Oklahoma City Thunder - Fanbase

Fanbase

During the 2012 NBA Finals, sportswriter Bill Simmons published a piece on the team's fan base in his ESPN-sponsored Web outlet, Grantland.com in which he noted the unusual enthusiasm of the city for its team. He noted,

With the possible exception of Portland, no NBA team means more to its city. This goes beyond having the loudest fans. There's genuine devotion here. These people arrived a good 45 minutes early for last night's Game 1 — and by "these people" I mean "everyone with a ticket" — then clapped their way through pregame warm-ups with such infectious enthusiasm that I remember saying to a friend, "No way these yahoos keep this up for three hours, they're going to burn out." Wrong. You know what burned out? My eardrums. My head is still ringing.

Simmons speculated that the Oklahoma City bombing played a major part in the team's culture, noting that Thunder general manager Sam Presti has every new Thunder player visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial, and encourages all players to look into the stands and consider the fact that almost all of the team's fans were personally affected by the event. He also noted, however, that the fact that the Thunder is the only team from Oklahoma City (or indeed the state) in one of the nation's four major leagues also contributes mightily to the city's devotion.

Thunder fans are also reportedly much more likely to attend major home games than most other NBA fanbases. According to a source in the ticket industry, only 5 percent of tickets to the 2012 NBA conference finals that were listed for sale on secondary market sites such as StubHub were for Thunder home games, and for every ticket listed for a Thunder home game in the 2012 NBA Finals, 10 tickets for Heat home games were listed.