The narrative now seems to be that OKC has its deepest team ever, the deepest in the league some people like Barkley even (incorrectly) say. And I've heard a lot about how they're actually excellent right now with certain 5-man combinations, and how their problems are fixable if Billy Donovan could just get them to run better plays (or any plays at all in many instances). But IMO the fatal flaw here is NOT fixable by either coach or players, it's in how the team has been put together is: the most important members of the supporting cast are ONE-WAY PLAYERS. They play 4 on 5 at one end when Roberson is playing, and at the other end Kanter and Waiters can't guard anyone at all. Why would anyone think that approach could lead to a championship?? (Btw, this is why I think OKC's best hope may be rolling with Adams and Cam Payne).

I really don't understand why drafting KD, Russ, and Serge automatically means Presti has a lifetime pass. He never was fried adequately for one of the dumbest trades in league history. He stuck with Scott Brooks for years when it was blindingly obvious Brooks was adding little tactical value, and in fact holding the team back (took him years to develop any offensive sets, made the team play with one hand tied behind its back and basically gave away the 2012 Finals by stubbornly starting Perk, etc). And now he's getting praise for having supposedly built a deep, young team around KD, Russ, and Ibaka that gives them a chance to contend for years and should get the stars to re-up in FA -- when in fact common sense says no matter how good Durant and Westbrook are you can't beat GSW or SA when your starting SG is ignored by opposing defenses and your max-money post player is one of the worst defenders in the entire league.

This is an example of one reason (beyond the latent racism of the pro-analytics dialogue) why overall I'm more sympathetic to "anti-analytics" opinionators than "pro-analytics" ones. Both sides, ingenuously or not, construct strawmen of each other. And obviously getting better data on what's happening on the floor can help coaches make better lineup decisions, GMs make better player evaluations, and players get a better understanding of their own and opponents' strengths and weaknesses. But this stuff is really on the margins. When we're talking about the things that matter most to their' ultimate success, we have a lot of evidence by this point that analytics is not helping teams make the correct decisions.

when Chuck was saying that shit.

>This is an example of one reason (beyond the latent racism of
>the pro-analytics dialogue) why overall I'm more sympathetic
>to "anti-analytics" opinionators than "pro-analytics" ones.
>Both sides, ingenuously or not, construct strawmen of each
>other.

The difference is that people believe the one constructed
by the pro-analytics people, and it costs people jobs.

And obviously getting better data on what's happening
>on the floor can help coaches make better lineup decisions,
>GMs make better player evaluations, and players get a better
>understanding of their own and opponents' strengths and
>weaknesses. But this stuff is really on the margins. When
>we're talking about the things that matter most to their'
>ultimate success, we have a lot of evidence by this point that
>analytics is not helping teams make the correct decisions.

Here's my thing:

Building a business and a brand is best left in the hands of
people who are familiar with all areas of that business and brand.
That means people who had direct access to all areas, have
people skills, can draw on experiences, understand clients and
customers.

Failed companies and poorly run business don't fail because
they lack DATA. They fail because they lack intelligent people
who are smart, have good instincts, have their finger on the
pulse of movements, and intentions and behaviors.

See, for example, the Sony leaked e-mails. Sony has more data
on moviegoing than anyone can hope to have. They've hired
the smartest people to analyze movie-going trends. They've
disaggregated the data. They know who makes money, in which
movies, when. They are DECADES ahead of sports in analyzing
their market. It's Hollywood.

So why has Hollywood, save a few giant superhero movies,
had a REALLY rough last five years? Why is Gods of Egypt
tanking? Why will the Ghostbusters shit tank? Why did
RIP Department tank? And Green Lantern tank? And Concussion
tank? It's not just randomness.

What is the problem?

Read those leaked Sony e-mails.

The problem is that the people in charge are racist and sexist
and are overall idiots who have no idea what entertainment or
art is. That was CLEAR from the minute you read the e-mails.
DATA doesn't do shit for that problem. You can't fix that with
DATA. You can fix that with imagination, and experience and
fairness.

So with regards to sports:

Hire a college kid to travel with the team, track the data,
test new principles. They don't need FRONT OFFICE jobs,
because they don't know anything about anything. They are
good at what they do, and that is a PIECE of the pie. But
a PIECE.

What the analytics crowd has done is taken advantage of
everyone else's mathematical low self esteem and convinced
us that they deserve jobs. It's mostly a job-getting scheme,
not a "movement."

You have the 76ers being run by someone willing to throw
away THREE SEASONS for ping pong balls odds. That is the
great insight from analytics? How about a front office guy
who can relate to Okafor and keep him from fighting in the
street, almost ruining his LIFE? Got data for that? NO. Because
in order to build a solid locker room, you have to understand
how people act. Their GM does not.






