With Russell Westbrook's commitment, Thunder can finally move forward

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The sky blue carpet was laid out, with fans equipped with handmade signs and smart phones lining decaled barricades, waiting for a car to arrive and drop off Russell Westbrook.

Local businesses downtown let employees off work early, encouraging them to head to Chesapeake Energy Arena. Drummers pounded on their snares and cymbals, scattered chants of "Rus-sell!" broke out organically, team employees bounced around handing out bottles of water and snow cones. More than a thousand people were gathered, sweating in unison on a steamy August day -- one in which the mayor of Oklahoma City, Mick Cornett, had declared to be Russell Westbrook Day.

One month ago to the day, Kevin Durant had signed with the Golden State Warriors, bringing the Oklahoma City Thunder franchise to its knees. "A truck just ran through us," is how one person within the team phrased it.

Now, a celebration was happening. Westbrook had signed an extension, stabilizing the organization and allowing it to finally begin to move forward. Durant's departure was the darkest day in franchise history; Westbrook's commitment might be the brightest.

The suddenness of Westbrook's renegotiated deal happening was jarring, going from dead silence for the last month to news breaking late on Wednesday it was close, and then done. But in reality, Westbrook and the Thunder have been in agreement on an extension for more than two weeks. The signal was Dion Waiters' qualifying offer being rescinded, a move done with only the goal of freeing necessary cap space to extend Westbrook. The moment the Thunder pulled that offer, they knew they had a commitment from Westbrook.

In the wake of Durant's departure, the Thunder focused on patience and level-headed choices. They quickly turned to Westbrook to try and steady the franchise and to do it with something tangible. A contract extension that in essence, plants a flag in the ground with the Thunder. A declaration that in forgoing his own free agency a year from now, Westbrook was going to pick up the mantle Durant willingly laid down.

Yes, Westbrook now maximizes his earning potential. His contract is a renegotiation and it only goes up, adding on an extra $8.7 million this season. Then it's another guaranteed year with the Thunder, and then Westbrook hits the coveted 10-year veteran max qualifier, and could ink a five-year, $204 million contract, making him the highest-paid player in the NBA.

But first, he had to commit to the Thunder now.

There's no denying Westbrook made the most pragmatic, sensible decision. He's making the most money he possibly can and keeping options open for the future. He's also making the most brash and bold one. He's assuming the burden of filling the crater Durant left behind. It's a perfect Westbrookian paradox, fitting for the kind of player he is. None of it makes any sense, except it all makes perfect sense.

Westbrook can re-enter the free agent market in two years, and many look at this situation as him giving the Thunder a timetable. A deadline of two years to convince him to stay again. But to judge the length of the contract and assume he's plotting for future free agency would be, like many do with Westbrook already, misreading the situation. Westbrook has made a clear commitment to the Thunder. He's under contract longer with them than Durant is with the Warriors.

The Thunder are under no illusion this is a lifetime contract, though. There's work to be done. The roster has holes, and Westbrook wants to win. But he also isn't in desperate search for approval because of it. Westbrook doesn't tend to care much about what people think. That should be pretty obvious with the way he dresses himself.

It's one of the reasons Westbrook is perpetually misunderstood. Many conflate his on-court persona with his off-court personality. He's unapologetic. He's fiery. He's emotional. He's arguably the most competitive player in professional sports. And he's really not as complicated as it might seem. With Westbrook, what you see is what you get. He's not one to mince words with the media -- no matter how short those words might be -- and it won't take a decoder to figure him out.

"I'm a straightforward type of guy. I shoot you straight," he said. "No need to go back and forth and try to figure out any other options, create this hoopla, rumors and all this stuff. This is where I want to be, and that's what I made the decision based on."

Almost instantly after Durant left, Westbrook understood the gravity of the situation he was cast into. It was time for him to make a decision now, a year earlier than expected, and give the Thunder a course to plot. As one person close to Westbrook said: He operates in the light of day. There would be no backroom angling. He was going to give the Thunder an answer, one way or the other.

"All the times we've been together," OKC general manager Sam Presti said, "I don't think I've ever walked out a conversation with him thinking, I don't know where he stands, I don't know what he thinks, I don't know what he means. It was right down the middle. Direct."

But following Durant's announcement, as he said Thursday, Westbrook quickly shifted into thinking ahead for the Thunder. He asked Presti, "What's next?"

"I said, 'Here is one thing that could be next,' " Presti said. "I'd really like it to happen, by the way."

The Thunder made it their primary objective to lock up Westbrook. They maneuvered to be in the position to do it, and once they formally presented the option, it didn't take long for him to commit.

It might have seemed as if it was a toss-up, that the Russell Westbrook many perceive wouldn't stay in little ol' Oklahoma City. He's got his fashion interests. He's from Los Angeles. He's got to crave the big city spotlight. Durant always appeared to be the perfect fit with Oklahoma City, with his humble nature and down-home demeanor. But he also was drawn to a bigger city, not necessarily for the brighter lights, but for the ability to blend. In Oklahoma City, Durant carried a larger-than-life burden everywhere he went. He'd privately lamented to friends an inability to be in public. Westbrook's ideal night off the floor, though? At home with his wife Nina, watching anything other than basketball. That's a fit with Oklahoma City.

