This may come as a surprise to you, but I love basketball.  And even back when I hated the NBA, I still watched the NBA draft religiously.  Now that the league has improved and we have a local interest, my obsession has only increased.

The sad thing is that as the demand for NBA information has increased, the local media’s knowledge has not kept up.  With the exception of The Oklahoman’s Darnell Mayberry, we get very little informed opinion or speculation about the draft in this market.  Most of the talk is centered around guys who played in the Big XII or else made the cover of Sports Illustrated.  So, to fix this, I recruited some of Oklahoma City’s best internet basketball writers to collaborate on a mock draft.
Since I think Mayberry has my email address blocked, he was not involved, but these guys were:

Royce Young of DailyThunder.com:  Royce is probably the top blogger when it comes to Thunder related information.  He has a partnership with ESPN’s TrueHoop network, and is one blog I check religiously.
Max Trueblood of OKCThunderFans.com:  When Patrick and I got out of writing exclusively about the Oklahoma City Hornets at HornetsCentral.com, we sold the site and it eventually became OKCThunderFans.  On their message boards, the resident expert is Max who has extensive knowledge about all NBA teams.
Clark Matthews of TheLostOgle.com:  Clark writes a weekly, too long, column called “Peace, Love and Thunderstanding” which is read by at least four people.  He is easily the smartest, handsomest, and most popular person I know.

Anyway, I wanted to see how informed three ginormous Thunder fans could be when it came to prognosticating the NBA Draft, and the results are as follows:
With the 1st pick of the 2009 NBA Draft, the Los Angeles Clippers select…Blake Griffin, Power Forward, University of Oklahoma
(Pick made by Clark Matthews)
The words above are bound to be heard on Thursday night and most Oklahomans will have their hearts break when they are uttered.  This is the biggest no-brainer of the draft.  Griffin is a legitimate 6′10″, has explosive athleticism, great rebounding instincts, is strong as a bull, and already has an offensive game.  While the Clippers have to take him, it is the worst short term fit possible for the Sooner Goliath.  L.A. has $39MM wrapped up into three players who play in the post.  Griffin will probably be the most talented of the bunch, but veterans earning $16MM (Zach Randolph), $12MM (Chris Kaman), and $11MM (Marcus Camby) will not take well to losing their minutes to a rookie.  Chemistry, which isn’t great in Clipperland to begin with, is bound to suffer.

Today begins the Sweet Sixteen round of Ogle Madness, with matchups from the East and Midwest Regions. With the top 4 seeds advancing in both regions, we have some compelling games being played today. These contests will take place at Robber’s Cave State Park near Wilburton and The Toy and Action Figure Museum in Pauls Valley.
Vote until midnight after the jump. UPDATE: Voting actually will continue through Tuesday. Keep voting, people.
(1) Gary England vs. (4) Carrie Underwood
(3) Jessica Schambach vs. (2) Cardboard Jim Traber
(1) Sam Bradford vs. (4) Mike Gundy
(3) Blake Griffin vs. (2) Jaime Cerreta

Recently, I read Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (which I highly recommend) and there was a passage in the book where Chuck Klosterman assails the concept of probability:
Life is chock-full of lies, but the biggest lie is math.  That’s particularly clear in the discipline of probability, a field of study that’s completely and wholly fake.  When push comes to shove–when you truly get down to the core essence of existence–there is only one mathematical possibility:  Everything is 50-50.  Either something will happen, or something will not.
If you are one of those people still holding out hope that University of Oklahoma basketball stud Blake Griffin will continue his career here in the Sooner state, I suggest you embrace Mr. Klosterman’s philosophy.  I, on the other hand, subscribe to math being all-powerful, and as a result, I am convinced that Blake Griffin in a Thunder uniform is a pipe dream.

Look!  It’s Rhett Bomar, Honeybee Talor and Kevin Bookout.  They are excited about Ogle Madness.  Are you?
Anyway, today’s round of games from the lower half of the Midwest Region concludes the first full week of Ogle Madness II.  These games will all take place at The Toy and Action Figure Museum in Pauls Valley.  The match-ups are:
(6) Brad Henry vs. (11) Steve Hunt
(3) Blake Griffin vs. (14) The Mathis Brothers
(7) Aubrey McClendon vs. (10) Joey & Heather
(2) Jaime Cerreta  vs. (15) Billy Sims
Find out a little bit about each person and vote after the jump.  Voting ends at midnight tonight.