----------------------------



O_E: "Acts like an asshole and posts with imperial disdain"




"I ORBITs the solar system, listenin..."

(C)Keith Murray, "

Don't print up 10M discs if u only going to sell 7M

"What the analytics crowd has done is taken advantage of
everyone else's mathematical low self esteem and convinced
us that they deserve jobs. It's mostly a job-getting scheme,
not a "movement." "

I read that the two sides were about $1M per year apart. I understand in luxury tax money it is or is potentially more than that to the franchise but I have a hard time believing that's all there was to it. I think he had other aspirations. If it was just about money why did they rush to do it? I guess the whole fucking thing doesn't make sense.

He could have left money on the table like Klay but he wanted every dime & feel appreciated if he was going to stay.

He has stated that he wasn't confident about being good enough to be a franchise player but the OKC front-office made the decision easier on him by not kissing his ass.

Perkins? One-way player or really later a no-way player.

Thabo? One-way player, provided no offense.

Harden? Oddly somewhat of a two-way player, but was dying to be a one-way player as he has shown time and time again.

You can go down the line with Kevin Martin or Reggie Jackson or whomever.

I guess that could be seen as doubling down on the indictment of Presti or absolving him somewhat, depending how you looked at it.

One thing is for sure, these guys could use an Iguodala type player to glue shit together. But what good team couldn't?

----------------------------



O_E: "Acts like an asshole and posts with imperial disdain"




"I ORBITs the solar system, listenin..."

(C)Keith Murray, "

Do we REALLY trust Kanter to play good enough D to stay on the court? Actually he hasn't in this series, but it hasn't mattered because the small lineup is killing GSW. And two good offensive games from Roberson and some great defense and decision-making on O from Dion are things we simply haven't seen from those players before. Do we really trust them to do this consistently??

I will HAPPILY accept the L if the Thunder win the title. I hope they do. But based on what we've seen from these players for years I have no confidence we won't see them revert to form.

And yes the Harden trade was still dumb. Presti misgauged the salary cap. Basically gave up a shot at contending in 2012-13 for the sake of the future. And if he was going to trade him he should've been able to get more. Who's to say OKC would still be ringless in 2016 if they'd kept him or gotten a better deal for him?

That was a unknown unknown

i dont think he is like mcgrady levels of selectively applying himself on d but he could be a lot more consistent. another reason i would love to see him on the spurs, though this run probably has him staying.

Sam Presti found a team dumb enough to give him a haul of young guys for Serge Ibaka.
Win.

I've been a huge critic of Presti. I thought he was average at best. But he went against all his tendencies last night. He made a bold choice and sold an asset that is probably depreciating for peak value, because he recognized that he has plenty of guys on the roster who can recreate what serge gave them. In exchange, he finally got Russ and KD a real third option, and a damn good one at that. All that and ensure the pipeline of white bamma centers continues unabated.

I love the thinking of "Well if you strip away his great draft picks and all the games he has won, he really ain't shit!"

Basically you can fry him for the Harden trade, though personally I think there were various factors at play there. It shouldn't fall squarely on him but sure, he is the GM, so he has to accept that it does.

Beyond that he has drafted well and managed assets well. He made the most of the Jackson situation and killed it here. They have drafted Durant, Westbrook, Ibaka, Jackson and Adams. The Waiters trade kinda sucked but he took what he could get to fill a need. I don't see how anyone could see Presti as anything less than above average. Have you seen some of the stiffs employed as NBA GMs?

>Basically you can fry him for the Harden trade, though
>personally I think there were various factors at play there.
>It shouldn't fall squarely on him but sure, he is the GM, so
>he has to accept that it does.

There is no copping pleas.

He let Harden go.

We took it EASY on him, if anything.

----------------------------



O_E: "Acts like an asshole and posts with imperial disdain"




"I ORBITs the solar system, listenin..."

(C)Keith Murray, "

Everyone was hyping Kanter and Dion and Roberson when they had a couple good games this spring...Then Kanter proved unplayable vs GSW, and Dion and Roberson reverted to form, to the tune of a combined 4-for-20 in Game 7 shooting...One-way players.

In the hierarchy of people who wanted that deal you had 1) Ownership 2) Player 3) Management. Ownership didn't want the luxury tax and decided instead to diversify assets. Harden would also absolutely not have continued in that role. If that were his desire, why would he balk at their offer over roughly $1M per year? They offered him a deal *very* close to the max.

Presti is clearly above average, not great, but above average.

You wrong, tho

But you mentioned Oppenheimer

Yeah, he made two amazing draft picks and one really good one in Ibaka. He's a great drafter. But before yesterday, he had made exactly zero good FA or trade decisions. He has failed utterly in his ability to put satisfactory pieces around Westbrook and durant, and he kept a mediocre head coach for way too long.

