Bill Haisten
Since 2008, it’s been a staple on the Tulsa sports calendar — the Oklahoma City Thunder’s October preseason games at the BOK Center.
There won’t be a Thunder appearance this year, though. When I received a Friday message from a team executive, my thought was, “Of course. He wants to share the date of the Thunder preseason game.”
Instead, my Thunder contact explained that there had been complications related to securing an opponent. He said that each of OKC’s two preseason home games will occur in the Thunder’s home gym — the Paycom Center. The organization’s contract with the Paycom Center requires the Thunder to play at least two preseason games in that building each fall.
A BOK Center game would have been, in effect, a belated championship celebration opportunity for Tulsa-area fans who couldn’t attend the Oklahoma City parade after the Thunder captured the NBA title.
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A Tulsa game this year would have been a more-special-than-usual occasion, but there won’t be one.
There is no reason why the Thunder players couldn’t be bused to Tulsa for an event of some sort — like an open-to-the-public preseason practice at ORU’s Mabee Center. Bring Rumble and the drummers.
That could happen.
Really, it should happen.
Based on numbers shared by the Thunder office, between 1,100 and 1,800 Tulsa-area fans are in the Paycom Center for every OKC home game.
About 25% of Oklahoma’s residents are within a few miles of downtown Tulsa.
The Thunder organization does a lot of community-engagement activity in Tulsa. Sam Presti himself was inspired to create the very impressive Tulsa-based Thunder Fellows school for smart, ambitious students.
But Thunder fans fell in love with Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook years ago — and with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren and their teammates more recently — because of their phenomenal basketball talent.
Tulsa fans are no different than Oklahoma City fans: they want to see Thunder players run the floor and get buckets.
There are a great many fans who can’t afford a regular-season game ticket — or even the fuel for a round-trip drive. It would not be difficult to schedule a practice or scrimmage in Tulsa.
Coming off of a championship season, it would be a strong exercise in community engagement. I specified the Mabee Center as a perfect spot because it’s a 10,000-seat arena with tons of parking.
The Tulsa World was told months ago that eventually, a Thunder regular-season game could be played at Tulsa’s 17,839-seat BOK Center.
The 2025-26 NBA schedule is released at some point in August, and I’ve detected no movement with regard to the possibility of a Tulsa game on next season’s OKC schedule.
I absolutely do expect a Tulsa regular-season game in 2026-27.
If the NBA approves of San Antonio playing regular-season games in Austin — which occurred during each of the last three seasons — then Commissioner Adam Silver surely would be fine with seeing the Thunder play at the BOK Center.
I hope Thunder officials get started soon with planning an October drive to Tulsa. Considering the consistency of strong Tulsa support over 17 seasons, a practice-and-celebration event would be a perfect answer to the team’s inability to play a BOK Center preseason game.
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