The Oklahoma City Thunder is a professional basketball team based in Oklahoma City, and is one of the participating teams coming out of the Northwest Division of the National Basketball Association (NBA) Western Conference. The franchise’s home stadium is the Ford Stadium, Oklahoma City. It was formerly known as the Seattle Supersonics that beat the Washington Bullets for the 1979 NBA World Championship. That team also won the NBA division title six times, and qualify for the NBA playoffs twenty times. In 2008, due to a dispute between franchise owner Clay Bennett and Seattle lawmakers, the team was relocated to Oklahoma City and became the franchise as it is today.
The team’s current head coach is Scott Brooks who succeeded P.J. Carlesimo. Gary Payton, who played for the team almost his entire career from 1990 – 2003, is the team’s all time leader in points, assists and steals. Because of his outstanding defensive talent, he went on to become known as “The Glove” due in large part to his excellent ability of shutting down the opposing team’s point guards. He won the Defensive Player Of The Year award in 1996 earning the unique distinction as the only other guard besides Michael Jordan to have won the honor. Ray Allen was another famous player who played six seasons with the team, and went on to break the record for the most three-point field goals in a regular season by converting 269 of his shots in 2005-06 season. Other Hall of Fame inductees who have served the team are Bill Russell, Lenny Wilkens, K.C. Jones, and Patrick Ewing.
The Oklahoma City Thunder has embarked on a captivating journey as they are now on the verge of taking over the reigns from the aging Los Angeles Lakers, and are poised to rule the NBA Western Conference for many years to come. The team had made an incredible turnaround in its second season by winning 50 of its regular season games, a marked improvement from its disappointing 22 wins the previous season which was their first as a franchise. It was during at this time when the team unearthed a gem in the person of Kevin Durant, who went on to lead the league in scoring in 2010-2011 season. He is now ably supported by the likes of start point guard Russell Westbrook and the versatile Jeff Green, forming a trio that is very formidable when firing on all cylinders.
Curiously, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were instrumental in leading Team USA to the 2010 FIBA World Basketball Championship. Durant was just only warming up because by the time the 2010 – 2011 season was over, he had already established a new record by becoming the youngest scoring leader in league history, with an average of 30.1 points per game and emerged as the second youngest player to reach 4,000 career points. Not only that, Durant also established a franchise record by scoring 2,472 points in a single season and making it to the All NBA First Team selection in only his third season. Amidst all these glowing achievements, Russell Westbrook, on the other hand, had silently made his own mark as he won the Player Of The Week honors on the first week of February 2011. He was a constant fixture of the team on all the 82 games of the regular season.
The fans, players, and the entire Oklahoma City Thunder franchise are all united in wishing for the good things to happen and great games to be played in the coming years. With all the talents that they have starting from their head coach, who, by the way, had won the Coach Of The Year award in 2010, their franchise player Kevin Durant, and the ever improving Russell Westbrook, the future indeed looks bright for this Oklahoma City Thunder team.
