Yahoo Sports Senior NBA Reporter Vincent Goodwill and Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe take a look at the Thunder’s young roster and whether it has the talent to make the playoffs in the coming years. Listen to the full conversation about “Good Word with Goodwill” — part of the “Ball Don’t Lie” podcast — and subscribe at , or wherever you listen.
Video transcript
I’m not going to say what coach it was, but there was a coach I talked to before the playoffs and he said, and we just mentioned Oklahoma City and he said, put them in an environment where it’s five minutes to go, uh, it’s not a game. closed, but only one playoff game played.
In fact, he said, in the first game of a playoff series, would I as a coach be uncomfortable playing them in their own building if they were inexperienced and had five minutes left in the game?
No, I wouldn’t be.
And I think even if it was a second round and they were on the road instead of being at home in that specific scenario, you could understand, I could totally understand what that coach was talking about and what he meant and it kind of that was revealed and you brought up one of my next points which would be: she had an excellent offensive series there.
I felt like when the game slowed down, he was still able to get to the points and get a bucket.
But Oklahoma City needed a second guy who could create double teams, who could create some mismatches and make defenses uncomfortable.
Nobody was really able to do that.
I don’t see where Josh Getty fits on this team anymore, especially if she’s going to handle the ball so much.
But Garrett, we talked about this a lot.
The Western conference moves very quickly.
We can’t assume Oklahoma City will automatically be there.
I think they will be in contention, but you can’t bet on these things year after year like you used to.
No, because there are teams coming, you know, there will be some young teams coming.
We don’t know what to expect from Sacramento next year.
What do the Warriors do in the off-season, what the hell is going to happen in Phoenix?
But Portland will take a step forward.
They have too much young talent not to do it.
Right.
Um, you know, there’s all over Memphis, Memphis can bounce back, right.
I mean, if they grew up healthy, I mean, they just had probably one of the worst years in NBA history health-wise.
Yes, you cannot deposit this.
It would be nice for any team in the West to take a natural step forward because we had no idea about Minnesota.
If you had said Minnesota went to the Western Conference Finals in October, everyone would have laughed at you.
The clowns, the chokers resisted.
Who, who will be, who will do?
Well, what’s cat, what, you know who’s going to, who’s going to win, defensive win of the year.
Rudy will be like, you know, if everything was one and yet everyone had respect for Anthony Edwards, but the rest of the guys didn’t really get much respect and Connolly was, well, he’s getting older, so you never know who that is. .
This will take a step forward in the west.
Sam Pressley did a great job being young, but now you need a vet there.
You need someone other than SG to say, OK, guys like this is what we’re about to do.
It has to be a, uh, you know, a 30-something or a late 20-something that’s with him and says somewhere else to say, hey, guys, like we’re close.
But this is how we have to move forward and be more mature, more professional.
Like you guys can get past these important moments because I haven’t seen anything from JJ Dog.
I didn’t see anything, you know, they all took that alley.
I didn’t see any of these guys other than you and I said, give me the damn ball.
I’m plundering us to victory.
