See You in St. Louis

First off, Happy belated 89'er Day! Oklahoma City was founded by the Land Run on April 22, 1889 by 10,000 homesteaders.  Fast forward 121 years later and Oklahoma might have just had its biggest sports day in its history.

April 22, 2010

Actually before I start on Oklahoma sports, its important to note one other event today.  For those of you who don't know, I'm a HUGE Oakland A's fan.  The A's beat the Yankees earlier in the day 4-2.  A-Rod proved his bush leagueness by running over the pitchers mound. 
And Jeff, the triple play is nice but you don't get any runs for that.  Plus the Yankees are evil.  Anyway....

As we were all expecting, Sam Bradford goes #1 overall in the NFL Draft to the St. Louis Rams.

The word on his rookie contract is obscene. Something in the range of $50 million in guaranteed money, likely around $13 million/yr. When asked what is the first thing he's going to buy with his new bills : "Probably some new golf clubs"

If he went back in time (a la DeLorean style), he could buy everyone of those first 10,000 OKC settlers their own golf clubs. And a covered wagon to haul them in. If I were to give Sam any advice on how to NOT spend the money, it would be this.....Sam, do not buy a restaurant. We don't need any more Boomer Q.

After Bradford, Gerald McCoy went #3 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Trent Williams #4 to the Washington Redskins. Russell Okung from OSU went #6 to Seattle.

Also of note, my Detroit Lions picked up Ndomanoad.....kong Suh with the #2 pick. Nice!

So the state of Oklahoma showing strong with 4 of the first 6 picks in the draft. And OU had 3 of the first 4 picks.  First time that's happened since 1946 (Notre Dame). OU and OSU would each have another drafted in the first round. So great draft for Oklahoma and the Big 12 as well.

Now later that night, the OKC Thunder hosted the first ever NBA playoff game in Oklahoma. Already down 2-0 (best of 7) to defending champion Lakers, Game 3 was a must win. I tried to get tickets but it didn't happen. You could tell people were getting hyped for this game. There were car flags and T-shirts and sports radio talking more about NBA than anything else. It almost felt like OU-texas week. Almost.

But the NBA definitely has taken off here, and people love this Thunder team. They are the youngest in the league and most thought they would maybe win 35 games this year. And that would have been a nice improvement over last year's 23 wins, but absolutely nobody predicted a 50 win season.

Jordan and I went over to Kevin and Becca's to watch the game. It was a lot of fun and we were really getting in to it. The Ford Center handed out blue shirts to every person at the game so it was a "blue-out". After the first 5 minutes of the game, we were just trying to avoid a blow out. Lakers went up 15-3 after missing approximately zero shots. But the crowd stayed into it the whole night. After the game James Harden, Kevin Durant, even Kobe Bryant all said it was the loudest crowd they'd ever played in front of. And it sounded like it on TV. Looked like a Duke game. The OKC Crazies ? ? Ford Center Fanatics ? ?

The Thunder trailed most of the game but played great in the 2nd half. After a HUGE dunk by Westbrook over Lamar Odom-Kardashian, the crowd got loud.

Then a defensive stop and a big 3 by Harden. Crowd got louder. Then another stop and a pull up 3 by Durant and the place exploded! I think the roof of the Ford Center actually raised up a bit.

It was an awesome game and the Thunder got their first playoff win. Game 4 is Saturday night.
CAN'T WAIT!