Chepe

Amateur Runner, Snowboarder, Mountain biker, #America #Murica #ThunderUp

[Chepe @jlrubes]

Pinning this till we beat the brakes off @spurs

[Mayor David Holt @davidfholt]

With the reported departures of Thunder champions Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe, it is most fitting to honor their legacy in Oklahoma City. These two gentlemen were key contributors to our 2025 NBA championship, our city’s first championship in a major league professional sport. Aaron and Isaiah will therefore always be a part of OKC’s history. On behalf of the people of Oklahoma City, we thank Aaron and Isaiah and we wish them all the best in their next chapter. I’ve included below the 2025 proclamations for “Aaron Wiggins Day” and “Isaiah Joe Day,” each of which provides a recap of their legacy.

[Thunder Film Room @ThunderFilmRoom]

Isaiah Hartenstein’s IG story 😭😭

[𝙽𝚘𝚝𝙰𝚗𝙾𝙺𝙲𝙵𝚊𝚗 ⚡️ @NotAnOKCFan]

These two stuck with the Thunder through the rebuild and were vital to the championship run.

They represented OKC the right way every step of the journey, were great teammates, and are even better people.

We will miss you, Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins. 🧡💙

[Mayor David Holt @davidfholt]

All this man has done in the last 12 months is help bring OKC its first-ever championship and NYC its first championship in half a century.

Congrats to back-to-back champion Dillon Jones!

[Mayor David Holt @davidfholt]

You’re the champion till the next team raises the trophy, and that moment has arrived.

On behalf of the people of Oklahoma City, congratulations to the New York Knicks and the people of New York City. You are the NBA champs!

(To be clear, I’m never retiring my championship apparel)

[Chepe @jlrubes]

Stays undefeated

[Brandon Rahbar @BrandonRahbar]

Dillon Jones
2 seasons
2 teams
2 rings

[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.

[Daig Muse⚡️ @DaigMuse]

Victor Wembanyama is 7’4” and just shot 28% from the floor in an NBA Finals game

I will not let the TL sweep this under the rug💀

[Joe Mussatto @joe_mussatto]

Russell Westbrook, an investor in OKC’s new multipurpose stadium and surrounding district, speaks at the groundbreaking today.

[SVPod @_SVPod]

"You can't be better in a loss than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was on Saturday night... can't play better, can't be a better example, can't lead better... Shai acted like a grown ass man before during and after."

@notthefakeSVP on SGA's performance in game 7 and actions afterward

[Joel Lorenzi @JoelXLorenzi]

SGA has set the bar for what he values in this league pretty high. How does he measure a season where OKC fell short of the Finals?

"It was a failure. I did not achieve what I wanted to achieve. In my experiences I learn the most about myself and make the most gains when I fail"

[Chepe @jlrubes]

@okcthunder have arrived -Sam Presti

[Brandon Rahbar @BrandonRahbar]

An incredible 2 season Thunder run comes to an end.

1 championship, 2 Western Conference Finals trips, 2 MVPs, 68 wins, 64 wins.

Just came up a few points short of another Finals trip.

Can't help but wonder how this series looks with JDub and Ajay Mitchell.

OKC will be back.

[Chepe @jlrubes]

Spurs get the * if they win right due to the injury of JDub and Ajay right?

[Enes Kanter FREEDOM @EnesFreedom]

I love my Knicks, but #ThunderUp all the way until the end.

Great conversation on @FoxNews about the #NBA Finals and the incredible energy around New York basketball right now.

And of course, I had to show some love to Oklahoma City too. That organization and fanbase will always feel like family to me.

[Chepe @jlrubes]

@NotAnOKCFan Belt to ass with starter playing full 48 and no foot off the gas.

[Sam Picks @tiosampresti]

É impossível o rookie n ter sido instruído a fazer isso aqui. Seja pelo FP ou pelos treinadores.

Dois lances em que ele fez a mesma coisa no principal jogador do time adversário.

Soma-se isso a Wemby mandando os caras baterem em JMac...

[Hater Report @HaterReport]

Jared McCain on the hard fouls at the end of the game:

“Yeah that was crazy I didn’t expect it…we were at the free throw line and I was like ‘why’d you do that man’… and he was like ‘I got another one for you too’” 😭💀

[Devin Newsom @DevinNewsom]

TITANIUM!!! ⚡️⚡️⚡️