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What do I look most forward to? Any game against the Warriors. (Photo by Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images)

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If it's August 10th, don't forget to vote in the Barry, Jr.-Eschbach matchup!

If it's August 11th, don't forget to vote in the Pinto-Tramel-Patton matchup above!

For those of you who don't know, the NBA Schedule was released today, and the Thunder finally know whom, where, and when they'll be playing next year.

What jumps at you right off of the page? National TV. Last year, we had 3 (or 4) national games. This year, we have 24, and they span every possible network. I was a bit skeptical that this would happen, given that we are the epitome of a small market team, but apparently the big wigs think that the Thunder draw enough national interest to justify being on TV. However, there is a notable drop in TV coverage for the last two months of the Thunder season, which may indicate that they don't anticipate us making a playoff run. Then again, it could just mean that they will "flex schedule" us in if we do make a run. Who knows?

More breaking it down below.

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As a caveat, this is all rumination and somewhat mindless thinking from my end. The focus is summed up in the poll below, so for those of you who don't care to read this little passage of text, skip to the bottom and just enter your opinion -- or better yet, post your iteration and explain.

Nobody knows what the Thunder will do come Draft Day. Probably not even Presti himself, though he no doubt has some different potential possibilities lined up. As armchair GM types, we get to sit back and throw out some ideas. Over at Daily Thunder they posted the potential idea of trading up to snag Cousins (or failing that, Monroe). To move up that far, it's pretty obvious that we'd have to trade a real asset (example: Jeff Green), some good pieces, our draft picks, and then perhaps take on some salary and -- heck, while we're at it -- the kitchen sink. Herein lies the question posed to the reader: What would be worth it? Who would be worth it? We'll keep it simple and just discuss moving up to that 4-6 range for Cousins or Monroe.

So the season ended and there was much cheering -- and much gnashing of teeth. To speed this along ... a final-game retrospective brought to light some fairly glaring needs, starting with Durant missing pretty everything. When your supposedly efficient scoring threat goes about shooting that poorly, it's a near-miracle that things happened to stay fairly close throughout the course of the game. But OKC somehow did in fact keep things close, so we'll pass up on ranting about Durant's goose-egg. No, instead we'll be here to focus on the two more urgent areas of need, as the last seconds of the game framed in perfection:

1. Interior defender with size (and knowledge enough to box out)
When Kobe misses that shot, it should have been game over. Instead, Gasol was given free reign to stroll between three defenders and tip that shot in. Going beyond the obvious question of why Ibaka and Collison failed to box out (leaving Pau with a clear lane for the tip) and the related question of why three(!) defenders in the vicinity failed to effectively challenge for a rebound ... the obvious issue throughout the series has been the lack of an effective (prolonged) counter to interior size. Taking charges is all well and good (Collison) but when you get shredded by lob-passes to Bynum/Gasol and you counter with Krstic in the paint, you're screwed. Ibaka brings smiles of a promising future, but we need more. This area of need was probably highlighted even better when Gasol and Bynum rebounded something like 5 times off each other's missed shots. This is something that would be nice to address in the off-season.

2. Perimeter shooter(s) / threats
Harden was supposed to be this threat, and it's likely that he's going to get better and better as he gets more experience, so this isn't targeted at him. Westbrook is improving, and he'll continue to improve on that jumpshot as he realizes teams are going to dare him to beat them from the outside rather than allow him to slash to the rim at ease. The problems arise when Durant can't shoot to save his life and Green/Westbrook/Krstic aren't all nailing those outside shots. Without the ability to spread the floor, you end up with such laughable tandems as Sefolosha and Maynor either failing to shoot open looks or airballing (or missing) anything they attempt. This pretty much allowed the Lakers to pack the paint and dare them to shoot. And they didn't. There wasn't exactly a good answer to that one. The Thunder were in salvageable position to win the game with 0.5 seconds left, but without Durant being his usual self there just wasn't a half-decent lineup available that any of us would trust to nail a catch-and-shoot opportunity. This is glaring area number 2 -- get at least one (preferably more) dead-eye shooters to bring off the bench or hope everyone seriously improves their outside shooting percentages. Probably both.

Both needs are pretty obvious concerns that have been noted throughout the season, but were particularly highlighted in this series. Feel free to post your thoughts regarding primary areas of need that need addressing prior to the start of the next season.

*To follow or comment in tonight's open game thread, please click here.

