Weekend Wrapup

Well, the last game I was able to see in person was last week's last second loss to the Nuggets. Over the weekend the Thunder beat down a quality Trail Blazers team and a bad Sacramento team. I was unable to make either. I've missed at least half this team's wins. If I didn't know better I'd think my presence was a bad thing.

A great win against Portland

I posted a few weeks back about how fun it is to read the other team's home paper. Nothing brings out bitterness, shock and disappointment quite like losing to the Thunder.

This story from Joe Freeman in The Oregonian illustrates this point.

Some choice cuts:

"In one of their worst and uninspiring performances of the season, the Blazers were outworked, outclassed and overmatched against the lowly Oklahoma City Thunder, falling 102-93 in an even-worse-than-it-sounds head-scratcher before 18,694."

From Brandon Roy, "They weren't scared of us -- at all," Roy said. "They came out from the opening jump and said, 'None of you guys can stay in front of us.' It was different than any other game. It was almost like they didn't have any respect for us. From the opening jump, they felt like they could beat any one of our players at any time. I don't know, I feel they just disrespected us. But if you can do it (and get away with it), do it."

Growth in the win over Sacramento

If the win over Portland was a confidence builder, the win against Sacramento could be even more important. As the Thunder continue to grow it's going to become more important to win games against teams of the King's (and the Thunder's) caliber. Portland dropped from 4th to 5th in the Western Conference with Friday's loss. Hopefully the Thunder find themselves jockeying for playoff position and every win is going to be critical.

The Thunder also showed great fight. The Thunder lost a huge lead but battled back. The Thunder have lost probably 10 games that followed this script.

New Mascot a bison

Here's the link from The Oklahoman

I like it. Bison is what I liked for a name and I think it works well with Thunder. I am surprised it wasn't some kind of Thor figure because so many people at games dress up in that sort of costume.

I just hope they make it look tough more than cartoonish and, for the love of all things holy, it has to be better than the horse mascot's that OU started using a few years ago. This hideousness sets the bar for me.

A Tacky Move

I was looking around the "Interweb" for Thunderwear and noticed that the price of identical products on the official "Thundershop" website and NBA.com are different. The Thundershop prices are way higher. At Thundershop you can get an authentic jersey, any size, for $240.00. At NBA.com the same jersey is $209.99 for XXL, $179.00 for smaller sizes.

Shooting Shirts (warmup shirts) on Thundershop are $80.00 for short sleeves and $90.00 for long sleeves. NBA.com has them for $53.99 and $69.99.

There are other examples. You can find Thunder gear on Yahoo! as well and it eflects the NBA.com pricing.

This is either poor work by merchandisers who can't get on the same page somehow or it's gouging on the part of the Thunder.

I hate to say it but I think it's the latter. Unfortunately, if true, it lends credence to the argument that Clay Bennett et al are money-hungry, opportunistic bastards. I know it's a business but they are robbing their neighbors. I can't imagine much merchandise goes outside of the state.

That's my public service for the day. All the extra money they are getting on merchandise had better go towards keeping Kevin Durant.