George named an all-star starter

(Photo by Torreypurvey.com)

By Michael Kinney

In the first half of the NBA season, there are very few players who have been as good as Oklahoma City’s Paul George. The veteran forward has seemingly proven why he resigned with the Thunder in the offseason with his play so far.

George reached another milestone this week when he was named a starter for the 2019 All-Star Game. He is slated to make his sixth career All-Star appearance and his third All-Star start.

“When I got traded here, people thought it was going to be the end of me an all-star,” George said. “Coming out to the west. But… God is good.”

In 46 games this season, George is leading the Thunder in scoring while averaging career-highs in points (27.0), rebounds (7.9), steals (2.33) and made threes (3.4). He currently ranks eighth in the NBA in scoring, second in steals and first in points off turnovers (5.0). He leads the league in loose balls recovered (2.3) while ranking second in deflections (3.8).

Since Oct. 28, George has registered the second-best plus-minus rating in the NBA (+9.7) while helping lead the Thunder to a 29-14 record during this span.

“It’s great man,” Russell Westbrook said. “It’s amazing. Just to see the work he’s been putting in over the summer and coming to this year, obviously, in a very very high level and that’s no surprise to me at all. Shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody.”

The 2019 NBA All-Star Game will follow last year’s format whereby LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo will draft rosters from a pool of players voted as starters and reserves in each conference, making their picks regardless of conference affiliation.

Fan voting accounted for 50 percent of the overall vote while NBA players and a media panel each accounted for 25 percent of the vote. Among frontcourt players, George received the third-most fan votes (3,122,346) in the Western Conference.

“I’m completely honored, grateful, not only for the state of Oklahoma but for the world for voting,” George said. “Can’t thank the fans enough for being in my corner and behind me all season long.”

TNT will announce the reserves, selected by NBA head coaches, on Thursday, Jan. 31 during NBA Tip-Off. Russell Westbrook is expected to be named a reserve. Steven Adams has an outside shot.

“I think the world, the league, his competition, they all respect what he brings to the table. Steven is a two-way big man,” George said. “He’s going to play on offense and defense. I think teams respect his ability to do everything. That’s a big position and I think he’s very underrated, but his opponents, guys and teams we go up against, they know how much they have to scout for Steven, as much as they have to scout for us.”

The 68th NBA All-Star Game will take place at Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C., on Sunday, Feb. 17 at 7 p.m. TNT will televise the NBA All-Star Game for a 17th consecutive year.

Michael Kinney is a Freelance Content Provider

 

Sooners introduce new staff

By Michael Kinney

In the three weeks since Oklahoma lost in the Orange Bowl to Alabama, much has taken place inside the Sooners football program. Coach Lincoln Riley held his first media availability since the loss in the playoffs to talk about all the changes and introduce members of his new staff.

Bringing Hurts to OU

Last week former Alabama quarterback Jalen Hurts announced he would be playing his final year of college football at Oklahoma. Riley talked about the process of bringing the grad transfer to OU.

‘It’s been an interesting process,” Riley said. “When you have a situation like we did with Kyler (Murray), where I think all three options initially were on the table. One of those being coming back here. Had a discussion with him a week and a half ago… I knew after that night that he was going to go play professionally, one way or another and was not going to come back to OU. Once I knew that then obviously you have a chance to take a look at your room and see what you have, what you need, what are your concerns. After I knew that, I started thinking about adding somebody older in that room. Jalen came up here and visited. It was kind of a quick visit. You bring a grad transfer in, they don’t care about a lot of stuff. It went well and Jalen let us know that he was coming.”

Austin Kendall Situation

While the Sooners are gaining one quarterback in Hurts, they are losing another in Auston Kendall. He announced he was transferring to West Virginia last week.,

However, it didn’t come without a bit of controversy when Riley initially refused to grant Kendall permission to play at WVU in the 2019 season.

“Honestly, I encouraged the family to enter the transfer portal. There are parts of this transfer stuff I don’t agree with. But when asked the question from his dad, ‘if he were your son, what would you do,’ that was my honest answer. I had great conversations with him It was kind of just an open honest process all the way throughout… Despite everyone in the world wanting to jump the gun without any accurate info, it was a very smooth process. It was a tough decision on allowing them to be immediately eligible considering it is another conference opponent. Considering this is the pone conference you play every opponent. And sometimes, as you’ve seen the last couple of years, you’re going to play somebody twice.”

The deciding factor on Kendall

“It was the human element. With the way the transfers are going, with the way this thing is headed, we finally got to the point where we felt like we can do it,” Riley said. “In his time here we’ve brought in two other transfers at his position and done a great job here. In the end, the human element and my relationship with him. The thing that probably pushed me over the edge was my last conversation with him that morning. Then I released him that afternoon. The human element won out. It got the point where I could come to terms with it in my mind that it wouldn’t be an awful thing for our place.”

Hurts intangibles

“He certainly has the ability to be a really good leader for us,” Riley said. “But he’s got to get in here and learn this team, learn this offense. He’s got to get in here and compete for this quarterback job. There’s a lot of steps ahead. But there is no the guy has been in some of college football’s biggest and best games the last few years. I’ve been really impressed with how he carries himself and the way he works. There is not going to be much that happens to this kid that he hasn’t been through already. But he’s got to come do it here. It’s not going to immediately snap in just because he had success at another school. He realizes that.”

Grinch has arrived

Riley introduced the Sooners newest defensive coordinator, Alex Grinch. The first bit of news he put forth was that coaches Ruffin McNeil (outside linebackers) and Calvin Thibodeaux (defensive line) would be staying with the program.

