Letter from an OKC Thunder Fangirl
Journey from photographing a team to becoming a full fledged fangirl.
Some people train their entire lives to get to the NBA. I’m not sure why, it really wasn’t that hard.
My first time photographing the OKC Thunder was Nov. 3 and I skipped my senior year homecoming to be there. I wasn’t able to make it to homecoming celebrations my freshman, sophomore, or junior year either so I really thought senior year might be the one. I was mistaken. I didn’t really mind though.
I don’t live in Oklahoma City, so I drove an hour and a half to get there, then back when the game went on for an ungodly amount of time. It was the game they played the Golden State Warriors during the in-season tournament. I didn’t even know it was a tournament until My Canadian’s (Sonia) boyfriend was notified of my NBA endeavors and started telling her all about the tournament and different players, then she passed on the news to me.
That night I learned that the OKC Thunder is actually really good! Honestly, as someone who follows minimal to no professional basketball, I saw that they were playing the Warriors at home and requested a pass for that game because I remembered the Warriors winning the NBA tournament a couple years in a row, plus Steph Curry is on all those commercials now.
The game ended up being extremely close, with the Thunder losing by only one point, both teams making it into the 100s. The loss was questionable though, as the call was challenged, fought over, booed, and then the OKC Police Department later Tweeted out, “Alert: Thunder has been robbed.”
Thunder fans believed that when the Golden State player rebounded the ball, he touched the rim or the net or some part of the basket that was illegal to touch on a rebound. I don’t know the exact rule, but in the slowed down instant replay, it was very apparent that a Warrior was touching the rim.
Later, after I had posted the pictures online, my friend Zaiden asked me what happened with the last call of the game. He was watching it on the TV and didn’t understand why the Warriors basket was still fair. I told him that it was obvious the player had touched the rim, but I didn’t know the rules well enough to know if that was illegal or not, but based on the reaction, it seems as though it was.
He said, “You don’t know the rules? I thought you used to play basketball?”
To which I responded, “In middle school girl’s basketball you don’t have a lot of scenarios in which players are getting called for touching the rim.”
It was that night that I became an OKC Thunder fangirl and have been ever since. I bought Thunder shirts while thrifting then cut them up and resewed them to make them look better. I read articles about them in the local newspaper. I even liked Tweets about them and connected with their photographer on Instagram.
Imagine by glee when the brackets for postseason play came out, and Thunder was ranked #1 in the West conference. Overjoyed! This band of thieves in ripped up jeans was ruling the world! The team is filled with so many young players and then players like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who fans like me affectionately call SGA, who is still only 25 but definitely should have won MVP instead of being the runner-up. There is also Chet, who reminds me of a baby giraffe at 22-years-old and 7 '1'' weighing just 200 pounds. Even looming inches over everyone else on the court, Chet still has some trouble coming up with the rebound. Just another reminder that you can’t trust 22-year-old boys to do anything!
In the first round of the tournament OKC easily beat the Pelicans, the eighth seed, four games to 0. The second round against the Dallas Mavericks proved to be more difficult. The Thunder was electric in the first round and the first few games of the second round. They were hitting incredible shots, started barking at fans (and eventually with fans), and everyone watching could tell that they weren’t just competing, they were also just having a really good time. Then, somewhere along the way, the power source went out. The fans never stopped supporting and attempting to bark their way to victory, but the OKC shots just weren’t hitting like the Dallas ones were
In the fifth game of the series on Wednesday, my parents and I went out to a bar to order appetizers and be OKC Thunder fangirls in person. The game started at 8:30 which is an extremely late hour for my parents to be out and about. The other day when I was talking to my brother Caden on the phone while my mom was in the room, I told them I stayed out until 1am the night before my 9 a.m. graduation. My mother was exacerbated.
Caden laughed and said, “Mom hasn’t been out past 9 since the ‘80s.”
Which is funny but Mother Huntley also admitted it was somewhat true. Once it gets dark outside, she is out for the night. However, she agreed to be a fangirl with me. We didn’t get to watch the whole game there though, because once it got to be 10 p.m. my father’s eyes started closing involuntarily and Mother Huntley started laughing all delusionally. Father Huntley paid for the food, then promptly had to drive back the next morning as he was so tired he forgot his credit card. He is a very put together man, so this forgetfulness brings the entire nation to shock.
