Then the next season the Sonics were moved to Oklahoma City as if anyone on the planet thought the city of Seattle at that time was going to build a new arena to replace Key Arena.
A great deal of NBA history then moved to Oklahoma City and with it the impetus for a NY Times bestseller titled Boom Town by Sam Anderson.
No one in the Oklahoma City market ever questions Sam Presti despite the fact as general manager he’s never won a first round playoff series without Kevin Durant or for that matter even won a Northwest Division title.
And it is Durant who is the villain in Oklahoma City. I wonder if Durant had still left in the summer of 2016, but had gone to the San Antonio Spurs to replace Timmy Duncan and play for Pop if the hatred would still be in place in Oklahoma.
There really is a great deal of white hatred in Oklahoma considering none of the sports teams in the state in football or basketball would be elite without black players.
It is tragic the state has an attorney general who graduated from an Oklahoma law school who believes January 6th wasn’t that big of a deal.
It’s genuinely sad that Oklahoma having an NBA franchise has in no way moved the needle for the collective mindset in the state. You can put lipstick on a pig, but we all know you’ve still got a pig under the lipstick…so to speak.
Truth hurts.
So here we are in 2021 as the Thunder stand 21-48 with three games left and shamelessly tanking in the hopes they land another youg black man from Texas to give the franchise the feel of relevance once again.
I will admit I love hoops. But I also have come to realize with me now probably being in the last ten years of my life that nothing is going to change in Oklahoma while I’m still living.
I find that somewhat sad and not very inspirational.
In fact it makes me want to cry.