I’m not really that much of a Thunder fan anymore what with the never ending tanking, but to me this a no brainer for Oklahoma City.
Build an NBA quality arena if you want to be an NBA city.
I was looking at the numbers for the recent Sacramento Kings new arena and that construction price went over $600 million dollars.
The city’s contribution rate was capped at $255 million dollars with the the team picking up all the extras they kept adding to the final design.
Team still sucks and is still on a sixteen straight season losing streak without making the playoffs. But they have a beautiful arena to lose in with never ending consistency.
Despite a reasonably decent roster, loaded with eight high end first round picks, the Thunder will once suck themselves and are projected by Vegas to win a total of 22.5 games which will again make them one of the worst teams in the NBA record-wise.
The Thunder will again be a G-League team on steroids depending on how many games Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is allowed to play.
I don’t think he makes it to the fifty-five game plateau. They would win too many game in Presti World if that happened. Presti World needs another high first round pick so they add add another physically emaciated white player to the mix who will be five years away from being an NBA player.
So my question to myself is this… who has been Presti’s best white Euro player in Oklahoma City?
Would it be Nenad or Alex Abrines? Serge obviously is the Thunder’s greatest foreign player, but of course, he’s black and never looked like he was entering the NBA as a Holocaust survivor.
I’ll go Nenad since I think Sabonis is considered an American kid.
The Thunder ranked 28th in league attendance last season but should provide an entertaining night of Harlem Globetrotter-like basketball where we all know they’re going to lose around sixty of their games by design.
This isn’t real basketball, but if you can build a new arena and keep a fan base of some sort down the road…what harm are the Thunder doing?
No harm at all. They’ll be helping downtown Oklahoma City remain a vibrant part of the state’s economic engine.
I’ll go 24-58 on the Thunder, while the Kings win thirty-two games this season.