The Glass Half Full

Timeout. The glass is actually half full. The glass in reference being one decorated in orange and blue. The Oklahoma City Thunder have completed the first half of the NBA season and have done so with the best record in the NBA. Much can be said about such an accomplishment.

Does it matter that they are the best team now and have been most of the season? Well, not exactly. Is it relevant? Sort of. What is most important is to think of the first half of the NBA season, in terms of the Oklahoma City Thunder, is that their glass is half full. And, it doesn’t matter how much they seem to drain out of that glass, it just continues to remain half full.

 (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Alright, analogies aside, the first half of the Thunder’s season does bring some rather interesting notes. One being that Oklahoma City actually does have the best team in the NBA. Defeating the second best team in the league, the L.A. Clippers, by an average of 9 PPG proves there is some difference. Playing alongside the Miami Heat last summer apparently served as the equivalent of eating just one potato chip. 

With the taste in their mouth the Thunder have shown all season how hungry they are to not only get back to the NBA Finals but actually win the series. 

OKC has shown different ways in winning this season, which is why they have made their way to the top. Winning a game from the opening tip all the way to the final buzzer, winning a game that maybe they shouldn't have because they played like crap or winning a game at that final buzzer because they gutted it out and gave absolutely everything they had. Any way you draw up the win, the Thunder have won.

(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Growth is always part of the equation when it comes to professional sports. This is something that the fans in Chesapeake Energy Arena have seen in tremendous bunches in the first half of the season. Russell Westbrook has officially improved statistically. Despite the criticism in each of his errant maneuvers throughout the season, Westbrook has actually gotten better. You do not want to have to try and guard him and if you are trying to get around him your night is not going to easy by any definition of the word. Entering the top-10 in scoring at 23 PPG and adding 8.2 assists and a shade under two steals per game, Westbrook is shall we say, Russellin-Russellin-Everyday-He-Russellin.

Then there is the superstar Kevin Durant. Just when you think there isn't any more this guy can do, he does. For instance, Tuesday night against those Clippers. 32 points with five 3-pointers and nine rebounds. The rebounds are coming in at a career high for Durant as are many other statistics. The Thunder are better because Durant is better now. This is kind of scary because of the early accolades of the young world-star, but KD is careering it in a handful of categories.

Oklahoma City has a target on their back this season, which is something new. The Thunder are suddenly and strangely expected to win and be atop the NBA. The glass half-full attitude has translated to the way both fans and critics look at OKC. Lets hope the second half of the season tastes as good as the first. 

Blogs I find Interesting

http://oklahomawine.blogspot.com
http://roundfootballs.davewalker.org
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.sbnation.com
http://bleacherreport.com

Basketball rumors begin

Much has been made of my love for the University of Central Oklahoma Bronchos.

The same goes for my love for the New York Yankees and New York Giants. You might know that I also am a lover of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

This though is more of a love affair between my favorite basketball team and another basketball team that represents what basketball is all about. Sometimes.

While watching a sports television show on Tuesday, I heard another fan of this team say that being a fan is emotionally complicated. I immediately related with a confirming nod and realized how much I still like this team.

The other complicated factor in sports fandom is that fact that Oklahoma City has only been around for four years. I’ve been a fan of one sports team or another most of my life.

Spending a winter night watching the Knicks play is something that only certain people can enjoy. Most of the time enjoying a Knicks game comes at the expense of winning.

Late Monday night was the first installment of the New York Knicks versus the Brooklyn Nets. The Brooklyn Nets are spending their first year in the New York City borough after a move from across the bridge in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

The Nets won that game in overtime and it caused quite the storm of debates across the sports universe. Tons of questions were asked about whether or not the Nets are for real and could contend with other teams but more questions were asked about the new rivalry.

Some journalists are not sure whether we can call it a rivalry yet because it has only been one game. In a couple of months the teams will have played four games and a better gage of whether or not it is going to remain as intense of its inaugural version.

Let me tell you what will not only make it as intense but even more of an attraction for the fans of the NBA. The New York Knicks need to trade Amar’e Stoudemire for Pau Gasol as soon as possible.

This is the most recent rumored trade in the NBA. Even though the rumors come early and often in the 82 game season, this one makes the most sense and for both teams.

Mike D’Antoni was recently named head coach of the Las Angeles Lakers and the Lakers new point guard Steve Nash played alongside Stoudemire in Phoenix for D’Antoni. The chemistry would be instant for a team that needs something, anything instantly.

Now for Gasol, he averages 13.4 points per game and just over nine rebounds per game. The Knicks would love this. The way they play has been head-scratching because of the chemistry problems with Stoudemire and Knicks star Carmelo Anthony.

Here is where the trade gets interesting. Stoudemire hasn’t played this season due to injury and Nash hasn’t played since October when the season began. Which means, you wouldn’t trade away a player who hasn’t played this season because your team might be better. Also, you wouldn’t trade away a valuable player like Gasol without knowing how he really can play with Nash.

