Bruce Schoenfield's Take on OKC

[okcpulse]

This article, titled "The Thunder Comes Dribbling Down The Plains" was published on Friday, October 24. In this article, Bruce trashes Oklahoma City by comparing it to 'culturally superior' Tulsa. This garbage stinks of bias. Below is a excerpt.

I’d been thinking exactly the same thing. For more than 40 seasons, the Thunder played in Seattle as the SuperSonics. The team captured an N.B.A. title in 1979, reached the finals on two other occasions and, at one point in the 1990s, sold out every home game for more than three consecutive seasons. With Seattle on a roll — it’s home to Microsoft, Amazon.com, Starbucks, Costco, Nordstrom — it is difficult to fathom why any team (or business, for that matter) would leave the city and its famous quality of life for a metropolitan area one-third its size. And why Oklahoma City? Even in its own state, Tulsa would seem to have greater national prospects, with its rolling hills, mansion-filled neighborhoods and cultural accouterments of a serious place, as opposed to flat, brown, insular Oklahoma City, where unseemly oil wells blight even the Capitol grounds. Farther afield, metropolitan areas without N.B.A. teams include San Diego, St. Louis, Kansas City, Nashville, Tampa and Anaheim, big-league markets all. So it’s not surprising that Oklahoma City wasn’t even on the N.B.A.’s list of potential candidates for expansion or relocation three years ago. It is, as Bennett admits, almost the archetype of the minor-league place: “When they first started looking at this, and the idea of the team moving from Seattle, a lot of the other owners said to me: ‘I like you, Clay. But when I hear Oklahoma City, I think Des Moines and Omaha.’ ”

I do not appreciate nor do I have the tolerence for journalists who don't have the ability to follow facts and slam a city they obviously know little or nothing about. Here is the rest of the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/ma...6NBA-t.html?hp

[Kerry]

...and the NYT can't figure out why it can't sell newspapers.

[southernskye]

http://www.okctalk.com/oklahoma-city...e-thunder.html
There is already another thread on this same article and I think its a good article.

[shane453]

If you read the whole thing it's not so bad. It's not a glowing report, but he does kind of show the facts behind the story, how the NBA is wanting to move into some smaller markets with no other pro teams over mid-size markets, Bennett as a human being, etc. At first I thought it was going to be not so great when I read that paragraph.. But it turns out alright.