
I was sitting Pappa Deux’s Mexican restaraunt in Houston waiting for my fajitas and trying desperately to get information about the NBA Draft lottery. TheLostOgle.com had just launched (it was so fresh that I, as a founding member, didn’t know it was live because I was out of town). Oklahoma City had no NBA team. New Orleans had reclaimed the Hornets, but I was convinced that the OKC based investors who had recently purchased the Seattle Supersonics did so with the intention of moving them here. That’s why my co-worker wondered why I was so antsy at the dinner table.
“I’m hoping the Sonics get the second pick in the draft,” I told him.
“Why?” he asked. “Why not first?”
Such a simple question with such a complex answer. It mostly hinged on my fervent belief that two years from then (it turned out to be one) the team in Seattle would be our hometown team. Otherwise, I could give a crap about the Supersonics. I had adopted the Hornets simply because they had played their home games here, but before that I had supported the Utah Jazz because I liked John Stockton and Karl Malone. As a kid, I liked Larry Bird and the Celtics. It was the perogative of a fan free agent.
At that point, on that day, I expected to make a life long commitment to a team and I wanted them to have the best college player I had ever witnessed.
University of Texas freshman Kevin Durant had been electric in his one season in the Big XII. During the triple overtime thriller that he played against my alma mater, Durant had lit up Oklahoma State. It came so easy to him. Even with defensive lock down artist Marcus Dove hounding him, K.D. found a way to score with such ease and grace that I didn’t even mind he was torching my team. Hell, I even wanted to see him get the ball more. After OSU finally won the game on a desperation three at the buzzer, I never missed a Durant appearance on national television. He was, quite simply amazing.
Meanwhile, Seattle sucked. Not just the city’s attitude toward the NBA team that headquartered there, but the team itself. The Sonics had one of the league’s worst records and a serious opportunity to move up in the draft with the luck of some ping pong balls. My hope was that they didn’t move up too far.
You see, Greg Oden was the expected number one pick. I’d watched him in college, too, and been underwhelmed. He was bigger and stronger than everyone else, and seven footers are automatically given overwhelming expectations, but what others saw in him, I missed. He didn’t even dominate in high school, and in college all I heard were a lot of apologies for why he seemed so ordinary. Perception is important, though, so I knew if Seattle got the first pick overall, they would take him.
Anyway, back to Pappa’s Mexican joint, I slipped away from the table just in time to see that Seattle’s ping pong ball had been in the top-3 on a bar television. When I found out that Portland “won” the whole thing and that the Sonics got the #2, I was ecstatic. For the rest of the evening, I was happy enough that I stopped thinking about how my brand new job–that I’d taken because my old company moved to Houston and I didn’t want to go with them–sent me to the armpit of America for my first assignment.
Since then, little has made me change my opinion. The Sonics drafted Durant, the team moved here a year later, and Durant has continued to be my favorite player. Of course, when I was praying I would be able to watch his every game, it was because I was enamored by his offensive prowess. Little did I know that he would also turn out to be an excellent role model, teammate, and leader. Yesterday, in a method 180 degrees different from the man he finished second in the MVP voting, Durant announced that he would remain with the Thunder until at least 2016. That means he will definitely be around long enough for my young sons to remember him as the first superstar they got to see in person.
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