Tyler Burmaster

Husband, Father, Flat Rolled Steel Connoisseur, Tulsa Univ. Sports Enthusiast, Ball Knower

[Hater Report @HaterReport]

Thunder fans watching the Spurs have the biggest choke job in NBA Finals history

[Tyler Burmaster @BurmasterTyler]

@TherealwesWes @getnickwright Yes

[Dabby @hiimdabby]

okc and shai are genuinely a 100 times more likeable than this spurs team and wemby.

you people are just fucking geeks who only complain about refs and physicality to support your uninformed biases about a team/player.

[Michael Martin @MichaelOnSports]

Still not a repeat offender of dirty, reckless, or dangerous plays if you ask Spurs fans.

Only Ethical Hoops from Wemby forever!

[Clemente Almanza @CAlmanza1007]

Probably the best moment from what Sam Presti said today. Went scorched earth on all of the SGA narratives that have been bubbling up over the years:

Of all the things that I've talked to Shai about, this is actually one I've never talked to him about. He's probably going to kill me for talking about this, truthfully.

First of all, let me just start with the opposing coaches for one second. The post-game press conference has turned into the bully pulpit to create competitive advantage. I mean, we know what that is. It used to be you'd get up there, you'd talk about your own team. Now everyone gets up there and they talk about the officials and they discredit the other team. Again, like they're great competitors, so we know why that's happening, and I don't fault them because I think they may think it works.

So the question is why are they continuing to do it? Because there's financial incentives not to do it. But everyone's competing. Let's also recognize that it's the bully pulpit for competitive advantage, and that's what it's kind of turned into, which is part of competing. We all get that.

Relative to Shai and the narrative on that, he's playing against six people. He's got five defenders, and the sixth defender is social media. That's a reality. He's not going to be the last player that the machine decides to target, but no one's going to handle it as gracefully because, when they turn it on somebody else, they're not going to step up there every night and not acknowledge it.

A couple things more just on the whole topic. We think all the time or we hear all the time about things that people don't like about the NBA, which are inaccurate, but they're narratives that exist on the alternate reality.

One, players don't play defense. Shai's a two-end player. Now, he plays with four or five All-NBA defensive players, so sometimes his defensive ability gets undersold, but he plays two ends.

Second, all NBA players do is complain, bitch and moan and try to intimidate the officials with bad behavior in the games to give foul calls. He's gotten three technical fouls this year. None for complaining. One for waving a towel in support of someone that hit a shot that doesn't play very often. Okay. So he's not doing that.

The other thing is load management. Nobody plays. They take all these games off. Shai plays every night. He missed a bunch of games this year for an oblique strain, and we might give him a night off two or three times a year, maybe. But he plays back-to-backs. He plays heavy minutes. He plays against good teams. He plays against teams that are bad teams. He plays every night. His consistency is well documented. So you can't get him on that.

The next one is all you do is shoot 3s. NBA players, all they do is shoot 3s. Okay. Well, he's brought the mid-range back to an art form. He's transcendent for any generation, any player. That's why like older players love his game.

It's also one of the reasons he gets fouled a lot. Because he plays in the mid-range because we don't call the landing space fouls in the mid-range the way we do at the 3-point line, right, because he's avoiding that oftentimes because there's too many bodies in there. With the 3-point shot, you can see it easily, and I think a lot of times he's trying to avoid that. So he's not a guy that's just launching 3s. So we can check that off the box.

The other one is like these guys are just totally inaccessible. They're in their own world. Well, the guy signs 400 autographs before every game. Before the Western Conference Finals Game 7, he's signing autographs.

So we've got a litany of things that generally the narrative is about NBA players that they do wrong. Well, based on those narratives, I don't agree with them, but he would be doing them right. And he doesn't really complain about any of it. So if we're just talking about trying to draw fouls, well, every other great player in the NBA, that's part of the game is drawing fouls.

He drew 415 fouls this year; 11 were challenged. 11. Four of those were overturned. So that's like 2 1/2 percent of the foul calls were actually challenged. Again, that's part of the bully pulpit part of this thing, which I get and it's part of competing.

As far as those fouls, I think in the fouls drawn -- I had this written down here -- he's tied with Embiid for 8 and 9 in terms of number of fouls drawn in the season. 6 and 7 are Jaylen Brown and Wembanyama. So that's kind of the group of players that he's in.

