Back at it
After a day off Sunday, the Thunder got back to business Monday with a lengthy practice. They’ll go once more on Tuesday before flying out to Billings, Mont. and playing Minnesota in the first preseason game on Wednesday. The Wolves open their preseason schedule tonight against Milwaukee.
In case you missed it, here’s my story from Sunday asking the question of whether the Thunder is too young to win. In today’s paper I laid out five questions to keep in mind as the preseason schedule gets underway this week. A Q& A with Kevin Durant also ran today and can be found here.
Mike Baldwin is writing about Joe Smith for Tuesday’s paper, detailing what the 13-year vet brings to the team.
Speaking of Smith, he’s got sore feet and has been limited in practice but should participate in some of the team’s seven preseason games. Smith went through only the first half of practice today, but Carlesimo said he wouldn’t be surprised if Smith plays during the three-game road trip. “Joe doesn’t need the reps as much as we need him to be healthy,” Carlesimo said. “We would err clearly on the side of caution with Joe. If it was a younger guy we would be saying, ‘Come on we need to get you out there and get you some minutes.’”
That’s exactly what P.J. is saying with Robert Swift. Swift and Mo Sene (get used to that, the guy’s recovering from microfracture surgery) are definitely out for Wednesday’s game. Unlike Sene, P.J. said Swift could play in some of this month’s exhibition games, “but he’s got to get out on the floor and practice and he’s got to play.”
Carlesimo took a not-so-subtle shot at Sene and Swift Monday. Swift, who Carlesimo called a “major problem” on Saturday, seemed to be the target of much of the ammo. “The problem that Robert and Mo have is just it’s getting away from them. Part of playing is being healthy. You don’t get upset when guys get hurt, but you look at guys’ history, they’ve got to play. When the same guy keeps getting hurt, you can’t count on that person. And that’s unfortunately been the case. You can’t count on somebody that’s hurt all the time.”
The good news is Johan Petro we learned today avoided a scare with what could have been a lingering hamstring injury and could now possibly play on Wednesday.
The bad news is the injury bug at power forward and center is becoming a big concern for Carlesimo. It’s a problem Carlesimo said he has yet to figure out how to get around this preseason. “I just hope that Johan and Joe Smith in particular can give us some minutes on the trip. I don’t want to think about playing Weezy or Nick 35 minutes. I want to get them in the low 20s.”
The injuries up front will have a trickle down effect on Jeff Green, who will be forced to play more power forward than anyone would like in the preseason. Carlesimo said he wanted to evaluate Green at small forward as much as he can this exhibition season and use him at power forward only in certain small-ball type situations. “Jeff played (power forward) last year, he knows the stuff, so that’s OK…but right now we may have to do it just to get through games.”
To advance Wednesday’s opener I’ll have a story examining whether the Thunder is on the right track in its rebuilding. But don’t use the ‘R’ word around this team. Here’s a sample of what’s coming Wednesday…
“That’s like last year’s question,” said Earl Watson. “I don’t see us rebuilding this year. I think last year you could say that we were definitely rebuilding with losing Ray Allen and losing Rashard Lewis, new coaching staff, new management, yeah, we were rebuilding. But right now, rebuilding was last year…I think the moves they made shows we’re not rebuilding anymore.”
Said Carlesimo: “I think we’re building. We’re not rebuilding. I think we established a nucleus last year. We have eight or nine guys returning from last year…We established who the guys were last year that we wanted around. We established some of the guys we think are going to be in our rotation. So I think it’s more like we started at the ground floor and now we’re trying to add pieces as we go forward. When people talk about rebuilding it’s usually getting rid of a whole bunch of guys and bringing in a whole new bunch. I think that process over two years has taken place. But right now we’re identifying pieces we feel good about being able to win going forward and continue to improve. So I think that’s a little different.”
-DM-
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Go OKC Potatoes!!!