A Thunder Fan’s Recap of His First Visit in Oklahoma City

It all started with a letter on July 6th. Now a young Thunder fan is chronicling his adventures during his first visit in Oklahoma City.

Wow. What a trip. I honestly don’t know where to begin.

I’ve chronicled my first impression of Oklahoma City and my first game at Chesapeake Energy Arena; both of them were extremely difficult to put in words. But the whole trip? Ugh.

I’ll be honest, when I came to Oklahoma City I wasn’t expecting to be blown away. But that’s exactly what happened.

This place isn’t filled with attractions like New York City. It isn’t uber-progressive like San Francisco (hope that’s what you wanted KD). No, Oklahoma City is completely different from those major cities.

That’s because it feels like home.

It starts with the people. For the four days I have been here I have been treated like royalty. And that isn’t because people knew I was an outsider; I’ve learned that’s how Oklahoman’s treat EVERYBODY.

That message really hit home when visiting the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum on my last day. A description wouldn’t be fair to the life-changing experience in those three hours. It’s…it’s…I don’t know.

My only advice is if you are ever in a four-hour radius of OKC, go out of your way to come to this museum. It’s the only way you will truly understand just how amazing the people of Oklahoma City really are.

The primary objective of this trip was to finally step inside Chesapeake Energy Arena, but the secondary mission was to get a true feel for this city. And I feel like I passed both tests with flying colors.

I got the best of both worlds with the two games I attended.

In Saturday night’s game against the Suns, Russell Westbrook led the Thunder to a dominating 114-101 win. I got to see the Shammgod live; more importantly I saw an OKC win.

Monday night’s game wasn’t the end result I wanted, but darnit it’s what I needed. I got to see the Peake ROCKING in a close fourth quarter game, which was amazing (seriously FanSided, ya’ll screwed up not putting this fanbase in the top ten let alone top 250). What was even better though was seeing how the fans reacted after the game.

Normally in a devastating loss where an ill-advised three is taken and a guy holds on the ball for too long at the buzzer, fans will be pissed. The thing is I was the only person who I heard actively cursing. Probably because I was the only non-Oklahoman.

OKC native and Thunderous Intentions’ professional tweeter Cole Hixon was gracious enough to take me and my family back to our hotel after the game. On the way to his automobile, people were more interested in where I came from and how I was enjoying my time in their city.

More from Thunderous Intentions

• Stealing one player from every Southwest Division team for the OKC Thunder
• Should the OKC Thunder chase after a disgruntled hometown hero?
• 3 OKC Thunder players who can step up in Aleksej Pokusevski’s absence
• Aleksej Pokusevski sidelined approximately 6 weeks with ankle injury
• Damian Lillard does not fit with the OKC Thunder

These people are relatively new to professional sports, but they already have the best lesson about sports: it’s just a game.

I guess that’s the best way to describe Oklahoma City and its inhabitants. Their main concern is that people are happy, that people have good experiences wherever they are.

This ranged from the young man at Earl’s Rib Palace who we kept from going home early to the ladies who cleaned our hotel room.

I said it before and I’ll say it again. If the rest of the world acted like Oklahomans, we would live in a  much better place.

To all the people I encountered on this trip, thank you for opening my eyes to what a true community feels like. Thank you for showing me that I fell in love with this basketball team for all the right reasons.

I can’t wait to come back and see you all again. Until next time.

Tony Heim