Join Me in Welcoming Your Oklahoma City Thunderrrrrrrrrr!

From Tuesday October 14 2008

Monday evening my lovely wife calls me on her way home from work. Bonehead that I am, left my cell in the bedroom when I got home so I missed the message. Later, when she finally reached me by other means, she tells me to check my voicemail and call her back. We've all seen Bocephus and his commercials for Monday Night Football, and we all know one line from the song. "Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?!" Anyway, I check my voicemail and I hear her voice scream "Are you ready for some BASKETBALL?!?!" She won tickets to the pre-season home opener against the LA Clippers!

We went to several Hornets games when they were here for the two years after Katrina and loved it. Her company has a suite at the Ford Center and her department got to use the suite for one game and that just rocked! Well now that we have our own team, and not just a loaner, I'm really excited. I wanted to buy season tickets when they were first made available, but you had to buy 4 seats which is way more money than I was willing to part with. A full set of the cheap seats will set you back $1640. I, personally would rather just go to a handful of games and have much better seats. Of course in this situation, free seats are the best seats! And these were club level, so we had easy access to real food and full bars as well. Of course we still have the standbys too. Our personal game favorite philly steak sandwiches and a Mountain Dew. Nothing better at a basketball game.

So the former Sonics...hang on, I have to address this. Let me be perfectly clear. I do NOT like the new team name. Personally I think it sounds like a soccer team and I'm not a fan.(No offense intended! I've never been to a game, match?) Soccer teams, sorry, clubs, traditionally have singular titles, United, Galaxy, Fire, etc, or at least the ones I've heard of LOL. I don't know them all, so I could be a complete fool here. So now Oklahoma City has joined ranks with the Jazz, Magic, and the Heat. Just my two cents, Clay Bennett should have kept the team name. Oklahoma City Supersonics sounds so much better than Oklahoma City Thunder. Next, they'll start calling the Ford Center the Thunder-dome! That's right, I said it first, remember this date. Oh well, he didn't ask me. So, we have the Thunderrrrrr!

So, back to the game, the team didn't look too bad. They looked like a starting five that was not used to playing together. They looked a little tired too. Sloppy ball-handling, absolutely no offensive rebound attempts. As soon as the ball left hands in 3-point territory, all five Thunders...of the Thunder...players were across half court ready to play defense. Sorry guys, 27.3% from 3-pt range does NOT mean everybody plays D. 3 out of 4 times you missed. Get the rebound and settle for two! Here's an idea, practice those 3-pointers and rebounding. Bring that percentage up to the 45.5% that the Clippers hit, and you would have beaten them by 3, get 50% of the rebounds on the missed 55%, and boom, you've beaten the Clippers by 9 .The Clippers are not really a championship contending team, but they did appear more cohesive, and alot more aggressive on defense. From my club-level seat, the Thunder didn't really look like a team, but more a group of guys shooting hoops. Or, they could have just been tired. They had just finished, I think 5 games in 6 days or maybe 5 in 7. Oh well, who am I? They didn't ask me. Anyway, even though the home team lost by 2, we still had a great time. Renee and I are really looking forward to the next game.

Next week I'll take a good long look at the schedule and try to map out which games to go to. I really want to see the Hornets again, and it would be cool to see some of the other high caliber teams. It should be an interesting crowd when the Hornets come to town. OKC really fell in love with them, and they were happy here. Stupid George Shinn, stupid sense of honor. (as spoken by Homer Simpson)

Go Thunderrrrrrrrr!