This image is a screenshot of the ESPN telecast from Wednesday night’s OU – Missouri game.  I wonder what the Missouri fans would have done if Amy McRee was shooting free throws?
(Picture credit to 314sports.com)

On Saturday afternoon, the world was right for all the Sooner fans who recognize the existence of the OU basketball team.  After UConn, the number one team in the nation lost earlier in the week, followed by North Carolina, the number three team in the nation being upset earlier in the day, the #2 Sooners were in pole position.  All they had to do was beat the underwhelming Texas Longhorns on primetime television and the top spot was theirs.
Three days and a gnarly elbow to Blake Griffin’s temple, and the picture is much bleaker.  While Griffin sat on the sidelines squinting at the lights, plugging his ears like the ClarkPupp at a Thunder game, and generally looking completely confused about where he was, the Sooners dropped the game against the Longhorns and their Big Monday game against Kansas.
That hasn’t stopped the hyperbole machine at The Oklahoman.  According to Jenni Carlson, the game last night would have been entirely different.  “With Griffin, the Sooners beat the Jayhawks by double figures,” she says.  While I agree that the Sooners probably win the game with their star player in tow, I think a 20 point effect is overboard, especially when you consider her reasoning:  The #15 Kansas team was awful, particularly Cole Aldrich.
Despite 15 points and 20 rebounds, the Jayhawk center was oddly underwhelming.
That is how much Griffin has spoiled the Oklahoma media.  Aldrich was underwhelming?  That’s how she characterized fifteen points and twenty rebounds, against the #3 team in the country, and a team about which she earlier wrote (along with Connecticut, North Carolina, and Pittsburgh):  “They have been dominant. They have been steady. They have shown themselves the most complete teams in the land”?
In tomorrow’s columns expect her to label the fifty points Kobe Bryant dumps on the Thunder tonight as “sub-par”. 
As for the Sooners, I think this setback actually makes them better.  Putting the team on Willie Warren’s shoulders in the second half of the Texas game, which ended up being a remarkably close road loss in a rivalry game, will help his confidence should Griffin get into foul trouble in a tournament game.  And the whole team rallying together without their team leader to keep the Kansas game close shows that there is more talent on this team than just a single player.

Last week, we posted some photos of Blake Griffin frolicking through a field in a blond wig, pink halter top and little green skirt. Since that day, our site has seen a little jump in traffic, as just about every Rival’s message board, sports blog and even a Sports Illustrated power poll has published the pictures.
When I first posted the silly little pics, I had no clue where or what they were from. Hell, I wasn’t even sure they were really of Blake Griffin. All I knew is that some person emailed them to me and I posted them the following day. However, after an email exchange with a person in the know, this is what I’ve learned about the photos:
• They were taken when Blake Griffin was 15
• The photos were from a “Back to School” video skit performed by the OCS Student Tech team.
• Blake was (probably) impersonating a female upperclassman
• There is a chance that OCS owns the rights to the pictures
Anyway, that hopefully puts the pictures into some context, and helps quell any rumors that Blake is a blazing cross dresser. However, it really doesn’t explain why his brother Taylor posted a picture of himself like the one above on his MySpace Page. It also doesn’t explain why our former editor Tony has a Blake Griffin room in his house that is very similar to the John Malkovich room in Being John Malkovich. Honestly, all of that is kind of creepy.

Maybe it’s a holiday hangover, but for the past couple days I’ve suffered from a severe case of writer’s block. Fortunately for me, the cure (random pictures of Blake Griffin dressed in drag) popped in my inbox yesterday evening.
Yeah, sometimes this blogging stuff can be too easy.
That being said, I was still somewhat hesitant to post pictures of my favorite team’s best player frolicking through a summery field wearing a pink halter top and green skirt. It just seemed like the wrong thing to do. Seriously, I can already picture Clark Matthews and all the agricultural engineering students in Stillwater dressing up like this for a Bedlam game. But then I figured who the f*ck cares, that’s Blake Griffin! Regardless of what the opposing team’s fans wear or say, he’ll still drop 30 and 15 and be the first pick in the NBA draft.
Anyway, these pictures are just awesome. The only thing that could make them better would be if they included Courtney Paris dressed up like a 1920s French bachelor wearing an old gray suit with a thin painted-on mustache and top hat. And those would only be better because they would bring more lesbians to our site. And other than Brent Skarky, who doesn’t like a good lesbian?