Thunderous Intentions
Fansided

OKC Thunder – Top 10 moments of 2008-2009 season

By Stephen Dolan

UNITED STATES - MARCH 24: Fans wait to enter the Ford Center for a National Basketball Association (NBA) game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Oklahoma City Thunder in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., on Tuesday, March 24, 2009. Nearly three decades after an energy bust that forced 122 banks to close statewide, Oklahoma City is in the fifth year of an economic expansion that's produce the lowest jobless rate for a major metro U.S. area. Oklahoma City demonstrated it could support a NBA team, encouraging the Seattle Supersonics to move permanently and become the Thunder, which now draw crowds as large as the Boston Celtics. (Photo by J.P. Wilson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
UNITED STATES - MARCH 24: Fans wait to enter the Ford Center for a National Basketball Association (NBA) game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Oklahoma City Thunder in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., on Tuesday, March 24, 2009. Nearly three decades after an energy bust that forced 122 banks to close statewide, Oklahoma City is in the fifth year of an economic expansion that's produce the lowest jobless rate for a major metro U.S. area. Oklahoma City demonstrated it could support a NBA team, encouraging the Seattle Supersonics to move permanently and become the Thunder, which now draw crowds as large as the Boston Celtics. (Photo by J.P. Wilson/Bloomberg via Getty Images) /
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The announcement

Ranking in order of importance or impact will be the natural way to sort the moments for most years, but in this first year, with moments and precedents being at a premium, these will be chronological.

On April 28, in the year of our lord 2008, the NBA Board of Governors voted “overwhelmingly” to approve the Seattle SuperSonics to Oklahoma. The only votes against, per the Seattle Times, were Paul Allen, Seattle native and current owner of the Seahawks, and Mark Cuban, that guy from Shark Tank. So Thunder fans everywhere can continue disliking Mark Cuban.

The City of Seattle promptly sued to force the team to respect their lease with Key Arena, but the writing was on the wall from that moment – Sonics to the Sooner State.

All due respect

Full disclosure, I now live in Seattle, so while I always had a certain amount of understanding for the anger and resentment of Seattleites, that feeling has multiplied. The fact of the matter is, Clay Bennett and his ownership group, the late Aubrey McClendon in particular, did Seattle wrong.

Starbucks owner Howard Schultz had sold the team to an OKC ownership group led by Clay Bennett in 2006 with the understanding that the group would do everything in their power to keep the franchise in the Pacific Northwest. The sale price was $350 million, with an eventual relocation fee of $30 million (The latest estimate of the Thunder’s value was $1.25 BILLION)

The team was transferred to Oklahoma only after a “good faith” effort by that group to get a new, modern stadium built-in the Seattle area. That faith of that effort was, shall we say, less than good.

Sonics fans took it in about the way OKC fans would if we found out the Thunder were packing up and leaving. There’s a bit of NSFW language in the below video.

Moving on

While it’s important to be respectful to the hundreds of thousands of fans who had their team ripped away from them unfairly, what are Oklahomans to do? Not root for the team? Of course not. The Oklahoma City Thunder were, and continue to be, a boon to the state and the region.

From the moment the Thunder tipped off their first game, Oklahoma became more credible. Bricktown boomed. Downtown leapt. Suddenly, to anyone who actually took the time to find out, Oklahoma City was a big league town, with big league aspirations and a big league franchise.

For a while, the stigma of small-town, USA, stuck with the team, but after the recent signing of Paul George and the previous signing of Russell Westbrook, it seems like the narrative regarding OKC is finally turning, and the turn started on April 28, 2008.

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