What does thunder have to do with Oklahoma City?

Do you know anyone that has been to Oklahoma city, wants to go to Oklahoma City or will ever go to Oklahoma City? Few cities with major sports franchises inspire less reason to visit than Oklahoma City. Other than the OK City bombing, does anyone know anything about this city? I'm not even a typical northeasterner that has never been to the Midwest and I still had barely heard of it. I've lived in the Midwest for six years and I was surprised to find out that it has about 500,00 people, which is quite comparable to Boston and much larger than Salt Lake. Sacramento and Green Bay are two other cities with a sports team where I wouldn't even be curious to stop for gas.
Switching cities, especially from Seattle which has a good basketball history and television market to a completely new place seems ill conceived. It isn't that basketball can't survive in smaller markets because it can - as proven by the Jazz and Kings - but moving doesn't cure all of your ills. Teams in smaller markets have to be smarter. They have less leeway to have lean years as your revenue sources aren't as large. You have less room to make a bad signing because of smaller television contracts and lower ticket prices. I know that there were a lot of reasons for this latest move but if Seattle was consistently in the playoffs, Ok City would never have happened. How many years does a team get before it has to leave down again because it isn't winning, which really means poor management. You can't blame the city and the fans but you have to blame the owner and the GM for making poor moves. Ask Memphis when people are going to be sick of losing and it is going to become the Shanghai Sharks of the global NBA?

The Jazz got a pretty easy victory tonight with the whole team contributing. Ok just doesn't have anyone consistent on a night to night basis. Durant is talented and in 2 more years he will be good. I'm not sure what his career will look like as he was predicted to be a future Hall of Famer but early returns don't look as promising. I am thinking more of a 3-4 time all star that leads his team in scoring but doesn't do much else, like a Jerry Stackhouse. Jeff Green looks like he can become a good third option in a couple of years. This team could use some veteran big men to do the dirty work inside and a solid team first point guard like Brevin Knight to get the ball to the young guys. Playing Earl Watson, a career backup, starters minutes isn't going to help improve anyone.
Knight is doing an amazing job running this team right now. Price isn't playing badly but you wonder what is going to happen when Williams comes back. Nobody played badly tonight and everyone contributed. I don't think I give Boozer enough credit for putting up the solid numbers that he does. He doesn't shoot 20 times a game to get his points and he looks for the ball when the team needs to score. He gets his points so easilly, like he hardly works for it. Kirilenko is playing very well and the 2 things that show that he is playing like the old AK are his rebounds and free throws. It means that he is spending more time near the basket instead of camping outside. He had only had three games with double digit rebounds and only 3 double doubles last year, terrible for a guy that is 6-9 and has had years of averaging over 8 a game. Tonight he marked his 2d of each in the young season. Of note, he and Peja Stojakovic are tied for most unintelligible post game interview. I wonder if an American playing overseas has ever done a post game interview in the native language of that country? Sometimes I see soccer players giving interviews in multiple languages and it would be nice to see an American doing that for once. At least in bad broken Spanish with an American accent.
No reason to get too excited about this 5-0 start, beatin up on bad teams at home is a Jazz specialty. Now the Jazz get some tougher games on this next five game road trip. For some reason the Jazz always play poorly against the Knicks and I can see a close loss but it is probably their best bet for a win. If they took 2 out of 5 by beating Charlotte and Washington it would be a successful road trip. The Washington and Cleveland games are back ends of back to backs so it wouldn't surprise me they didn't play well in either game. The team has been together long enough that is should start to win against the bad teams on the road.
Looking at 82games.com, there was a revised +/- list for all players this last season and there are a couple of surprises for the Jazz. I like the +/- rating because there so many things that you can't measure through ordinary stats. Things like tipped passes that lead to an eventual shot clock violation, shots altered instead of blocked or a hustle play that demoralizes the other team are not counted on paper. I think you can capture some of that in a +/- rating and I like how they broke it down into offense and defense. Leading the offense was Steve Nash and with his passing ability that makes sense, even more sense then a big time scorer. For the Jazz, AK came out on top. The team did seem to play its best when he was on the floor. I thought for sure that Williams or Boozer would have the best offensive numbers but in general I think that anybody that watches a lot of Jazz games can see appreciate what AK can do.