There has always been a question mark around Gasol and the addition of Nash this year meant that Gasol would be fed the ball in the right place at the right time.

If I’m the General Manager of either team today, I make the trade. What D’Antoni wants to do in Las Angeles doesn’t have anything to do with Gasol and what the Knicks need when Stoudemire comes back from his injury is no Amar’e Stoudemire.

For the sake of all the Knicks fans, whether part-time or not, make this happen and make it happen soon for the greater good of the sport.

All the leaves have fallen

The final week of the season is upon the Broncho football team. No way, this stinks, I want more.

Football is one thing I will readily admit to throwing fits about. Whether it be a bad call, my team losing or the end of the season. This season has gone by way too fast. You might think why on earth I’m so bent out of shape regarding a season in which the football team only managed two wins through the first nine games. Or, how I can get so excited about a game that ended up with UCO on the wrong end of the worst loss in this school’s last 93 seasons.

It really depends on your level of patience and your commitment to the university. Whether or not you’re the kind of student that comes to school and the leaves the school as soon as your class is over. Or the student who comes to school early and leaves late all the while being involved throughout the day. The student who just loves to watch the bronze and blue compete whether it be the football team who can’t seem to win or the soccer team who surprises us with a loss every once in a while.

Then you add to the equation whether or not you won’t ever see a Broncho football game again, as a student, or as the student body media’s Sports Editor. Being a senior is full of emotional moments, from the happiest of highs to those wait a minute this isn’t ever going to happen again moments.

Don’t get me wrong there isn’t going to be any tear-jerking moments on Saturday when the final horn sounds on the Bronchos season. It’s just kind of a buzz-kill knowing that some of the guys on the team are done, it’s over for them more than it is me, I just write about the games, they give all they have purely for my entertainment, and yours.

Sitting in the coach’s office every week I’ve grown more attached to this season than any other. I didn’t even write for The Vista last year and now I’m an editor. Which means making my rounds through Hamilton Fieldhouse and asking the coaches why we lost.  This can be challenging at times, but once you’ve got a couple of quotes to plug into your story then the conversation can easily stray into family, classes, high school football or even politics. This is what pulls me into the stadium each and every home game. I could easily make covering the game someone else’s job, but personally I wouldn’t miss the game for the world and as the sports editor I have a nice seat on the 50 yard line.

Covering one more game is going to be awesome, not just because of the President’s Cup and the game against Northeastern is always good. But because it will be one last chance to see the Bronchos as a student at UCO. It’s senior day, and not just for the players. This one’s going to be a good one.

Basketball Jones

Timeout. The Miami Heat are better. What? When did this happen? Why? They aren’t supposed to get better, they’re supposed to have been lucky to win last season and their time was over, it’s our time.

This team wasn’t even supposed to win last summer, the Thunder were a better team and had the talent to beat the Heat. 

The forecast never said Heat, only Thunder in Oklahoma City in June during the NBA Finals.

Strangely enough, the Thunder have lost to the eventual NBA champion in each of the last three seasons, the only three seasons our favorite group of guys from Bricktown have been in the playoffs. The Lakers, the Mavericks and the Heat have defeated Oklahoma City respectively, the last three versions of the NBA Playoffs. The Heat doing it in The Finals in only five games, after the Thunder won the first game and the world thought we had arrived.

Now all of the sudden we, Oklahoma City, find ourselves in an awkward position of having to prove to the entire world that we haven’t taken any steps backward and are in fact a better team. A special thanks to James Harden for what he did here, however, I hope you find a nice television in Houston to watch next summer’s edition of The Finals.

In an offseason in which the Heat and the Mavericks and the Lakers all “Got better,” the Thunder, according to some, made the biggest mistake of their young history and traded away Harden.

Umm, not exactly.

Photo by Cyn Sheng Ling, The Vista

Miami is better, this we now know. Dallas is better it appears, despite losing a Hall of Fame point guard and a thrilling, sixth man of the year winner of their own. The Mavericks ran through the Lakers on Tuesday night, literally, Elton Brand ran through Pau Gasol on a play and emphatically made a statement that Dallas is going to be a force to be reckoned with. Dallas beat LA 99-91 and now for a moment some of the attention will be shifted away from Oklahoma City and our front office moves, and focused on the Lake show and how they acquired some pretty hefty players and suddenly they might not be the least bit a better team.

When speaking of the upper-echelon of teams in the NBA, these four teams are always going to be in the argument. Alongside, Chicago and maybe Boston, there aren’t really any other teams that are serious contenders this season. San Antonio is always a contender whether serious or not, usually not talking about them fuels the Spurs to a number one seed in the playoffs, but we’ll find out tonight whether or not they have a team worth mentioning.

Halloween means one thing in my household, and that is that it’s basketball season. And with that comes all sorts of thundering up. The rollercoaster of a season in which each and every week the media will flip-flop on who the best team is and what’s wrong with the team that we thought were the best. It’s basketball season, charge up that cell phone and put on your seat belt, we are in for a long ride.