The Oklahoma City Thunder are an American professional basketball team based in Oklahoma City. The team was originally established as the Seattle SuperSonics, an expansion team that joined the NBA for the 1967–68 season. The franchise relocated from Seattle, Washington to Oklahoma City in 2008 after a settlement was reached between the ownership group led by Clay Bennett and lawmakers in Seattle following a lawsuit. The name “Thunder” was chosen in reference to Oklahoma’s location in Tornado Alley and Oklahoma City as the home of the U.S. Army’s 45th Infantry Division, theThunderbirds.
About Oklahoma City Thunder in brief
The Oklahoma City Thunder are an American professional basketball team based in Oklahoma City. The Thunder compete in the National Basketball Association as a member of the league’s Western Conference Northwest Division. The team was originally established as the Seattle SuperSonics, an expansion team that joined the NBA for the 1967–68 season. The franchise relocated from Seattle, Washington to Oklahoma City in 2008 after a settlement was reached between the ownership group led by Clay Bennett and lawmakers in Seattle following a lawsuit. In Seattle, the Super sonics qualified for the NBA playoffs 22 times, won their division six times, advanced to three NBA Finals, and won the 1979 NBA Championship. In Oklahoma City, the Thunder qualified for their first playoff berth during the 2009–10 season. They won their first division title as the Thunder in the 2010–11 season and their first Western Conference championship as theThunder in the 2011–12 season, appearing in the NBA Finals for the fourth time in franchise history and first time since 1996, when the team was based in Seattle. The Thunder are the only team in the major professional North American sports leagues based in the state of Oklahoma. Oklahoma City previously hosted the New Orleans Hornets for two seasons following devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The name “Thunder” was chosen in reference to Oklahoma’s location in Tornado Alley and Oklahoma City as the home of the U.S. Army’s 45th Infantry Division, theThunderbirds. The NBA G League affiliate is the Oklahoma City Blue, which it owns.
The SuperSonic’s final NBA draft was in 2008, and they used the fourth overall pick to select Russell Westbrook, a young point guard from UCLA, who would become the team’s franchise player. The players wore generic black and white jerseys reading “OKC-NBA” against an outline of a basketball. TheThunder participated in the Orlando Pro Summer League featuring their second-year players, potential free agents and rookies. The club’s temporary practice facility was the Sawyer Center at Southern Nazarene University, which had been used by theNew Orleans Hornets when they relocated to Oklahoma city after Hurricane Katrina. In their preseason home opener, the Minnesota Timberwolves defeated the Thunder 1–3 on November 2, 2009. The next day, the team lost their first game by defeating the Minnesota Minnesota Timberwolves 1-0. The first game of the regular season was on November 14 against the Los Angeles Clippers. On November 22, 2009 the Thunder won the first game against the Milwaukee Bucks 2-1, improving their record to 1-3. But the team went on a 10-game losing streak before deciding to fire head coach Plesimo Carlesimo and assistant coach Paul Westhead on November 22. The previous season the team managed to prevent their previous losing streak of 14 games to tie the previous Seattle team to set the previous season’s record of 14 wins and 14 losses. On September 3, 2008 the team name, logo, and colors were revealed to the public. In 2007, Bennett announced that the franchise would move to OklahomaCity as soon as the lease with KeyArena expired.
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This page is based on the article Oklahoma City Thunder published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 24, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
