By Joe | January 20, 2009
This may come as a big surprise to any and all that read read the stuff here because I didn’t give any hints, but there have been some things in the works for several months.
Royce from the Thunderworld and I were jointly contacted by the big boy in sports blogging out there, and they floated the idea of us coming together to make one great blog from the two, and augment each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We both gave it some thought and actually got the process started. About that time a different opportunity came Royce’s way and a decision had to be made. Royce decided to go for the newer opportunity and offered me a spot on the roster. My choice came down to going it alone as is, going it alone with the big boy of sports blogs, or joining forces with Royce in his new opportunity.
I gave it a lot of thought and decided to join forces with Royce. He now has an “ESPN affiliate site” called Daily Thunder.com. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Henry Abbott from Truehoop has some involvement and it should really be the next big thing in team sports blogs. Look for an announcement by Henry in the coming days.
What’s great is that with two guys doing this, there should be twice as much content. twice as many opinions to bat around and the full force of the best of both blogs!
I will still be just as active as ever. I will be there posting pre games, post games, feature articles and statistical essays. I always seem to have something to say about the Thunder and I don’t think that will change any time soon. Everything new I write will be going over to Daily Thunder, so please update your bookmarks.
If you’ve been a reader of this blog I invite you to continue over at Daily Thunder.com. And if you are one of the intelligent commenters who always ask great questions and give great insight, guys like Crow, AD, Martz, Jumbo, DJ, Tobasco, Zorgon, Shaun, April, Mr P etc, please come on by.
Thanks.
Joe
Daily Thunder.com
By Joe | January 18, 2009
Box Score
What else can I say about this game that is more to the point than “too much Dwayne Wade”?
Forty eight minutes of deep shooting brilliance by the Heat, offset by mini runs and mini slumps by the Thunder. This game never really seemed like a game that the Thunder were going to win. It was close for most of the first quarter until the Heat took the lead at 22-19 late in the first, and never relinquished the lead.
The Thunder did many of the things that they’ve done successfully in the last 9 games, like getting to the line quite a bit, and win the battle of the boards, yet still the Thunder turned the ball over too much, and couldn’t seem to do anything about guarding the perimeter. The Heat just let fly from deep all night long, and the Thunder could only seem to counter that with average field goal shooting and a lot of free throws. The Heat launched 21 three pointers and hit 11 of them (52%). It’s tough to win countering that with one point free throws. Read More »
By Joe | January 17, 2009
What wins basketball games?
I could ramble on and on, but smarter men than I have addressed this question, so why reinvent the wheel. Dean Oliver, author of “Basketball on Paper”, and a former consultant to the Sonics and current consultant with the Denver Nuggets has done all the statistical work and he breaks down what wins games to four factors, with their relative weights in parenthesis:
- Shoot a high field goal percentage (10).
- Do not commit turnovers (5-6).
- Get offensive rebounds (4-5).
- Get to the foul line frequently (2-3).
Teams that consistently win basketball games do at least three of these things well. If you don’t shoot well, you better do the other three. Oliver says Read More »
By Joe | January 17, 2009
The OKC Thunder are starting the new year off in style, getting two in a row in the halfway game (41st) of the season.
In a game where neither team really shot the ball especially well, the Thunder won in a fashion that seems to be the beginning of a trend: stout defense. In Basketball defense is sometimes subjective when you are watching it, but the numbers don’t lie. Over the last nine games including tonight, the Thunder have only allowed two opponents to reach the NBA average a mere two times. To put it another way, we have held 7 out of the last 9 opponents below league average offensive production of 106 points per 100. If it happens once or twice, or here or there that would be one thing, but 7 out of 9 is the beginning of a trend. The Pistons average 105.6 points/100 possessions (offensive rating), but tonight the Thunder kept them to a very low 90 points/100, which is our second finest defensive game of the year; our best being last month against Toronto, also a win.
When Coach P.J. was fired, and a few games under Brooks had passed, I was starting to be convinced that defense was not going to be a priority with this team; and actually, for many games it really wasn’t. But there has been an undeniable defensive improvement of late.
In tonight’s game, the score was close for most of the game. When the Thunder really separated was the first half of the fourth quarter when Detroit went over 6:00 without a score. The Thunder were able to put 13 points on the board during that time, which was the death blow.
Box score. Game flow. Read More »
By Joe | January 15, 2009
Over at Doug’s stats, Doug (I assume that is his name…) has been putting the NBA numbers together for years. I haven’t really had a reason to look at these this season because, well, we all know they’ve been bad. As in real bad. But now we are starting to see momentum. OKC is 4-4 in their last 8, and the overall feeling the team is giving off is more positive than any time in the last two seasons.
I’ve taken the liberty of copying and pasting the last ten game stats for the Thunder from Doug’s site, and they are fun to look at. The higlighted numbers are emphasis mine, and the text between stat boxes is mine:
Scoring Statistics
Player Pos G M/Gm FGm FGa PCT 3m 3a PCT FTm FTA PCT AVG
1 durant,kevin SF 10 40.4 84 179 .469 12 36 .333 59 67 .881 23.9
2 green,jeff PF 10 38.7 65 140 .464 16 36 .444 42 49 .857 18.8
3 westbrook,russel PG 10 34.8 63 132 .477 6 17 .353 42 56 .750 17.4
4 collison,nick PF 6 28.3 27 40 .675 0 0 .000 13 16 .812 11.2
5 krstic,nenad C 5 21.2 20 41 .488 0 0 .000 10 13 .769 10.0
6 mason,desmond SF 9 28.1 34 70 .486 0 1 .000 11 14 .786 8.8
7 wilcox,chris PF 7 19.6 25 50 .500 0 0 .000 10 18 .556 8.6
8 watson,earl PG 10 27.0 31 64 .484 2 8 .250 12 13 .923 7.6
9 wilkins,damien SG 4 17.0 10 24 .417 2 5 .400 5 5 1.00 6.8
10 smith,joe PF 5 15.6 8 24 .333 1 1 1.00 7 8 .875 4.8
11 weaver,kyle SG 7 16.4 11 20 .550 1 5 .200 3 3 1.00 3.7
12 swift,robert C 7 13.9 9 16 .562 0 0 .000 4 5 .800 3.1
13 petro,johan C 2 6.5 2 4 .500 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 2.0 Read More »