Jolt Country

For years I covered entire NBA seasons here at Jolt Country, and while playoff basketball is always exciting, it was always more exciting when the Thunder were there. For years this town hitched their hopes to names like Durant, Westbrook, Harden, and all those that supported them along the way, but none of them could get it done. They got close a few times, but couldn't get it done. Then, Harden left, and Durant left, and Westbrook left, and all of them left, only to be replaced by "kids" with last names like Luguentz Dort, Isaiah Hartenstein, Chet Holmgren, and Isaiah Joe, led by a guy named Shai Gilgeous-Alexander that everyone calls "SGA" because nobody could figure out how to say his last name.

Oh, and we also have two guys named Jalen Williams. Well, one is Jaylen. So they call one J-Dub and the other J-Will.

Last night, in game seven of the NBA finals, YOUR Oklahoma City Thunder got it done.

This team is not easy to watch. When they're hot they're hot and when they're not, they're not. They love coming from behind to win, and they love blowing big leads. Being a Thunder fan is a rollercoaster ride, and the bottom of the ride was when every All-Star and name left this city behind. Three years ago, the Thunder won just over 20 games in an 82 game season. Cheap tickets to Thunder games were $10, and you could often get them for free. It cost more to park than it cost to go watch an NBA game.

The Thunder is a rag-tag group of talented kids. They are unbelievable. They drop threes, draw fowls, and do this "defensive swarm" where they've caused more turnovers than any other team this year. The team's average age is 25.7, mostly because we have one 31 year old (Caruso), who is so old they nicknamed him "Uncle". Nikola Topic, one of our point guards, was born in 2005.

The general consensus is that this series has been bad for the NBA because Indiana and Oklahoma City are small markets. That being said, it's been one heck of a playoff series. Seven games, and in the last game the Pacers' star Haliburton tore his ACL in the first quarter which was heartbreaking and terrible, but the Pacers rallied and went into half-time up by one point. Then the Thunder came out and swarmed and took that title.

Congratulations to YOUR Oklahoma City Thunder, the 2025 NBA CHAMPS!!! The parade is Tuesday; anyone needing a place to crash is welcome to come.

I am really happy for you.

(People will now pretty much go out of their way to discredit your championship. I have seen it with the Blue Jays ("they had the biggest payroll that year!") the Saints ("they cheated, somehow we're not really sure, by hitting guys too hard") and Syracuse men's basketball ("Syracuse was the one collegiate organization that paid student-athletes and that would never fly now!"). I hope you REVEL in the bitchy, whiny haters. I hope their tears FUEL you. Nothing makes me happier than seeing Vikings fans impotently try to screech like the choads they are on Reddit whenever the Saints are topical. You might even get a chance to see it FROM Minnesota fans, since you crushed them on the way to the title. Hahaha! Worst Americans in our history.)

I don't know who anyone is in the NBA any more, so when I saw your discussion elsewhere and saw "Haliburton" be the name of a good player who got hurt for the Pacers I was like, well, I hope Enron, Blackwater and Richard Cheney are ok. How does a league come up with iconic nicknames like Magic, the Durantula and World B. Free and then allow a guy, a good player, to just run around being referred to only as "Haliburton"? That is just wrong.

I hope you grab as much championship merch that you can. I am truly happy for you. After the Saints SB, my mother bought me a pewter football with Saints colors that list everyone on the roster from the championship season. It really does have everyone's name on it including Darren Sharper, and so I had to go cross the name out of the 52 other players except for Darren Sharper.

Today I took off work today and went downtown to attend the championship parade. My wife loves being in the middle of stuff like that and even though I would have been okay with watching it on TV, I'm glad we went. It was a long hot day with temperatures in the low 90s. We arrived at the parade route around 9AM for a parade that was scheduled to start at 10:30AM and we didn't see anything go by until 11:45AM. The parade was about 10 giant trucks filled with staff and random people followed by half a dozen open-top double decker busses with all the players, coaches, and owners. I'll tell you right now, I've rewatched the parade highlights on YouTube and the view on television was way better than what we could see, but someday I can tell people I was one of the few to see it live. And by "few" I mean the estimated crowd size was 500,000.

Hell yeah! OKC wins! FINALLY!!

500k?! Yall "sports people" are cray