Being white is the shiznit

DA said Russy ain't talking extension, period.

I mean the cap rises again next year - he'd be lighting money on fire by signing this year.

http://espn.go.com/espnradio/play?id=16769911

windhorst and amin do a good job of explaining it in this podcast (skip to about 17 minutes in; although the whole thing's worth a listen) but in short, what the thunder can essentially do, since they now have cap space, is renegotiate this last year on westbrook's contract to bump him up to a true max in 16-17, which takes him from 17m up to ~26m, and then extend up to 3 additional years, with an opt out after 17-18, when russ would have 10 yrs of service and thus be eligible to cash in on the super-max.

it would benefit both parties, okc gets an assurance of at least 2 more seasons of westbrook and can plan accordingly, and russ essentially gets a free extra 8m next season and still hits fagency after his 10.

it's about them gauging his desire to stay with the team, the same way trading for him is about gauging his willingness to stay with the team that gets him.

let me just say that "tampering" is the word use for when a GM says too much. if they do too much quietly, it's never caught. put it this way, russy's agent got a phone bill that looks like BIG's circa 1994 right about now.

He may have signaled KD he was leaving in a year, regardless, so KD took his "golden" opportunity to leave now.

what he had planned to do previously and, regardless of that, what he plans to do now.

LET THE DOMANTAS SABONIS ERA COMMENCE!!!

he would stay long term. Apparently, KD and Russ hung out in L.A. last week. I just think there's no way possible they didn't discuss all this.

Presti started the rebuilding process already with the Ibaka trade.

It'll be very interesting to see what happens with Westbrook and when. The best thing he could do is be up front about his goals and where he wants to go. If they can identify a small handful of places where he'd re-up, then they can get a healthy competition between trading partners and a good return. If he just gives them the Westbrook face and says he'll decide next June, eh, they might get screwed in the deal.

is that Russ says fuck it...let's ball and goes hard to show he can carry a team, gets like 25 triple doubles this season and next summer after losing in the 2nd round again...Blake comes home to Oklahoma. Russ, Blake, Dipo, Adams...that's a good ass core.

just sipping on a lil something strong...waiting for it to get dark so Jr and I can go out and launch these missiles...safely, though...no JPP. Almost nailed that...missed it by like a MILLION triple-doubles and no Dipo with PG instead of Blake.

https://www.sbnation.com/nba/2017/6/30/15907106/thunder-paul-george-trade-sam-presti-nba-rabbit-out-of-hat

https://twitter.com/HowardBeck/status/911638955728211969

https://twitter.com/DannyLeroux/status/911647707709632512

https://i.makeagif.com/media/8-01-2016/WVkNEr.gif

.

Like a lot

5 years later...OKC looks ready to blow the whole thing up.

Only thing he got right was not overpaying Ibaka, IMO

Dude squandered a core of 3 top 10 players

that will be his legacy.

He choked in the playoffs when he had a chance.

And then, he wanted more than needed to pay him.

I can’t think of anyone who thought Harden would be as good as he is today while also still being a liability on defense.

after being embarrassed by Utah in the 1st round

OKC = 3rd in payroll

Most think PG will opt out

but Melo opting in

OKC is destined to blow the whole thing up summer of 19'

That's his legacy

5 years later = nada.

OKC was 19th in payroll when they had the big 3 (4 if you want to throw Ibaka in there, he was still playing at a high level)

So he ended up cutting the check for lesser talent anyway.

double nada

nada nada LOL.

There was a GM who saw the franchise leader potential in a 23Y.O. 6th man of the year on a finals team...if given the minutes

...and paid him as such...

yeah he choked but dont act like he came out of nowhere. they shouldve kept him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<---- 5....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlgiritpmfo

=======================================

3 top 10 players

The alpha dog
KD = Steph

Robin
Russ = Klay

DPOTY candidate
Ibaka = Green

Reinforcements
Harden = Iggy and Livingston

of course with KD going to GSW it's not an exact correlation to today's roster

but that 1st iteration of the GSW...that could have been OKC had they found a way to make it work, IMO

had Presti figured it out...I'm sure that group would have been together longer than 3 years...IMO

but sure MIA

poe tae toe

poe tah toe

...and Melo gettin his Kobe on....

Dude still got a job?

KD leaving for nothing fucked them and they've been reacting ever since. Look at what happened to LA when their all-in moment didn't work out, total tailspin. At least these guys have been in the playoffs and shit. The Melo trade was terrible, they knew it was a two-year deal and they knew he was washed. George deal in hindsight was kinda bad but I think almost every GM would have made it.

