NYT: For OKC Thunder, Wins Don't Come, But Fans Do [Archive]

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01-12-2009, 12:21 AM

January 6, 2009
For Oklahoma City Thunder, Wins Don’t Come, but Fans Do
By JONATHAN ABRAMS

OKLAHOMA CITY — Mayor Mick Cornett snaked through this wind-whipped city by car, pitching it the way he once pitched it to David Stern, the commissioner of the N.B.A. He pointed out what was there for the eye to see and what he hoped would be there in the future.

There was Automobile Alley. There was the restored Skirvin Hilton Hotel. There was the anchor from the U.S.S. Oklahoma, which was attacked at Pearl Harbor. He circled around. Here was where a giant park would be. Here, a skyscraper and a revamped thoroughfare would go, with any luck, in the next few years.

This is a city that is toeing the line between big and small after a series of business cycles, more booms than busts. Because the buildings do not quite scrape the sky, one can see the night expanding for what seems like forever.

Straddling the two worlds is the N.B.A. After last season, the Oklahoma City Thunder moved here from Seattle, another relatively small market but more of a corporate powerhouse, sending a coast-to-coast signal that this city is primed for the limelight.

By all accounts, the on-court play of the Thunder, formerly the SuperSonics, has been atrocious. To residents of this city, though, the Thunder is more than a basketball franchise. It is their shot at the big time.

“Our fan base is still really not in tune with the rest of the league and even our team on the road,” Cornett said. “I don’t get the sense that if you walked into a restaurant and our team is playing a road game, that it’s a given that they are going to be playing it on TV. The market just hasn’t matured in that respect. To them, the N.B.A. is 41 home games, and the rest will take time to develop.”

The losses come frequently, but so do the fans. The team itself has a strong, young nucleus centered around Kevin Durant, a spindly forward in his second year, and Russell Westbrook, a rookie guard. But after just one win in the first 13 games, Coach P. J. Carlesimo was fired. The Thunder has the worst record in the N.B.A., 4-30 entering Tuesday night’s game against the Knicks.

But its season-ticket allotment quickly sold out, and despite playing in the league’s smallest market, the team is drawing 18,548 fans a game, 12th among 30 teams.

“I think if you asked the people of Oklahoma City, they’d rather have more wins,” Stern said in a recent telephone interview. “But other than that, it’s been an unqualified success.”

Cornett, a former sports announcer, said the N.B.A. extended its tentacles like an octopus, touching other socioeconomic aspects of the city.

“If someone’s offered a job in Oklahoma City, are they going to think to themselves, If I take this job, I have to live in Oklahoma City?” Cornett said. “Or are they going to think to themselves, If I take this job, I get to live in Oklahoma City? And having an N.BA. team, having some sort of image to that ESPN crowd, even though it’s a very superficial level of equality, the fact that you play all those cities is something those people can hone in on that Oklahoma has something.”

The city is still identified, nearly 14 years later, with the domestic terrorist attack that killed 168 people when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal Building, which was a short walk from the Ford Center, now home to the Thunder.

“We had no identity,” Cornett said. “If you say Oklahoma City, then the next words out of your mouth were probably ‘bombing.’ Across the country, that was our identity.”

Cornett offered his hard pitch to Stern a few years ago. While impressed, Stern had no plans to move a team here. Undaunted, Cornett returned and Stern suggested he might be better off seeking an N.H.L. franchise. Kansas City, Mo., seemed first in line if an N.B.A. team were to move or if the league were to expand.

Why, Cornett asked, would the N.B.A. move where the fan base would be split among the N.F.L’s Chiefs and baseball’s Royals among a population of about two million? Oklahoma City’s 1.2 million people had no professional sports team and the unquenched willingness to support one.

Then the New Orleans Hornets were displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. For much of two seasons, they played at the Ford Center, an arena built when landing a professional franchise in Oklahoma City was still little more than a hope.

The Hornets were easy to root for. Their visit was seen as temporary and exciting. Oklahoma City rallied behind the charismatic point guard Chris Paul. But then the Hornets returned to New Orleans to help rebuild it.

In Seattle, the SuperSonics had helped prove that a small, driven city could sustain pro sports. Basketball came first in 1967, followed by baseball, then football. But by last off-season, KeyArena had become outdated and Seattle, which had built new baseball and football stadiums, held its ground in refusing to renovate again for basketball.

Clay Bennett, an Oklahoma City businessman, headed a group that had recently purchased the franchise from Howard Schultz. He also could not get arena financing and planned a move. The city of Seattle sued and it was eventually settled, with Seattle retaining the SuperSonics name and colors, should the N.B.A. return.

In 90 days last summer, a franchise picked up and relocated here, where the citizens had already agreed to give $125 million for renovations to the arena and a new practice facility.

“This is something the community definitely wanted after having the Hornets here,” said Desmond Mason, a Thunder swingman who played at Oklahoma State, was drafted by the SuperSonics and played with New Orleans during its relocation here. “When this city heard about the Seattle SuperSonics moving to Oklahoma City, there was a big-time excitement here. This city can really embrace a basketball club.”

Eventually and inevitably, the initial euphoria will pass. The newness will fade. The Thunder will have to provide tangible proof in the standings that it is a viable franchise.

“Clearly, from a wins-and-losses standpoint, nobody is satisfied with where we are,” Sam Presti, the team’s general manager, said. “Everyone in our building knows that. But at the same time, we feel that we have positioned ourselves well and we have a commitment to a vision for the organization that will allow it to sustain itself over a period of time.”

Durant said the fans “know that we’re a young team and working hard to get better and giving us some time.”

So, for now, the team and its city are in a honeymoon phase.

Cornett, who grew up here collecting sports cards, found a meeting point in a city where sports loyalties are divided between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.

“The term impossible dream is overused,” Cornett said. “But in this case, it pretty much applies.”

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