When we finally document the story of the Oklahoma City Thunder’s championship season — after we’ve had time to reflect, dissect, critique, appreciate — it’s possible that the defining result is Mayor David Holt becoming a meme based on his head-in-hands response to Jaylin “J-Will” Williams’ perfectly timed F-bomb at Scissortail Park. No, it wasn’t family friendly, but the NBA, as much as it would like to portray that image, isn’t really family friendly. One of the wonders of the Thunder is how fan-friendly the team is, but no team is truly family friendly, unless the family in question uses profanity around the house like salt and pepper in the kitchen.
It was the moment when all the joy, excitement, decompression and celebration coalesced into one spontaneous, gloriously profane, and perfectly succinct summary of the day: “We’re the f–ing champs!” The team exploded with laughter, and Mayor Holt, per his own conversation with Oklahoma Gazette, said, “It was a fun moment, likely the defining sentence of the day, but as the mayor, and knowing it’s a family event, I had to have a little dad energy.”
Holt has seen the memes — J-Will posted one the same night — but he’s also seen the Thunder in The Economist, one of the most iconic publications in the world, in the wake of its improbable season.
“Oklahoma City is now part of a much different conversation,” Holt said. “Having a professional sports team changes the conversation about a city, but winning a championship immortalizes the team and city. We have journalists from all over the world talking about the Thunder and Oklahoma City.”
They’re talking about us in ways they haven’t before, and while it’s refreshing at one level, Thunder General Manager Sam Presti, speaking at his post-season wrap-up June 30, said what many of us have been saying and thinking since at least MAPS II: “I don’t agree … that this is an underdog state in any way. I think the thing to note here, in my opinion, is that there is really nothing missing in Oklahoma. There is nothing missing here, and we didn’t need a trophy to validate anything whatsoever.”
Presti had emphasized the team’s “cowboy toughness,” self-reliance and what he called “essential sense of goodness” and then noted that these are the features of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City and were before there was a team. Per Presti, the team is a reflection of the state’s core values and way of being.
“If you look closely at all of the things that make this place unique and special … the things that really matter, we’re not short on any of those things,” Presti said. “In fact, we’re long on all of them. I just want to make sure that although we won and we were the last team standing, we didn’t really need that for other people to recognize all the great things it means to be from here or to live here.”
That last bit is very important, because the Thunder aren’t “from here,” neither the team itself, nor, atomistically speaking, the players themselves. Given that no one besides indigenous people are “from Oklahoma,” it’s fair to say that in this, too, the team reflects the state. We were a cobbled-together people in a place most Americans didn’t think of as desirable. Free land brought them here, a place in the middle of everything and known for not much.
Core values
In the build-up to the NBA Finals, when it was becoming apparent that two “small market” teams would be the representatives of the Eastern and Western Conferences, national media went out of their way to wring their hands and lament the necessity of coming to one of these cities that isn’t New York, Chicago, Miami or Los Angeles. It was commentary reminiscent of Old Testament prophets spritzing themselves with dust and ash, as if these media professionals wouldn’t actually be staying in beautiful hotels and eating in restaurants that are now competitive with any city in America.
When it was done, when the Thunder hoisted the trophies and the crowd was finally able to breathe, and when Presti’s choices to build a team reminiscent of who we are and to trust a young coach to guide the process were vindicated, we had a parade. Some official estimates say 500,000 people packed the parade route, Bicentennial Park and Scissortail Park. The special events team of the Oklahoma City Police Department will have official numbers at some point, but Mayor Holt said the initial estimates are reliable.
“It may have been the greatest day in the city’s history,” Holt said. “We’ve had big days before — the discovery of oil and gas, the launch of Tinker Air Force Base, the acquisition of a professional franchise — many great days, but we never had a parade for one of them until now. We hope to do it again, obviously, but there is nothing like the first time.”
Presti notes that the odds of doing it again next year are “stacked against us.”
“Sixty percent of the 10 previous champions have failed to get past the second round, and only one has repeated,” he noted.
In fact, the Thunder were the seventh different champion in the past seven years. In addition to the parity and money in the NBA, there are also the “silent forces” that Presti has spent a decade talking about: hubris, fatigue, distractions, complacency and the day to day of being a multimillionaire, world-famous athlete, including contract negotiations, tempting offers from elsewhere, family issues and even social media.
“Those silent forces knock a hell of a lot harder when you’ve had success,” Presti said. “We have been very, very fortunate, and that the role of chance and luck throughout the year at different times favored us. In past seasons, at different times, those things didn’t favor us. … Right now, what we need to do is be very present and be very grateful — grateful for our players, grateful for their families, grateful for wonderful ownership, a committed staff and a community that inspires us like a propulsive force.”
Presti and the Thunder organization have already started shoring up the team for next year. League, Conference Finals and Finals MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has already agreed to a four-year, $285 million contract extension on July 1, making his the richest annual salary in professional sports history. That extension begins in the 2027-28 season. Jaylin Williams signed a three-year, $24 million contract on June 29, so Presti is well on his way to solidifying the Thunder core.
Beyond the dollars, though, Presti emphasizes the important of how the team was built, the core values that the players and coaches embody.
“I read recently that there are 500,000 kids in Oklahoma between the ages of 8 and 15,” he said. “That’s the age when you’re really a sponge. What a great thing for kids to be consuming, not the trophy, but the way the trophy was earned.”
And for the city itself, Mayor Holt likes to remind all of us, including those who aren’t sports fans, that “people who consider moving their business here, opening a restaurant here, moving their kids here, this changes their perspective. It’s a prism through which we view the city.”
And that prismatic view includes the reality that, per J-Will, “We’re the f–ing champs!”
Visit nba.com/thunder.
This article appears in City crowned.