OKC Thunder Podcast: Loud Noises - Episode 41; Ranking the Western Conference teams from worst to first: Where does OKC fit?

One of my most frequent guests last year was James Holas, and that was mostly for the fact that he takes me outside of the OKC bubble to give a more rounded opinion of the league. With the season now one day away, I realized I hadn’t spoken with him on the show since just before the playoffs started last year. As you may have heard, a lot has changed since then, so we had plenty to cover.

Our first topic was the gift that keeps on giving (and seems to be angering some Facebook friends), and that’s Kevin Durant and his inability to say nice things about OKC these days. In contrast to the profile of Durant that came out in Rolling Stone last week, we had the wonderful Lee Jenkins’ profile of Russell Westbrook in Sports Illustrated that was basically the exact opposite of the Durant piece for OKC fans.

So we covered all of that before looking ahead to the season. We stuck to the Western Conference and ranked the teams from worst to first, and were surprisingly in agreement for just about all of it - except, surprise, I was slightly higher on OKC than he was.

We ended like we have been all offseason by going off-topic, with this week’s Off-Topic Ten focusing mostly on Portland, avocados and monkeys.

Listen in, and if you don’t already, give James a follow on Twitter @SnottieDrippen and check him out over at Bball Breakdown.

As always, you can subscribe to the Loud Noises Podcast on iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher and while you're there, leave a review.