But I understand, if you listen to the narrative, you'd think he's 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. He drew a lot more fouls before we got much better, and when we got better, obviously people pay much more attention to him.

We'll have to see where that goes, you know what I mean? We don't know. He'll never say anything about it. And the only thing I'm pointing out is I don't think he's being unfairly handled, I just think, instead of talking about something that we are looking to find as a negative, can we please also acknowledge that he also does a lot of positive things for the game, most of which are the things that people are very unhappy -- not unhappy, but they don't like on social media. And I know that a lot of us live on social media. I would think they would love him for that reason.

This is like the world we live in today. There's a lot of financial incentive to create these things, career ambitions, like I said before. The best thing we can do when those things happen is stay above it.

Now I'm pointing it out now at the end of the season, but we're going to have to stay above it because it's probably not going to change. But he does a lot of good things too.

[Trilly Donovan @trillydonovan]

I’m pretty sure this is how Kelvin Sampson evaluates recruits.

[Tyler Burmaster @BurmasterTyler]

@thetweetsofTodd

[Cameron Jourdan @Cam_Jourdan]

Not the first time a Frenchman retreated and let someone else do the dirty work for him

[Tyler Burmaster @BurmasterTyler]

@SpursReporter @thetweetsofTodd

[Tyler Burmaster @BurmasterTyler]

@thetweetsofTodd @ChrisPParrish I am in my recliner and he looks fine.

[Sifu @MEdwardsBball]

😏…..14 year old 7th Grader ain’t Legit!
Thats HS Freshman Age! 🤣

#ImJustSaying 🤷🏽‍♂️

[Chad P. Smith @ChadPSmith_]

Much like the Sith feeding off anger and chaos, #Thunder hate is starting to sustain me. The national meltdown has been incredible to watch.

A bunch of people from coping in real time because OKC has built a better organization than their franchise. Better GM. Better coach. Better players. Better culture. All in a smaller market. It’s humiliating for people who were promised geography/population was supposed to matter.

At some point you have to stop fighting it and simply accept you are witnessing the beginning of an OKC dynasty. Healing starts there. Praying for everyone affected during this difficult time. Take care, bye bye

#NBA #ThunderUp

[Scott Van Pelt @notthefakeSVP]

Spotted them the first 15 and won by 15.

On the road.

Championship stuff.

[RecruitLook Hoops @RL_Hoops]

2030 | Corbin Griffith | #RLHoops

⭐️ Lead the game in scoring with 14pts
⭐️ Picture perfect jump shot
⭐️ Efficient with or without the ball
⭐️ Runs the floor every trip

[Riggs @RiggsBarstool]

Incredible trip to Shangri-La Resort in Oklahoma. Had never even really heard of the place. A fantastic 27 holes winding through the tree lines with tricky ass greens & great bunkering. Plus a PHENOMENAL 18-hole par 3 course.

[Bobby Fijan @bobbyfijan]

As a PR matter … Dimon should jump in, and go full scorched earth.

Not only is it good “politics” but it’s also just true that if someone f**** with one of your team members like this guy did should warrant massive retribution.

[Derelle Desiré @DerelleDesiree]

AGTG let’s work!!! #committed

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

SGA made a slight edit to Dillon Brooks’ jersey in his insta dump

[Mike Hoffmann @MikeHoffmann]

Luke Falk shared a Mike Leach story that stopped me cold:

Two kids. One rich. One poor.

Every training camp, Coach Leach told his team about these 2 kids.

The rich kid has two choices.

Get soft. Get entitled. Expect everything handed to him because he was handed more.

Or take the resources, the coaching, the opportunities, and compound them into something greater.

The poor kid has two choices too.

Say nobody gave him anything. Blame the world. Make his circumstances the reason he never became what he could have been.

Or outwork everyone in the room.

Luke said the locker room had both. Kids from wealth. Kids from nothing. Kids with every advantage. Kids who scraped for every inch.

Same choice for all of them.

Ownership or victimhood.
Fuel or excuse.

The rich kid can waste the head start or build on it.

The poor kid can drown in the deficit or weaponize it.

Greatness doesn't come from where you start.

It comes from which kid you choose to feed.

Credit to @coachlukefalk for continuing to share golden nuggets about Coach’s legacy