Category: OKC Thunder (NBA)

The End of a Thunder-ous Era?

I’d be lying if I said I understood every aspect of the NBA’s free agency policy. I know there are unrestricted free agents and restricted ones, but I think ESPN writer Royce Young said it best earlier this week when he said “In the NBA today, everybody is a free agent at all times.” Last week at the beginning of trade season, the Oklahoma City Thunder announced they were actively shopping Steven Adams. Adams was drafted by the Thunder in 2013, and has become not only an amazing player and a fan favorite, but a staple of the community. Last… (read more)

RobOHara

Durant’s Golden State Warriors now 0-1.

As a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Kevin Durant made me do a lot of things. Once, after dishing an alley oop to Russell Westbrook, he made me leap out of my chair in the cheap seats so hard I spilled $9 worth of beer. Another time after hitting a buzzer beating shot to win in the finals, he made me high-five a complete stranger. When he referred to his mother as “the real MVP” during his MVP acceptance speech, he made me cry. And last night during his debut as a Golden State Warrior, Kevin Durant made me… (read more)

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Kevin Durant’s Exit: My Two Cents

The world needs another article about Kevin Durant’s decision to leave Oklahoma City for Golden State like the Warriors need another three-point shooter, but regardless, now that I’m back from vacation I feel compelled to write something. As an adult in my forties, I don’t believe anything any celebrity says, ever. When you’ve watched the President of the United States lie to the entire country on television under oath about not having a sexual relationship with his intern, why should we believe anything anyone else has to say? Musicians routinely cancel concerts due to exhaustion (read: drug overdoses) and “happily… (read more)

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NBA 2015-16 Rundown

The 2015-16 NBA season was a good one for Oklahoma City Thunder fans. With first year NBA coach Billy Donovan at the helm, the Thunder finished the regular season with 55 wins and 27 losses, placing them third in the Western Conference. In the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Thunder muscled their way past two aging but solid Texas teams: the Dallas Mavericks and the San Antonio Spurs. In best of seven contests, the Thunder beat the Mavericks in five games and San Antonio in six to make their way to the Western Conference Finals to face the… (read more)

RobOHara

A Thunder Storm

Wednesday night for Mason’s birthday, Susan, the kids and I attended the Thunder vs. Hornets game. From the moment we found our seats and sat down I knew there were going to be problems. The people sitting directly behind us were already drunk and being loud and belligerent. This was 20 minutes before tip off. You know you’re going to be dealing with obnoxious drunks when they shout “USA YEAH MAN WOO!” during the opening prayer, which is exactly what happened. A few minutes into the game, the two guys directly behind us began shouting “DE-FENSE! DE-FENSE!” That is a… (read more)

RobOHara

A Basketball Birthday for Mason

Mason was four or five years old when he attended his first NBA game, sometime during those two seasons when the New Orleans Hornets temporarily relocated to Oklahoma City during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Back then Mason was more into the food and halftime antics than he was the game, but there was something about basketball that stuck with him. Since then he’s played one season of soccer and took a couple of month’s worth of karate, but all along he’s said what he really wanted to do was play basketball. When we moved into our old house we… (read more)

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And the Thunder Rolls … Over.

Rarely can a person determine the outcome of a professional basketball game by a single shot, much less the first one. But in Game 5 of the NBA finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Miami Heat, when LeBron James (as he has done before) waltzed through a crowd of defenders and threw down a monstrous dunk, I turned to Mason and said, “It’s over.” The score was 2-0, Miami. Of course we, the Thunder fans, had to endure two-and-a-half more hours of pummeling before facing the inevitable truth; at least this year, the Thunder had no answer to… (read more)

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Lakers Level Thunder

“Daddy, who is number 24?” Mason asked me last night in reference to the sea of purple and yellow Kobe Bryant jerseys roaming around the Ford Center. A few minutes later, Mason, me, and the other eighteen thousand people in attendance were shown, in person, just who number 24 was and what he does. Coming off a decisive win over the Minnesota Timberwolves and last week’s surprise victory over the San Antonio Spurs, there was a buzz in the Ford Center, a little bit of hope that maybe — just maybe — the Thunder had a chance of holding their… (read more)

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Thunder Pound 76ers

Earlier tonight the 25th-ranked OKC Thunder took on the 18th-ranked Philadelphia 76ers. It was my 12th Thunder game to attend in person this season, and my and Mason’s first since the team adopted their new mascot, Rumble the Bison. The Thunder came out strong and led by 8 early in the first (13-5) and held the lead for much of the first half, which is pretty amazing considering our two best scorers (Durant and Green) are out due to injuries. After taking the lead the Thunder did the same thing they always do — they blew it while forgetting how… (read more)

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Thundershock!

The surprising part of tonight’s game against the Utah Jazz wasn’t that the game ended with a twenty-one point difference; the surprise came in the fact that the Thunder were the ones that were twenty-one points ahead! The Jazz came into tonight’s game with a simple plan — shoot lots of shots from the three-point line (or darn close to it), and occasionally drive to the hoop. It seemed like the Jazz missed almost every shot from the outside, and the Thunder were defenseless against them every time they went inside. Based on that you would have thought the Jazz… (read more)

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