https://youtu.be/bEuzrQFLS8U
The Thunder are done trying to win games. What they did last year was fun and all, but even a maximization of the potential on that particular roster was unlikely to result in anything more than a second-round exit before the rotting corpse and gigantic contract of Chris Paul dragged them back into the depths. Why not hasten the process by ditching Paul, and basically everyone else?
Blatant tanking has fallen out of favor in the NBA after the 76ers abused the system so badly that the draft odds got rearranged. DownToBuck doesn’t agree with the premise of tanking, and thinks it’s a blemish on the integrity of the league (not even being sarcastic right now, what kind of goofy system rewards losing games, seriously), but even he can admit that it made for some really fantastic scrublights. Those 76ers teams were an absolute gold mine of bad players playing way too many minutes and sometimes stumbling into decent-ish performances. Hold on, I’m tearing up thinking about Furkan Aldemir right now. Give me a sec.
In Oklahoma City, we’re gearing up to see something resembling what the 76ers were doing during “The Process”. We’re not there yet, because there’s still some solid veteran action hanging around (Al Horford, George Hill, apparently Trevor Ariza is on their roster, and you can count Mike Muscala if you want) and they’ve still got a bunch of future draft picks whose scrubbiness only exists in our hopes and dreams. But they do have a nice amount of random talent of varying quality already, and are not shy about giving minutes to their foreign rookie duo of the Serbian Aleksej Pokusevski and the French Theo Maledon.
Pokusevski, sadly, has been really REALLY bad, with maybe one okay-ish game so far out of almost 20. I’m staying vigilant, though. As soon as he does something that isn’t just missing threes and looking helpless, I’ll be on it. In the meantime, look! It’s Theo Maledon!
I don’t know how many people really pay attention to the preseason, I know I don’t, but I remember Maledon having a game similar to this during it. But that’s preseason: it doesn’t matter. What really matters is regular season games against superteams, and Maledon showed that his own big three (the left ball, the right ball, and the rod) can easily compete against the big three of James Hardemandatrade, Kryrie Virgin, and Kevirgin Durcanthavesex. 24 points, 6 for 6 on threes (it looked like 7 to me but whatever), now if only Pokusevski had stepped up a little, maybe the Thunder could’ve gotten a win out of it.