Since the All-Star break Oklahoma City has been bustling with playoff talk for their sports darlings – the Oklahoma City Thunder. Even bantering about the potential to host – yes, host - a playoff series in just their second year in their new home.

And then last weekend, the Chicken Littles came out of their hidey-holes with talk of falling to ninth and out of the playoff picture. All the fretting started on St. Patty’s day when the Thunder fell 100-92 at the Bobcats after having the 19 point advantage in the first half. Friday saw Oklahoma City take care of business in Toronto, but then again it is Toronto. Then on Sunday the real panic began – a 121-101 drubbing at the hands of the Indiana Pacers. Was this team really a playoff-caliber team if they couldn’t take care of business against the Pacers? And how about the maturity factor? A Jay Z concert the night before an early day game isn’t exactly the wisest choice when battling for a playoff spot.

Thankfully, it was time for the Thunder to head back to the Ford Center but that didn’t mean a win was in store in the Monday night game. After squandering another lead, this time to an experienced San Antonio squad, the game came down to a last-second miss and OKC dropped another one, 99-96. Ouch.

But Wednesday, when another neighbor-state team arrived a different story was told:

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At the beginning of the season, the attitude of even the most unabashed homers of the Oklahoma City Thunder was that of hopefulness. Maybe the Thunder can get to the first round, but if not, we're still a young team. To predict anything over 40 wins would be a invitation to get heckled by one's friends, and to predict winning a round would be considered nothing more than a joke. But now, the Thunder are 65 games in, and they've already reached 41 wins. They just beat the team that was directly ahead of them in the standings, putting them in the mix for the 4th seed. And the division leaders, the Nuggets, are only 2 games out of reach.

Detractors might claim that we are only a few losses from falling behind into the 4th seed, and that's true. But the fact remains that the Thunder have a good possibility of gaining home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs, and that possibility should be explored by all means.

For starters, we should look at our remaining schedule, and see how it shakes out.

Below: Remaining Schedule Predictions, Possible Playoff Matchups

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Gameflow charts for 11/03 Lakers vs Thunder (top) and 11/04 Lakers vs Rockets (bottom) courtesy of http://popcornmachine.net/

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The Gameflow charts that you can find on PopcornMachine provide a nice visual layout/summary of a game. While the practical uses are kind of limited, it's still fun to look at. Here we have two charts, with back-to-back games played by the Lakers against the Thunder and the Rockets. This is made more interesting given that both games were pretty close, the Lakers were the common denominator/opponent, and we have the Rockets as the upcoming opponent. Whereas the Thunder were down early and clawed their way back into the game (and kept it tensely close for the remainder of the evening), the Rockets ... didn't really do that. The cursory visual differences in the charts for the fourth quarter are probably the most interesting (well, to me at least). Anyhow, for those of you who haven't had a chance to check out the charts, they're quite fun to waste time on so peruse them at your leisure.

With pre-season action set to get underway in just a couple of days here, that got me wondering about the television schedule and whether or not they would be showing each and every game as they did last season. I'm sorry to say I was a little bit disappointed to find out that it just isn't the case. Hold on now, before you go jumping off of a building, all of the regular season games will be televised, its just the pre-season that will be lacking in coverage for several games, most notably the very first game, which will be taking place on Wednesday evening in Memphis. With fans itching for their first taste of Thunder basketball, and being extremely eager to see the new additions in action for the first time with the likes of Kevin Durant, Jeff Green, and Russell Westbrook, you'd think that someone, either in the Thunder front office, or in the halls of either KSBI or Fox Sports, would realize this and make sure, at the very least, to get the first pre-season game televised.

In any case, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make just as long as all the regular season games get broadcast in High-Definition, something that wasn't the case last season, and guess what? Oh Hell Yeah! I don't know whether it had to do with the teams abrupt move last season or if someone was paying attention to all the whining and crying I was doing last season, but whatever the case, at least according to this list (Make the Jump), every single Thunder game, be it broadcast on KSBI or Fox Sports Oklahoma, will be televised in glorious High Definition! Thank God for that too because it was almost sickening having to watch standard def games last season, so much so that I almost didn't even want to watch the games. Anyway, enough blabbering, and just go ahead and make the jump to see the full tevelision schedule. I've gone ahead and added where you can find the games as well depending on your provider, so you might want to bookmark this page so it'll be handy anytime you aren't making the trip to the Ford Center for a game.

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