“I’m thrilled to have the staff that we have,” Grinch said. “Coach McNeil, coach Thibodeaux round out that staff. You’ve got good coaches, good recruiters, and good teachers.”

What is Grinch’s philosophy?

“We kind of use the phrase, downhill approach,” Grinch said. “Really what we mean by that is being less reactionary. The offense knows the play their running, obviously, we have to react to where the ball is. That’s football. But try as best we can to put our guy in a situation that an offense has to react to you to a certain extent. Single gap defense in our front. From a coverage standpoint, attempt as best we can to make receivers win. The game is space and speed. Structurally it will be multiple on the front and the back end.”

Turnovers will be a priority

In 2018 the Sooners ranked 120th in the nation in turnovers gained with only 11. Grinch says he is bringing an emphasis on creating turnovers with him.

“We kind of coined the phrase ‘takeaways equal victory,’” Grinch said. “It stems from the fact that the sole purpose of the defense to be on the football field is to get the ball back to the offense. The purpose behind every play in football is for the defense to get the ball back to the offense. The ball doesn’t have any working knowledge of who its supposed to be thrown to. It doesn’t know the quarterback is supposed to throw it to the receiver. It doesn’t know it’s supposed to stay in the runningbacks arms. So if the ball doesn’t know, then how on the earth do we know. It affects possessions. We did a study several years ago. Essentially 24 takeaways equated to nine wins regardless of any other statistic in football.”

New staff

Oklahoma’s newest coaches were also introduced Sunday. Both Roy Manning (cornerbacks) and Brian Odom (inside linebackers) said they are entering their new position with an empty slate. Nothing that happened in the past will be used as far as evaluation on current players.

No excuses

Manning says he enters his new job with only high expectations.

“Just a no excuse mentality. I don’t like to waste anyone’s time and I don’t want them to waste my time. So I am just going to expect the best. Your best is good enough. It’s that simple. Only your best is good enough.”

Linebacker U?

Odom says the Sooners have a long and storied past at linebacker. Living up to that legacy will be important.

“I probably know the tradition at inside linebacker at the University of Oklahoma as well as anybody. TO be able to have the title of position coach over that group is awesome,” Odom said. “With that awesomeness comes a lot of responsibility. With those guys in there, they have a lot to live up to from the guys that came in during the past. There is an expectation level with the inside linebackers, going back as far as I can remember. I know there were people before I was born that were great players. There is a tradition here of inside linebacker play that is second to none.”

Michael Kinney is a Freelance content provider

Local artist inspired by Thunder star

By Michael Kinney

Despite having only started painting in 2012, Robert Peterson has seen his work hanging in some pretty impressive places.

The Oklahoma native says some of his art is part of collections belonging to billionaires, princes and small shop owners.

Yet, it’s one of Peterson’s newest works of art that could become his most popular.

“Honestly, it’s something that I’ll put on my resume of accomplishments,” said the 37-year-old Peterson. “I think that it’ll be good, it will be something that hopefully impresses galleries and museums.”

On Dec. 6, the Oklahoma City Thunder unveiled a commissioned painting from Peterson. His subject: Russell Westbrook.

The night before in Brooklyn, the star guard collected his 108th career triple-double, which moved him into third all-time.

“We thought there was an opportunity to be creative and to be a little different in helping to acknowledge that achievement,” Thunder Vice President of Broadcasting and Corporate Communications Dan Mahoney said. “We had our discussions with Robert Peterson, a tremendously gifted artist and big Thunder fan. We thought he was the perfect one to be part of that.”

The painting made its public debut via a one-minute Instagram video, which showed Peterson’s process of creating the mural of Westbrook.

The next night, with the Thunder taking on the Bulls in Chicago, fans who watched the local television broadcast of the game saw the broadcast crew talk about Westbrook’s record. But they also focused on Peterson and the painting.

“I’m just kind of using it to help push my brand,” Peterson said. “I picked up maybe like 50 new followers on Instagram. I use all of my social media to market my art and to push my art.”

Peterson has been able to make a living as an artist despite not living in an area that is known nationally for its diverse art. Peterson has sold paintings to Kevin Durant, Floyd Mayweather and Miley Cyrus.

But it was old-fashioned word-of-mouth that got him hired for the Westbrook painting.

In 2016, Peterson painted a mural on the side of a building in his hometown of Lawton. It was of Westbrook, after he decided to sign his long-term contract and stay in Oklahoma.

“I didn’t expect anything in return – I did the mural because Lawton and Oklahoma itself, they support my art,” Peterson said.

Word of the mural reached Michael Zubach, the broadcast creative lead for the Thunder.

“We knew of Robert based on his experience in Lawton with the mural of Russell Westbrook,” Zubach said. “We did a piece on him a couple of years ago. When we started conceptualizing for ideas on what we were going to do for 108, he was the person who we brought up in a conversation.”

The painting is currently sitting in the third-floor offices of the Thunder executive staff. It is surrounded by other special memorabilia the franchise has collected.

“Right now we’re just hanging onto it for our Thunder archives,” Mahoney said. “Don’t know what the future of it is. It’s a wonderful piece and we want to keep it and find the right use for it at a later date.”

Whether it’s hanging in the arena or seen on social media, thousands of people will get a chance to see the painting in all its detail and ferocity. Peterson wants it to be a message to the rest of the art world.

“This will be just something that adds to it as I try to build my career and eventually put a name for the art community on the map because there’s not a lot of artists from Oklahoma that are known for anything other than Native American or Western art,” Peterson said.

Michael Kinney is a Freelance Content Provider

Story appeared in The Journal Record