While Durant often had issues with the roster -- not enough veterans, not the right mix, not enough spending -- Westbrook has always been a believer in Presti. Westbrook's mentality has consistently been this: Give me the 14 guys you want me to play with, and we'll go after it. And as the Thunder now reconfigure around him, Presti has the responsibility of sorting through the best way to complement a Westbrook-led roster.

Westbrook's world is forever different now. He was once a part of a core, with Durant and James Harden and Serge Ibaka. Then he was the Han Solo to Durant's Luke Skywalker. Now, he's flagbearer, assuming the full weight of a franchise on his back. He now takes on the responsibility of being the franchise player, alone. He didn't ask for it. But he has embraced it.

Westbrook has always has been an overcomer. He didn't care he was barely recruited out of high school. He didn't flinch at critics saying he's not a point guard. He's not one to shy away from a challenge. He runs into them headfirst, full steam ahead, sometimes for better or worse. Picking up the pieces after Durant's exit is as much a challenge as there is.

Exactly the kind of thing Russell Westbrook lives for.

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North Korea: U.S. "crossed the red line," effectively declared war

 

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- North Korea's top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press on Thursday that Washington "crossed the red line" and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong Un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned next month.

Han Song Ryol, director-general of the U.S. affairs department at the North's Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that recent U.S. actions have put the situation on the Korean Peninsula on a war footing.

The United States and South Korea regularly conduct joint military exercises south of the Demilitarized Zone, and Pyongyang typically responds to them with tough talk and threats of retaliation.

Han said North Korea believes the nature of the maneuvers has become openly aggressive because they reportedly now include training designed to prepare troops for the invasion of the North's capital and "decapitation strikes" aimed at killing its top leadership.

Han says designating Kim himself for sanctionswas the final straw.

"The Obama administration went so far to have the impudence to challenge the supreme dignity of the DPRK in order to get rid of its unfavorable position during the political and military showdown with the DPRK," Han said, using the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"The United States has crossed the red line in our showdown," he said. "We regard this thrice-cursed crime as a declaration of war."

 Although North Korea had already been heavily sanctioned internationally for its nuclear weapons and long-range missile development programs, Washington's announcement on July 6 was the first time Kim Jong Un has been personally sanctioned.

Less than a week later, Pyongyang cut off its final official means of communications with Washington - known as the New York channel. Han said Pyongyang has made it clear that everything between the two must now be dealt with under "war law."

Katina Adams, State Department spokeswoman for East Asia and the Pacific, said the U.S. continues to call on North Korea "to refrain from actions and rhetoric that further destabilize the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its commitments and international obligations."

She said the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises are "defense-orientated" and have been carried out regularly and openly for roughly 40 years, and are designed to maintain stability on the Korean Peninsula. "These exercises are a clear demonstration of the U.S. commitment to the alliance," she said.

South Korea's unification, defense and foreign ministries did not immediately comment.

Kim and 10 others were put on the list of sanctioned individuals in connection with alleged human rights abuses, documented by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, that include a network of political prisons and harsh treatment of any kind of political dissent in the authoritarian state. U.S. State Department officials said the sanctions were intended in part to highlight those responsible for the abuses and to pressure lower-ranking officials to think twice before carrying them out.

Pyongyang denies abuse claims and says the U.N. report was based on fabrications gleaned from disgruntled defectors. Pointing to such things as police shootings of black Americans and poverty in even the richest democracies, it says the West has no moral high ground from which to criticize the North's domestic political situation. It also says U.S. allies with questionable human-rights records receive less criticism.

Han took strong issue with the claim that it was not the U.S. but Pyongyang's continued development of nuclear weapons and missiles that is provoking tensions.

"Day by day, the U.S. military blackmail against the DPRK and the isolation and pressure is becoming more open," Han said. "It is not us, it is the United States that first developed nuclear weapons, who first deployed them and who first used them against humankind. And on the issue of missiles and rockets, which are to deliver nuclear warheads and conventional weapons warheads, it is none other than the United States who first developed it and who first used it."

He noted that U.S.-South Korea military exercises conducted this spring were unprecedented in scale, and that the U.S. has deployed the USS Mississippi and USS Ohio nuclear-powered submarines to South Korean ports, deployed the B-52 strategic bomber around South Korea and is planning to set up the world's most advanced missile defense system, known by its acronym THAAD, in the South, a move that has also angered China.

Echoing earlier state-media reports, Han ridiculed Mark Lippert, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, for a flight on a U.S. Air Force F-16 based in South Korea that he said was an action "unfit for a diplomat."

"We regard that as the act of a villain, who is a crazy person," Han said of the July 12 flight. "All these facts show that the United States is intentionally aggravating the tensions in the Korean Peninsula."

