OKC Thunder and Sam Presti received death threats for trading Paul George

Following the trade of star Paul George, the OKC Thunder and General Manager Sam Presti specifically received death threats which police are investigating.

There are fans who get invested in their teams and then there are fans who take things to another level entirely. In this case, the fan definitely falls into the latter category as shortly after Paul George was traded he placed a call the OKC Thunder and left an extremely threatening message.

In fact, two separate voice mails were left presumably from the same caller with one aimed at the franchise and the second directly at General Manager Sam Presti and his family.

As per Perris Jones of Coco News 5  the man who says he’s from Virginia threatened to kill “everybody”.

In the first voice message, the man, who identified himself as being from Virginia, said he hoped “to kill everybody” and criticized the Thunder’s decision to trade George. The man cited the trade of Paul George while retaining players like Andre Roberson and Raymond Felton.

"“Y’all traded Paul George but kept Raymond Felton. You kept Andre Roberson. Do y’all not love Russell Westbrook?” reads a transcript of one of the voicemails. “I hope he kill everybody. I want to kill everybody.”"

Shortly after the first message, a second message was left re-upping the sentiments of the first voice mail. In addition to the initial threat, the man said he would use a bomb if he ever came to Oklahoma City. While all threats would be taken seriously the fact the man said he would use a bomb would be particularly frightening to the team given the bombing in Oklahoma City at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.

The uni-bomber, Timothy McVeigh was responsible for this bombing which killed 168 people including 19 children and injured another 680.

The OKC Thunder have handed over the voicemails to the police who’ll investigate and track down the source of the calls in order to take action. As per the Coco News 5 article:

"Thunder officials released a statement saying, “We defer to the authorities and they can handle the situation as they see fit.”"

Although the caller likely didn’t know George requested the trade, this is beyond the scope of a fan just blowing off steam over an action he didn’t appreciate. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a fan making death threats before.

Let’s hope the police track down this man and resolve the situation quickly.