The crowd, meanwhile, never stopped roaring once it soaked in a jazzy instrumental rendition of the national anthem by former Oklahoma star and NBA veteran Wayman Tisdale. One Oklahoma City newspaper columnist opined in Tuesday's paper that the NBA's arrival finally made this an actual city and, judging by the noise from a sellout of 19,163 at the Ford Center, it means a lot to the locals to be in the big leagues.

"These crowds are going to be like college basketball crowds," said Desmond Mason, the Hornets' newly acquired swingman from Oklahoma State. "It's unlike anything else you'll see at an NBA game."

Yet even the player who knows this terrain best found it a bit strange to be playing a real NBA game in the land of collegiate football. The proximity to the rest of the Southwest Division and the presence of a relatively new NBA-level arena were lures that, for the league and the Hornets, made Oklahoma City an obvious choice to take the Hornets in, but Mason was openly stunned to be back.


Here's the article:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/column...arc&id=2211077