Han warned that Pyongyang is viewing next month's planned U.S.-South Korea exercises in this new context and will respond if they are carried out as planned.

"Nobody can predict what kind of influence this kind of vicious confrontation between the DPRK and the United States will have upon the situation on the Korean Peninsula," he said. "By doing these kinds of vicious and hostile acts toward the DPRK, the U.S. has already declared war against the DPRK. So it is our self-defensive right and justifiable action to respond in a very hard way.

"We are all prepared for war, and we are all prepared for peace," he said. "If the United States forces those kinds of large-scale exercises in August, then the situation caused by that will be the responsibility of the United States."

Last year's Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises involved 30,000 American and 50,000 South Korean troops and followed a period of heightened animosity between the rival Koreas sparked by land mine explosions that maimed two South Korean soldiers. In the end, the exercises escalated tensions and rhetoric, but concluded with no major incidents.

Han dismissed calls for Pyongyang to defuse tensions by agreeing to abandon its nuclear program.

"In the view of cause and effect, it is the U.S. that provided the cause of our possession of nuclear forces," he said. "We never hide the fact, and we are very proud of the fact, that we have very strong nuclear deterrent forces not only to cope with the United States' nuclear blackmail but also to neutralize the nuclear blackmail of the United States."

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'Nerve': Film Review

Web platforms and smartphone apps are evolving so quickly that a game like Nerve seems like it might be available for download already. Combining live video-streaming functions and social media features, the fictional mobile application aggregates online communities of “watchers” who interact with “players” competing for cash by completing challenges that are originated by participants over a 24-hour period.

Described as “a game like Truth or Dare, minus the truth,” Nerve appears to have the potential to thrive on both the anonymity of online trolling and the widespread quest for instant celebrity. Risky and deceptive online behavior probably emerged soon after popular adoption of the internet, although broader recognition followed the release of films like Nerve co-directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s noted 2010 low-budget documentary Catfish.

With its attractive young cast and a multiplatform media campaign, Nerve won’t need to rely on going viral to find its audience, but it’s unlikely to be trending for long once viewers digest its simplistically cautionary message.

The issue partly is the filmmakers’ muddled social-engineering perspective that almost instantly transforms a teen with fairly average online habits into an impulsive daredevil with the mere adoption of a new app. Shy, responsible Staten Island high school senior Venus “Vee” Delmonico (Emma Roberts) has been comfortable living her life in the shadow of her much more outgoing best friend Sydney (Emily Meade), until Sydney challenges Vee to live a little for a change. Ignoring her university acceptance letter to art school and joining the Nerve community, where “watchers pay to watch and players play to win cash and glory” by accepting and completing dares that are broadcast to Nerve participants on the players’ smartphones, Vee meets Ian (Dave Franco) after targeting him on her first challenge to kiss a stranger in public for five seconds and win $100.

Not coincidentally, Ian also is a player, and the online watchers quickly pair them up to ride his motorcycle into Manhattan, where they complete a series of tasks that brings them escalating payouts into the thousands of dollars and sparks the possibility of romance (while getting Vee an unusual tattoo in the process). Vee begins to question her impulsiveness once it becomes obvious that the app has extracted an alarming amount of information from her digital footprint that may be putting her friends and family at risk in all-too-tangible ways, as well as her own personal safety.

Vee’s overprotective mom Nancy (Juliette Lewis) is chief among her concerns, serving as an extension of screenwriter Jessica Sharzer’s strategy of balancing tension between parental censure and teen boundary-pushing. It won’t be any surprise where the filmmakers come down on the issue of online excess, but with immersive virtual reality and artificial intelligence applications looming as the next major technological advances, all of the hand-wringing over the proliferation of selfie culture, celebrity fixation and unexamined over-sharing only emphasizes the appearance of a widening generational divide between early adopters and their ill-equipped imitators.

Fortunately, Schulman and Joost keep the film visually engaging by combining characteristics of videogame play, social-media interactivity and web-based video sharing with a heightened style that emphasizes DP Michael Simmonds’ neon-leaning nighttime lighting. All that busyness onscreen distracts somewhat from the impression that Roberts and Franco don't look much like teenagers, although they form a fairly good team as long as they’re pursuing specific challenges rather than sharing their nascent emotions for one another or attempting to unravel the intricacies of the game.

Distributor: Lionsgate
Production companies: Allison Shearmur Productions, Keep Your Head Productions, Lionsgate
Cast: Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, Emily Meade, Miles Heizer, Colson Baker, Juliette Lewis, Kimiko Glenn, Marc John Jefferies, Brian Marc, Samira Wiley
Directors: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Screenwriter: Jessica Sharzer
Producers: Allison Shearmur, Anthony Katagas
Executive producers: Jeanne Ryan, Qiuyun Long
Director of photography: Michael Simmonds
Production designer: Chris Trujillo
Costume designer: Melissa Vargas
Editors: Jeff McEvoy, Madeleine Gavin
Music: Rob Simonsen
Casting directors: John Papsidera, Ann Goulder