at SI for cleaning it up. Nevertheless, here it is:

We think it's pretty bad on the whole that the SuperSonics ceased to exist, but we're not really all that sad about it. For the most part, the Sonics were a bad team throughout the 2000s. Key Arena was last reviatalized in 1994, so it's reasonable to move the team if the city is not willing to update its arena every 10 years. The general feeling for Seattle around here, quite frankly, is "too bad so sad". Nobody is really feeling the remorse, and there was only one person (Zeb) wearing Sonics gear at the unveiling. The Oklahoma Sooners football team went to Washington to play a game, and the general feeling in Seattle wasn't hostile, according to many fans.

"The fanbase for the NBA here is generally below average. Before the Hornets came, most people followed the Dallas Cowboys, and didn't pay attention at all to the NBA. People went to Oklahoma Sooner Basketball Games, but they generally only liked high-scoing contests. Defensive-minded coaches, like Kelvin Sampson, had many critics. When the Hornets finally did come to town, people generally didn't see beyond Chris Paul. They hardly had any idea about the NBA at large. But, needless to say, this is a growing process, and the fans will generally become more acclimated to the NBA. What they don't have in knowldge they make up for in loud, college-like cheers.

So, what are our hopes for the team? Well, most fans around here would probably settle for nothing less than an NBA Championship. Realistically, we can't expect to win more than 30 games. If you look at our roster, our 3rd and 4th best players (Behind Durant and Green) are probably Chris Wilcox and Nick Collison. That should say a lot about our win record. For this season, we expect to be partially a development team for the younger players, and partially a stowaway for ancient NBA castaways.

Roster-wise, the team should aim to get better big men. Most of the big men, aside from Nick Collison and Chris Wilcox, who are average, are basically failed projects. There's no starter-quality Center, as Johan Petro, Robert Swift, Saer Sene, and company are all backups at best. We're basically set at Power Forward, Small Forward, and Shooting Guard, so we need to aim to get a better Point Guard. Earl Watson is a 3 point specialist and shouldn't really be a starter, and Russell Westbrook is more of a combo guard. So basically, we need to work on the positions at both ends of the spectrum."

Yeah, pretty embarassing. Anyway, this is a growing process, and we continue to get better as time goes on.

Big thanks once again to the guys at SI.com, and whoever cleaned up our mess!!!!