Wednesday, September 10, 2008 | by nathan

The Thunder. It Rolls. And We Are Struck By It.

I have a feeling that among my readership, such as it is, there are a bunch of people who neither enjoy nor appreciate my love for sports. This is fine, though you should know that at the Oklahoma-Cincinnati game on Saturday, Brian yelled so loud that he almost completely lost his voice, and we stayed through pretty much the entire fourth quarter, which Sooner fans are not wont to do.

I’ve long derided professional sports as one of the "Things That Are Wrong With America;" who should get paid $32 million a year when there are people starving literally feet away from the arenas where said professionals play their sports? And why the hell do NBA players get to play in the Olympics?

That, of course, was before Hurricane Katrina forced the temporary relocation of the New Orleans Hornets to Oklahoma City for two seasons. I was in grad school the whole time this was going on, and so I never got to go to one game, but it impressed me the way that having a professional team seemed to energize the city. And for those of you who’ve been to OKC, you know that it needs energizing in a big way.

So, I don’t approve at all of the rather underhanded way that Oklahoma City acquired an NBA franchise, but I was stoked that we were getting one. That’s why, on Monday, I went with my mom to the Ford Center to see about getting season tickets. I’d made us an appointment literally the second the website went live, and so we were able to be among the first people there.

We arrived and were handed an order form, then told to make our way into the arena, find the seats we wanted, and sit in them, until a sales associate came along to help us fill out the necessary paperwork and talk to us about payment options; Brian pointed out later how much the whole process rather resembled the Oklahoma Land Run, right down to the flag they draped over our seats that listed them as "Claimed.". Rather by accident we ended up in the club level, further up than we’d intended, but we happened to find a pair of seats on the front row of said level that seemed perfect. Here, I’ve drawn you a rather crude Perez-Hilton-style circle around where they are:

We liked the front-row-ishness of them, and the view is pretty much awesome:

So when the sales associate came around she told us that, unfortunately, due to planned renovations of the Ford Center in next year’s off-season, our chosen seats will not be there next year. Unlike the rest of the season ticket holders, we’d be guaranteed to keep our seats only for one year. We would, however, be placed at the top of a priority list when the time came, after the renovations, to choose new seats.

It only took us a second to decide. We have no idea how many games we will be able to attend. We hope it will be a lot, but there’s no guarantee. One year will give us the chance to be in on the ground floor without a long commitment; it’s sort of the best of both worlds, really. We went with it. The tix weren’t cheap, but the three of us - my mom, my brother, and I - agreed on a cost-splitting arrangement that will make them more or less affordable. Since mom & I went to get the tickets, we decided, we get the tickets for the first game, against the Bucks.

So, anyway - the NBA is coming to Oklahoma City, and for the time being, I have to say, I’m pretty stoked. Now if they’d just get AC/DC’s "Thunderstruck" on iTunes, we’d be all set.