Both have jobs.

You do realize they COULD have kept him, right?

I don't even have an OKC agenda

but this shit is hilarisad

$300M for a 1st round exit

dude still has a job

when's the fire sale?

Remember when they didn't have the money to pay Harden?

LOL&SMH.

If you are white and have the right haircut, people
think everything you do is cerebral, and you'll get
all the credit for good things and none of the blame
for bad things.

It's almost never not true.

----------------------------



O_E: "Acts like an asshole and posts with imperial disdain"




"I ORBITs the solar system, listenin..."

(C)Keith Murray, "

This post was made 2 years ago

The mental gymnastics and plea coppage ensued

and here we are

Allegedly, it was a $4M difference in the Harden negotiations that was an impasse

but they're shelling out money like they printing it for PG and Melo

Allegedly in an attempt to keep Russ

LOL

This shit writes itself

YT boys got a great sense of humor...or irony...or both.

stretching Melo will be worth $101M off the tax bill alone

.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

they were an inch away from maxing him but supposedly he got pissed because they didn't (offer was like a mil per under the max). they had time to work on a deal but didn't take it (why?). i still feel like we dunno the whole story there. but we do know that avoiding the luxury tax was the reason they dinked around at all--not that we know if it mattered for sure or not though--and then they turned around and paid it for other teams later.

bizarre.

getting embarrassed by Portland in the first round you know he was dying for a way to reboot that shit.

He couldn't trade Russ first because the fans and everybody else would've let him have it. He probably pissed his pants when the PG "trade request" came up. That's exactly what he needed. He knew at that point Russ would be be ready to go and the fans would understand. Yeah its still kind of a bad look to have drafted 3 of the last 6 league MVP's and not have shit to show for it, but he got an assload of picks back for both of those guys even though he did end up getting stuck with CP3 and his contract he might have to spend so money to buy him and and it won't be cheap you know CP3 wants ALL of his money.

trade two stars for a huge grab bag of draft picks, pray to trade another one for a pick or two (questionable but maybe if he bounces back after some more money comes off his deal) and then be like LET ME SEE THIS REBUILD THROUGH. this could be the longest rebuild ever.

Presti out big time with this move, if anything Presti just got lucky as hell.

After getting embarrassed in the first round from the end of the season and through almost the first full week of free agency it looked like almost every other team in the west had gotten better.

It would be a bad look at that point to try to trade PG or Russ but if THEY asked for a trade he was more than happy to oblige them and was probably clicking his heels why he was doing it.

Its just funny how certain media types try to put it all on the players saying they have "too much power" and try to paint George as a bad guy. Presti didn't have to make that deal, he was begging to. What was PG going to do? Hold out a year after he had signed a deal as an unrestricted free agent and professed his love for Russ and OKC?

i don't see any reason to chastise george, the players should have the power because they are what make the league. i thought what kerr said was bullshit and my reaction to it was kind of in step with what you're saying here. would presti have preferred to get a big ass haul of picks, a good young point guard and a tradeable contract (or at least cap relief) for PG or *fucking nothing at all* when his contract expired?

i don't know if presti deserves props or not but i think we agree that fortune kind of smiled on him, in a relative way at least. they weren't winning anything with this group and sooner or later george was going to bounce on him. the fans also would rather see a semi-contender than a shit team so they'd have turned on him for shopping one star or both. he also managed to get rid of russ's godawful contract, even though theoretically his playing it out would have been fine. he gets a couple picks here for maybe the only equivalently bad contract in the league.

but does he deserve props? i dunno, seems mostly circumstantial. if he can manage to foist CP3's contract onto someone and get even OK return--just a straight salary dump or a shitty but shorter contract and a pick--then i'll say he deserves props.

But still drafting 3 straight MVPs, having them play TOGETHER, and only getting one finals appearance out of it is an L no matter what.

This man had THREE LEAGUE MVPs and ANOTHER TOP 3 MVP finalist
and is being coddled because of what he MIGHT do with the draft picks in 3014

This is why everything sucks and nobody who doesn't look a
certain way can't get a fucking job.

Meanwhile, Rich Paul EARNS it, and has the universe
conspire against him

And YES -- they are related




----------------------------



O_E: "Acts like an asshole and posts with imperial disdain"




"I ORBITs the solar system, listenin..."

(C)Keith Murray, "

by many people in here for his "analytics" and he basically threw all that of the window and traded for Russ lol.

The NCAA decided to crack the whip on them and between Paul's own excoriation of their fuckery and an almost unanimous verdict in the court of public opinion, it's the NCAA that's looking like dog shit now.

Presti has done a decent job and it's more the OKC ownership that has been manic and unable to maintain a winning culture despite having the talent to win.