Follow me on Woofer!

I finally cracked and joined Woofer. If you don't know what that is, all I can say is July 2009 called, they want their social networking trend back. What does Woofer mean to the future of the NBA? I couldn't even begin to answer a question of that magnitude in under 1,400 characters.

For Sale: Dreams, $9.99

My great shame is 2 fold: One, I didn't own a franchise until WNBA sleeves were on the outs, and second, I'm passing on this stitched Joe Forte masterstroke of design. I want to drape it over my Christmas tree and practice holy traditions beneath it. But alas, power seller mechpaul told me he doesn't trade for stocktips and there's not much room to slide those multiple X's of material into these jeans buddy, I tell you. But dammit if someone out there doesn't appreciate a little less shoulder on the court or in the pool or in front of a mirror. If you're also into socially responsible jerseys take a look.

Now-defunct amateur comedy duo Rick Sund and Wally Walker get most of the credit for this one, and that one bit where Joseph got sucker-punched by Jerome James in the shower always made me smile. Thanks for selling dreams mechpaul, at least until Tuesday.

FREE COLLISON

Something for the involuntarily liberated fans. Unfortunately there's no Imperial Outlet, but if you want some truly phenomenal swag feel free to download and get your CafePress on. Or start a blog. Because if there's one thing this world needs, it's more NBA blogs.

Update: Color-coordinate with your favorite shade of sunset unique to this geographic region:

Nick Collison wears out his welcome.

The Oklahoman has long been terrified of new types of media. John Rohde, Darnell Mayberry and Berry "Bullfeathers" Tramel have all at points in time used their lofty positions as newsmen to warn against the threats these types of outlets pose to decent folk and the common good and civil society as well as probably their own relevance and possibly job security. Fortunately no blog or Twitter page could compete with a mighty newspaper, least of all the Oklahoman, standard-bearer for integrity and truth.

Against this backdrop comes Jenni Carlson's bizarre column about Nick Collison and his curious Twitter page, and how he uses it to showcase a "lovefest" for Seattle while "tak[ing] shots" at OKC. Check out the screencap. You could blame it on the 24-hour news cycle except Jenni Carlson really only writes about once a week. What's odd is that although she claims to not mind and even "like him more" for his pro-Seattle comments, the tone of much of the article pretty clearly conveys the opposite. And the lede is written in such a way that it could only be perceived as trying to stoke a negative reaction. She even warns the Thunder brass not to get any "crazy ideas" about a Twitter ban, as if any of this is ban-worthy, and as if anyone else had that idea. Besides me of course.

Needless to say, it has ignited a firestorm of controversy. And rightly so. Because Nick Collison may look like one of us, he may act like one of us, and he may even sweat profusely while on the job just like you or I, but Nick Collison is not one of us. Nick Collison is a Seattelite. Gasp!

It's true. Despite wearing the light blue, dark blue, sunset yellow and reddish-orange of the 'Der, Nick Collison still lives in Seattle. And the smug bastard even likes it there. He says so right on his Twitter page. Not only that, he thinks Oklahoma City's 105 degree summer heat is too hot. Earmuff the children!

When will athletes learn that we don’t want to hear honest, off-the-cuff remarks no matter how benign, no matter how much genuine wit or charm they might possess? We want canned, rehearsed pablum you hear from real Americans like Mitt Romney or Kevin Durant. We demand it. If something drifts outside this narrow spectrum of rehearsed soundbites, sportswriters become threatened and attack the offender and try to purge it with fire.

Now it's time to dispense some old-fashioned mob justice.

Leading the crusade is talk radio personality Jim Traber, who took to the OKC airwaves to blast Collison for his remarks (the ones about the weather), "declare war" and literally try to run him out of town. Which makes me wonder why a city this sensitive about the weather would name its team the Thunder. Then Nick called the station and confronted Traber live on the air. Click here to listen to the exchange. It's pure gold. Some quotes:

“I am trying to run you out of town.”

“People are mad at me for saying 105 degrees is hot”

“As far as I’m concerned you can stay there!”

"I'm from the EAST COAST!"

This is all so major-league I can hardly believe it.

Co-host: “To be fair, I remember in the years when you were doing a show out in Phoenix, there were many winter days when we were freezing our tails off in Oklahoma and you would remind us that it was 80 degrees out in Phoenix."

Traber: “Absolutely. But let me tell you another thing too, okay, let me tell you another thing. I love Oklahoma City, I’ve been here 17— actually 20 years in total, and I never said, I would never say things like, you know “I didn’t want to be here” and all this other…”

Collison: “You know what Jim, I never said I didn’t want to be in Oklahoma.”

Traber: "Okay. Okay, fine."