That is what was going on in Missouri, but what was going on in Oklahoma was, unfortunately, far more disappointing. Thunder trailed the entire game and it seemed as though it was impossible for them to make any shots while Dallas kept draining three-pointers. I begged the NBA gods that a player other than SGA would be able to make a basket, I would even support a few Josh Giddy points! Alas, Thunder lost.
Yesterday night Thunder officially got knocked out of the tournament. Despite leading for almost the entirety of the game, the Mavs were able to pull out a win in the fourth quarter and win by one point. With 2.5 seconds left, OKC was up by one point, but a Mavs player was fouled while shooting a three. The Mav’s player executed the opportunity flawlessly. He made the first two shots to put Dallas ahead by one, then purposefully missed the third to run out the clock. Although a half court shot was tried by OKC, it came up unsuccessful.
After the final buzzer rang I turned off the television immediately as I have no want or need to see Mark Cuban broadcasted in my living room. Unless he wants to invest in my business, I see no reason for his existence. He has also been trying out a new hairstyle lately that looks a lot like micro bangs. Will Mark Cuban be the next Internet “it” girl?
I sat in my living room with the TV off and lights out for a while after the game ended, contemplating the fangirl life and if I was going to be able to emotionally do this season after season. I felt very connected to these Oklahoma boys I had photographed six months ago
Before I moved back to my parents’ house right after graduation, I wrote for the local Oklahoma newspaper, covering college football, basketball, and the occasional concert. I decided to pull up the website and look into who was writing for the Thunder and what they had to say. This was not a smart move, as it turned out to be my arch nemesis.
I have many arch nemeses. This one is a 70-year-old white man who writes about everything from high school to professional sports for the newspaper. He is a very negative man who thinks he is smarter than everyone and writes about the players as if they are just video game characters instead of real people or, in the case of high school and college athletes, literal children. The first sentence of his article about OKC Thunder after their Wednesday game was, “It doesn’t take a deep dive into the stats book to understand why Thunder is on its way to be eliminated from the Western conference.”
During football season I was attending two press conferences a day and writing four articles a week about a singular collegiate team. It was the first time I had followed a team this closely and had an inside look at what kinds of questions the press actually ask the players in the conferences. I was not very pleased. It felt like the players could not do anything right and that most of the reporters wanted superhuman results from these boys in their 20s who were just trying to play a game that they love while getting a degree. I could tell that the college media liaison also regularly got fed up with the questions the reporters were asking and the length at which the press conferences would run. We became pretty close by the end of the year because he would always cut off the men who would interrupt me, the only female in the room and the only person under 40, even though I had a microphone.
At the last press conference I said to him, “You know what I think you should do? Organize a game at the very end of the season where the reporters run through some football drills or a scrimmage with the team so the players can ask them questions like, ‘why did you decide to drop that ball right there?’ and other ridiculous things like that. It might give the reporters some much needed perspective.”
He responded, “That would be a funny idea, but half of these guys wouldn’t be able to even stand out in the heat for that long, much less run around and throw a ball.”
“That’s exactly my point,” I said.
I have always been protective of the athletes I am reporting on ever since I started that gig, especially the star players, because that used to be me. It wasn’t that long ago that I was the player out on the field or court and therefore I remember what it feels like to have parents and reporters talk about you and tell you how to improve when they have a beer belly, two bad knees, and had never picked up a field hockey stick before.
Even though I am not reporting on OKC Thunder, I still felt myself getting protective over them as the sports media people flooded onto Twitter after the game. Everyone was writing about what they needed to have done better and how they would have ran the last play if they were the coach. What they would have done if they were the players.
But they are reporters and not coaches and they are certainly not the professional athletes and therefore should stick to writing the facts instead of what could have been. And I’m not the star player anymore and the sport is basketball and not field hockey. So I suppose if I am asking them to stick to their job, then I must stick to mine and continue to just be an OKC Thunder fangirl.
Yours truly,
Calihan