Camp Observations: Day 5
The Ford Center was the setting for the fifth day of training camp, giving players their first feel for their new home arena. It was an important change of venue because you wouldn’t want the Oct. 29 regular season opener against the Bucks to be the second time the players use the Ford Center. The next time the Thunder uses the Ford Center will be the Oct. 14 preseason game against the Clippers.
The team will have an open practice on Oct. 20 inside the Ford Center, allowing fans to come and see how things are done. Details haven’t been announced yet, but the team is believed to scrimmage in front of the fans. Not sure whether players will be available for photos, autographs and all that.
The biggest news from today is Johan Petro sustained a mild strain to his right hamstring near the end of practice. He was walking around gingerly by the time the media was allowed in, and he had the right side of his shorts pulled up. Following a free throw game just before the end of practice, Petro was excused from running the lap around the Ford Center that his White team owed for losing the free throw game.
Petro is a big loss from a depth standpoint, because the Thunder was already thin up front with Robert Swift (hand) and Mo Sene (leg) recovering from injuries. Without Swift and Petro healthy this preseason, Chris Wilcox and Nick Collison will need to play more minutes than would be ideal for the exhibition season.
Further depleting the team’s frontcourt is a damaged toenail on the foot of Joe Smith. Considering D.J. White has been limited because of a jaw injury, Collison and Wilcox are now the only healthy post players on the roster. As of today, training camp invitee Chris Alexander would be the second string center.
“Going into next week’s (games), at (point guard, shooting guard and small forward) we’re fine,” Carlesimo said. “We have enough bodies to rest guys, to play guys minutes to do what we want. At (power forward and center) right now, unless our situation improves dramatically in the next three or four days, we’re going to end up having to play some bigs a lot more minutes than we want or play some guys out of position. We just don’t have enough healthy bigs.
“Mo’s the only one that we anticipated not being able to practice. Anybody else not being able to practice has been a setback for us.”
P.J. was particularly disappointed in Swift, who fractured his right hand at the end of the offseason after already trying to bounce back from surgery to repair a torn meniscus from last season.
“Robert Swift is a major problem right now,” Carlesimo said. “Everything’s getting away from him. He needs to get on the floor…It’s going to get away from people right now, and they ain’t gonna catch up.”
The good news is Wilcox said he’s had no problems health-wise after coming into training camp fresh off of what was believed to be food poisoning. He said the illness made him lose weight and he hoped to put it back on in training camp.
“I’m doing good,” Wilcox said. “It’s training camp, so everybody’s sore… But I haven’t really skipped a beat. The first couple of days I could tell I was a little winded. But at the same time I stayed out there every day, ran on the treadmill every day until I got my wind up and now it’s starting to pay off in practice.”
The team will take Sunday off and get back at it on Monday with a couple of hard practices Monday and Tuesday before Wednesday’s preseason opener against Minnesota.
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Go OKC Potatoes!!!