Traber wouldn’t be satisfied until Collison swore allegiance to the team and the state, and declared his desire to play there for the rest of his life a la Kevin Durant. After which I guess he would have believed him? Who knows. One thing I know is that Traber has stumbled upon an idea so brilliant in its simplicity I don't know how anyone in history hasn't thought of it before: Loyalty Oaths. This is something only the Oklahoma sports media could come up with.

But fear not, God-fearing Thunder fans (except for God), because the truth is out and Collison is on the chopping block. We are building this team upon players with Character™, and Collison clearly has none. And coincidentally he's also the highest paid player on the team, so this works out great. As far as I'm concerned, the team won't be safe until every last former-Sonic is run out of town. Except for Kevin Durant and Jeff Green, because they don't count. And Westbrook is kind of a gray area because he was drafted by the "Sonics", but not the "Seattle Sonics", because if you remember David Stern removed "Seattle" from the logo behind the podium on draft day even though the case hadn't settled yet. That was classy.

Kevin Durant Has Had Jessie Spano Syndrome & Doesn't Didn't Know What To Do With His Hands

Before Nike dubbed him Professor X lite "Velvet Hoop" and Afrocentrism was apparently ironic, an offseason evening might find KD in a DC club, rigidly posting up and pining for the comfortably obscure & surgical sterility of Bricktown. Since, though, he's totally mastered the hemi-airscratch, and is completely not outshined by fellow dynamic personality, Rashard Lewis (Video here). It's like hearing Eminem murder Jay-Z on his own shit. Or eating plain yogurt with a glass of lukewarm tapwater in a 60W incandescent-lit room with no windows. But this viral video marketing is genius- take a few successful millionaire professionals, dress them up like the good ol' days in the street. Maybe a cookout theme with hoodrats and shoes on the grill because times is hard. Oh and mammies, obviously. Done. Wait, caricatural bulging eyes. OK. Wrap.
I doubt there's anyone more appropriate to walk such a fine line between painful, ingrained stereotypes and hip-hop culture than this guy. Another W. Anywho, one might hardly recognize straight edge Kevin Durant sulking around a charismatic Lebron as the reimagined, smooth Hoop Velvet, but goddamnit, this is who he is now. Like how Dwight Howard is the new Shaq Carrot Top and his jokes are funnier, his characters more 3 dimensional. Wigs and muscle suits FTW. But here are some vids which are either clips from the episode where Lisa sets Jessie up on a blind date with Darnell Mayberry and it goes comically awry when they stand up to leave The Max and she's like 3 feet taller than him, or it's just someone carrying a life-size cardboard cutout around a club.

Dissed.

The latest non-story broiling at NewsOK.com is the perceived slight against Kevin Durant by whoever schedules the NBA's nationally televised games. The Thunder has (have?) only one nationally televised appearance this year, on ESPN. Three if you count NBATV games as "nationally televised", and apparently some of them do. But either way, this is an appalling lack of national exposure for one of the league's marquee franchises and for one of its most prominent stars. The only possible explanation is this: KD is being disrespected on a massive scale.

If you weren't aware, some say Kevin Durant is as good as, and possibly (probably?) better than, LeBron James. This debate has been gaining steam lately and there doesn't seem to be anyone who can answer it definitively. Yet the Cavs have 25 nationally televised games this year to the Thundermen's one. NO. FAIR. All I know is: the LeBrons went to the second round in his third year and Kevin Durant is the greatest player of all time to have never won more than 23 games in a season. So look out league, the Oklahoman's turning this fairly obvious, routine business decision into locker room fodder. It's like, what have you done for me lately, NBA? Don't you read blogs? We're cult faves over here. We're the Boondock Saints of the NBA. Your friends tell you that you totally have to see this movie, then you do, and it fucking sucks like nothing you've ever seen. What I'm saying is you should at least release our games on DVD box set.

So if the league is sitting on the current LeBron James in OKC, why won't they show the world? While it's probably a league-wide conspiracy, it might also be because of this report by Sports Business Journal, who compiled the local TV ratings from NBA markets over the course of last season. Apparently they can do that.

"Another disappointment came in Oklahoma City, where an average of just 8,000 homes watched Thunder games on Fox Sports Oklahoma, even though this season was the team’s first in the market."

Disappointment? Don't you mean "unqualified success"?

Yes, Kevin Durant was only seen by an average of 8,000 households per game, the second-worst figure in the NBA. The former LeBron drew 134,000 households on average locally. I find this statistic interesting because every time you go to a Thunder game, you are literally looking at a majority of Thunder fans in existence. It would seem that if anyone were disrespecting Kevin Durant it's Oklahoma City, which is an idea so patently absurd it makes me want to laugh out loud and then swallow hard and get very quiet. Durant has even inspired his own extremely FD t-shirt with his face on a milk carton:
But Durant is a Nike man, and the new LeBron, so something like this might be more appropriate: