Chris Pardoe

Proverbs 3:5 Panthers, Yankees, Thunder, and all things Hawkeyes.

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

Miss ya pup, rest easy

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

I miss Panther football

I miss Thunder basketball

Already ready for fall

#ThunderUp #KeepPounding

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

This is why Presti is the GOAT

[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.

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

I just went 82-0, think you can go 82-0? https://t.co/iNpmsofCjn #NBA #82and0

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

Sounds like an open invite for a hit job Wemby with the crap he pulls, but that would probably break the internet wouldn’t it??

[Jeff Biesinger @JeffBiesinger]

I’m going to be honest. I’m a huge fan of policing your own. MLB does it. NHL does it. NFL does it. The only way to get players to stop acting like idiots, is to let them know when they are. If a team is going to constantly flop and foul bait, then you may as well get your money’s worth. I’d love to see more of this in the NBA. It’s the only way things are going to get cleaned up. Obviously, the league isn’t going to fix it.

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

This paired with the elbow in round 2 and the “hard fouls” instructions to the benchwarmers, Wemby’s building a nice profile of dirty plays for himself

[ThunderChats @ThunderChats]

Blow this tweet up like it’s the other way around

[Jake @JakeWayneSports]

This OKC Thunder team has separated media members who are truly knowledgeable on the sport, and those who are out engagement farming.

Fanta tells it how it is, and has naturally built a huge following by being authentic. This is the way.

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

Well crap, now I can’t enjoy the playoffs anymore that sucks. My day is ruined cuz some random doesn’t wanna watch basketball anymore

[Wake Up Barstool @wakeupbarstool]

The Thunder have broken @EBoKnowss

After last night, he will no longer watch the NBA Playoffs

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

I would like to respectfully request you stick with your Spurs love and stop the constant flip flopping of opinion so OKC can stop getting jinxed by you.

Please and thank you

[Joel Moran @joelvmoran]

Part of me thinks OKC goes up 3-1 today

[Rob Perez @WorldWideWob]

The most basic loose ball scramble ever there between Fox and Dort. Do not even try to suggest it.

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

Every single star in the NBA would be tacking up techs leading to suspensions in the playoffs.

SGA, Wemby, Jokic, Luka, LeBron, ALL of them. No way the league would let that happen

[PFT Commenter @PFTCommenter]

Counterpoint- it sucks when sga flops and even if it doesnt get called in game, the nba should review to give techs and fines retroactively between games

[Lo 🍀 @SoloDaCannon]

Okc Vs SA is cinema hoops. Quit tryna ruin it. Castle is hacking SGA every play... Hartenstein is hacking Wemby every play.. oh the fuck well. Playoffs between 2 teams that hate eachother. We’ll see this series at least 5 more times.

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

Both teams are being equally physical with the superstars, both sides need to acknowledge it and just focus on watching fun basketball instead of reffing narratives

[Tom Orsborn @tom_orsborn]

Julian Champagnie believes it's time for him and his teammates to "hit back" to protect Wemby from the Thunder's physical play:

"The guys hit him, they pull him, they grab his jersey, they're grabbing his arm when he's jumping...That's not basketball.”

https://t.co/MmHhqWBMEU

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

But SGA is a free throw merchant! Geniuses on this app tell me so every game and there’s no way that those people are wrong!!

[Pardon My Take @PardonMyTake]

Despite the SGA flopping video that went viral

SGA only went to the free throw line three times

[Barstool Iowa @BarstoolUIowa]

Oh boy! Can’t wait see how it ends

[Hoop Central @TheHoopCentral]

“You people at home and TV talking about they were physical with Wemby, man y’all need to stop it. I’ve been kissed harder…For you people thinking that’s physicality, y’all need to shut the hell up.”

— Charles Barkley. 🤣💀

(h/t @NBA__Courtside)

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

This series is gonna be freaking epic, hats off to the Spurs they were great tonight.

Shai’s gotta be better in game 2, absolute must win. Need Chet and the shooters to show up too

No need to panic when all but Caruso/Dub played below their standard, just gotta hit shots

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

LETS GOOOO

[Shams Charania @ShamsCharania]

Oklahoma City Thunder star Jalen Williams – out since April 22 with a hamstring strain – is listed available against the San Antonio Spurs for Game 1 of the Western Conference finals.

[Chris Pardoe @chrispardoe14]

The only tough question here is who’s 1 and who’s 2 between JDub and Chet

[DraftKings Sports @DKSports]

Rank the following players 1-4 👀