Eli🅾️tt

🇧🇪 🏀⚡

[Auteur House @auteurhouse]

David Lynch on dream logic.

[Belgian Red Devils @BelRedDevils]

Overturn this. 🧏‍♂️ #USABEL

[Mahir 🇹🇷🇬🇧 @ScrewderiaF1]

Cape Verde qualifying for the Round of 32

[✍️ 🇦🇱 @10blended]

watching Belgium play football is just pure torture I give up

[Yamz. @MapleGlazed_]

Silver is in his blood.

[Legion Hoops @LegionHoops]

Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins have won an NBA championship before Jimmy Butler.

[TrashTalk @TrashTalk_fr]

Les gens qui se plaignent d’un match de foot à 4h du matin

[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.

[NBACentral @TheDunkCentral]

Sam Presti says SGA doesn’t seek foul calls with poor behavior

“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.”

(Via @CAlmanza1007 )

[Eli🅾️tt @eliott_smeets]

RT @BrandonRahbar: Another regurgitated false narrative is OKC & San Antonio were built similarly through tanking.

OKC missed the postseas…

[JAE @OkieFBfan]

“Tonight’s matchup is the OKC Thunder Vs the Klu Klux Klan!!!!”

NBA Twitter:

[ThunderChats @ThunderChats]

GOOOOOOOOOOODMORNING THUNDER FANS

IT IS SUNDAY

THE THUNDER PUT ON A SHOW AND MADE A STATEMENT IN THE LAST GAME

RECLAIMING HOME COURT ADVANTAGE

OVERCOMING A 15-0 START BY THE SPURS

WHILE METHODICALLY TEARING THEIR DEFENSE APART

THE MISSION WAS TO WIN ONE IN SAN ANTONIO

THAT MISSION HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED

THEY THINK WE SHOULD BE SATISFIED

THEY THINK WE SHOULD HE THRILLED

WE ARE PLAYING WITH HOUSE MONEY

BUT TONIGHT WE GO FOR BROKE

BUT TONIGHT WE HAVE A CHANCE TO STEP ON THEIR THROATS

TONIGHT WE ARE DOWN AJAY AND LIKELY DUB

TONIGHT THE SPURS ARE GOING TO PLAY ANGRY

TONIGHT THE ODDS ARE STACKED AGAINST US

TONIGHT THEY ARE THINKING SURELY THEY CANT WIN THREE IN A ROW AGAINST THE SPURS

BUT TO THE CREDIT OF OUR FORMER ALL TIME GREAT I ASK… WHY NOT

WHY CAN SHAI NOT CONTINUE TO TO DISSECT ONE OF THE BEST DEFENSES IN BASKETBALL

WHY CAN CHET NOT CONTINUE TO BUST OUT OF HIS PSYCHOLOGICAL MIND BLOCK AGAINST WEMBY

WHY CAN IHART NOT TEAR THEM APART WITH HIS HUB PLAYMAKING AND PUSH SHOT

WHY CAN DORT NOT THROW FOX AND CASTLE INTO THE DORTURE CHAMBER

WHY CAN COOKIES AND CREAM, CARUSO AND CASON NOT KEEP ON WREAKING HAVOC ON THE OPPOSITIONS BALL HANDLERS AND FLY IN TRANSITION

WHY CAN THREE SIX MAFIA, LIGHTNING MCCAIN AND JWILL NOT PROCEED WITH SPACING THE FLOOR AND GETTING TIMELY BUCKETS OF SHAI’S GRAVITY

WHY CAN’T ISAIAH JOE CATCH FIRE LAUNCHING MOON BALLS ALL OVER THE COURT

WHY CAN KENNY NOT PROVIDE A SPARK OFF THE BENCH AND SET A TONE OF PHYSICALITY AND HUSTLE

WHY CAN AARON WIGGINS NOT SHAKE OFF THE COB WEBS BLOW OFF THE DUST AND SAVE BASKETBALL

WHY CAN’T WE GO UP 3-1 ON THE SECOND BEST TEAM IN THE SPORT

WHY CAN’T WE MAKE THE HARSHEST OF CRITICS CHOKES ON THEIR WORDS

WHY NOT CRUSH THEIR DREAMS

WHY NOT BREAK THEIR WILL

WHY NOT SHOCK THE WORLD ONE MORE TIME

WHY NOT SHOW THEM WHAT IT MEANS TO PLAY OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER PLAYOFF BASKETBALL

SO SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, AND EVERYBODY

PLEASE LET ME KNOW

WHAT MF DAY IS ITTTTTTTTT

#ThunderUp

[Underdog @Underdog]

Do SGA and the Thunder actually have a free throw advantage? 🤔

NBA Recap breaks it down for us:

[Stat Defender @statdefender]

Active Playoff Teams With The Fewest To Most FTA Per Game In The 2025-26 NBA Playoffs :

1. Oklahoma City Thunder — 21.0
2. Minnesota Timberwolves — 23.8
3. Los Angeles Lakers — 24.1
4. San Antonio Spurs — 25.8
5. Cleveland Cavaliers — 25.9
6. New York Knicks — 27.1
7. Detroit Pistons — 27.4

[David ImeI @Davidimel]

2026

[Eli🅾️tt @eliott_smeets]

@OKCThunderFR @dearbball 52 !

[Oklahoma City Thunder France @OKCThunderFR]

👕 NOUVEAU JEU CONCOURS ⚡️ :

Nouvelle petite collab' avec les copains de @dearbball pour vous offrir le t-shirt ci-dessous.

Pour participer :

🔸 Suivre @OKCThunderFR et @dearbball
🔸 RT
🔸 Devine le total de points inscrits par SGA + Chet lors du G1 des 1/2 de conf

[Joel Lorenzi @JoelXLorenzi]

Suns center Oso Ighodaro on pointed criticism of the officiating in Game 2: “I’ve seen all the stuff that’s going viral. But if I’m being honest, we didn’t lose last game because of the officials.”