It starts a little differently for everyone. Maybe you’re fighting the subconcious urge to wear blue all the time. Or you get this itch every few nights, thinking there’s something you should be doing, but you can’t put your finger on what. Perhaps you get a little misty when you hear “Thunderstruck” on the radio.
The season is over, and some of you are going through Thunder basketball withdrawals.
Many of our fans seem to have spent the days following the team’s last game of the 2010-2011 season trying to process everything that just happened – the collective excitement. The way our community was peppered with a vibrant hue of Thunder blue. The shared celebration of and with our team.
As much as we have been wanting to thank our fans, our fans, it seems, are wanting to thank us. Some people have mentioned in person or online that they’re still wearing their Thunder shirts every day, or that they put out a Thunder flag in their yard this weekend.
Other fans have been putting their thoughts into writing; two great pieces in particular came to my attention over the weekend.
Jenifer posted a note to Facebook on Friday, called “An Open Letter To The Thunder.” You can read the whole letter here, but this excerpt in particular struck me:
We’re the people who set what is now called “The Oklahoma Standard” for community response to disaster. We’re the people who taught the world how to grieve in a public and positive way, how to turn disaster into opportunity.
We don’t always win here, but nobody cares more, tries harder, or stays truer than Oklahomans. There’s something strange and special about this place, but you have to stay here for a while to understand it. [...]
You get who we are and you’ve been able to give us a voice in the world by the way you play, by the way you persevere. All of us Native Okies are here because somebody decided to stick it out through the bad times and keep working for better times. When we watch you play, we see those beliefs rewarded. For us, whether you win or lose really is less important than how you play the game.
Ed is a fan I ran into at several games this season. He passed along a blog post he wrote to voice his thoughts on the uniqueness of this moment, entitled “An OKC Love Affair.” Here’s an excerpt:
It’s just different here. And the amazing thing is that EVERYONE knows it. There seems to be a very serious realization of what we have here from the fans right on down to the players. [...]
Play hard, don’t quit, do it the right way… do it the OKC way…and you will receive more love and support than you could ever imagine.
This season may be over, but Thunder basketball doesn’t quit - not from our end, and, from the looks of it, not from our fans’ perspective, either.
- Karina Henderson
