This weeks Sports Illustrated named the Top 8 NBA Coaches & OKC’s honcho failed to make the list….

1-Popovich, 2-Rivers, 3-Carlisle, 4-Thibodeau, 5-Spoelstra, 6-Karl, 7-Adelman, 8-Hollins….

Sports Illustrated doesn’t always get it right but they point you in the general direction…. 3&4 could easily be 7&8….

Makes me mad, on 2k12 I have a GREAT LEGENDARY team playing as OKC BUT the “coach” is Brooks, I hate timeouts because it always shows him on the sidelines & I don’t know how to fire him/get rid of him…. Damn quirks of the game….

WHERE IS BROOK’S NAME, IF HE IS A GOOD COACH??? I DON’T THINK ANYONE FROM THE SPORTS WORLD THINK SO!

On another note, Sooners championship entitlement has existed for at least as long as I’ve been aware of its existence.

Grumbling and complaining has run rampant all around the Memorial Stadium stands, even when the Sooners stood tall as a regular top national-champion contender year after year.

God knows, when I was a little girl in the mid and later 70′s inside Memorial Stadium I wanted to rip off the heads of Sooner-fan gripers, who yelled at the Selmon brothers defense for allowing a first down or 10 points in a game, and yelled at Thomas Lott’s offense for not gaining at least 20 yards on every carry – “Stupid Lott didn’t let the right man carry the football,” the fans bellowed.

Forget the moaning and groaning when the Sooners wishbone fumbled three, four, six times in games the Sooners won by 50 points or more.

The humbless entitlement, however, doesn’t exist among the thousands and thousands of Thunder fans in the stands thrilling over their beloved, exciting, enthusiastic, adventuresome millionaire Thunder players.

The fans here don’t complain. They’re too busy cheering their favorite Thunder on – “Just win the game, and if the Thunder win enough games they’ll play for the championship. But for now, Thunder, just win the game.”

See the difference?

The only Thunder serial complainers I’ve found are among those who don’t regularly attend, or can’t attend, Thunder home games, who apparently love complaining on the darker side, even if the darker side occupies only a square foot.

Sigh.

Not everyone, though. Some good stuff interspersed among the rest. Best comment award would have to go to Dragon, for the favorite color line. That’s funny. And true. And Mike’s observation about entitled Sooner fan mentality….agreed. And I’m a Sooner fan. But he’s right.

I guess for me, at this point, it would be disappointing to not win a title someday, but I don’t see myself jumping off a bridge or something, if we end up with no titles. The fact that we have a realistic chance at a title, after a mere five years? That’s what really blows me away.

Think about it. Not that long ago no one even gave “NBA team in OKC” a serious second-thought. Now here are debating what it would mean if our NBA team did not win a title someday, realizing that they very well could.

And that’s only one part of the progress you can see if you lift your head up above the trees for a moment, and take a look at this impressive forest.

The Oklahoma City Thunder are taking on the Orlando Magic tonight, a team that just had to go through one of the tougher things in professional sports.

Orlando saw its former star, Dwight Howard, return to their arena in a different uniform and torch them for 39 points and 16 rebounds last Wednesday night.

Nothing could have felt worse for an NBA fan.

Howard was loved in Orlando for many years. He led the Magic to an NBA Finals appearance in the 2008-09 season and he kept Orlando relevant among the elite teams in the league for many seasons. It wasn’t until the last few seasons that things started to get ugly.

Bolting for LA is nothing new for big, ringless stars in the NBA and that’s just what Howard did.

The Thunder have their own young stars right now in Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. Right now, it seems impossible to imagine one of them dawning a different jersey in their NBA careers. You could have said the same thing about James Harden a year ago though.

Durant’s contract will be up before Westbrook’s is. Durant is currently signed through the 2015-16 season and Westbrook through 2016-17.

Will the Thunder fans ever have to go through what Orlando fans have?

There’s one major difference that makes this comparison a little unfair and that’s that we are talking about Durant here. He just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who could do to Oklahoma City what Howard did to Orlando.

But it’s not if Durant does exactly what Howard did. It’s just if there’s a chance Durant could not be playing for the Thunder after the 2015-16 season.

What if the Thunder don’t win a title during that time? What will everyone be saying about Durant and this franchise?

It would probably be a lot of talking heads saying Durant doesn’t have what it takes to win the big one. Or that Westbrook and Durant just don’t work together. Or that Durant needs LeBron to win a title.

It’s very reasonable to figure the Thunder could not win a title in that time span. Just watch LeBron play a few games and you start to think there’s no one out there that could beat him.

Durant may end up in the same position LeBron was in his last year’s in Cleveland. At that point, there may even be an opportunity to go play with LeBron whether it be in Miami, LA or even Cleveland. A lot can happen between now and then.

Thunder fans shouldn’t be too worried though. A huge reason why the James Harden trade was made was to ensure the ability to keep Durant past his current contract. If the Thunder were stuck trying to stay under the salary cap with Westbrook, Harden and Serge Ibaka also on the books in 2015-16, keeping Durant would have become extremely difficult.

Thunder GM Sam Presti has set this franchise up quite nicely for the future. He will continue to bring in young talent to surround Durant and be able to keep the realistic expectations as high as any team’s in the league.

You never know though. Nothing would be more heartbreaking for this city than seeing Durant leave. Let’s just now think about it.

By Andrew Kennedy-S.I. Sports

Perry is showing he can shoot the ball and should be given minutes to get NBA experience for his short 6 minutes, like a point per minute. His body is similar to Durant’s thin structure.

The main unit is now double the minutes of the bench going to the end of the 2nd quarter with 36 points with only 6 points from when the bench took over and not much increase.