OKLAHOMA CITY — It’s a cool, quiet morning in this city’s most somber space, the Outdoor Symbolic Memorial at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.

The grassy hill here at the former site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building is lined with 168 chairs, one for each life taken in the April 19, 1995 bombing that rocked the city to its core. On a sunny December day, visitors wander through the chairs. They pause and take pictures.

Every few minutes, a sound pierces the silence. It’s the clanging bell of the city’s new streetcar, the latest progressive step in Oklahoma City’s recovery from that April morning almost 24 years ago.

Board the OKC Streetcar here, and after it loops through the city, it’ll take you to Chesapeake Energy Arena, home of the Thunder. It’s less than a mile south, like the museum, a bookend of the downtown core along Robinson Avenue.

“I love that we’re on two ends of Robinson,” said Kari Watkins, executive director of the National Memorial & Museum. “On this end, the very worst happened. At that end, there’s the Thunder. In between here and there, we figured out how to get to our very best.”

It’s a connection nobody takes lightly.

To play for the Thunder — to hold most any job in the organization — is to become acquainted with the story of the city. And the bombing is a critical chapter. When a new player is drafted or acquired via trade or free agency, the National Memorial & Museum is among his first stops. Same for coaches and executives and other front-office staff.

And sometimes, it leaves an impression that lingers.

That happened to Paul George.

On July 11, 2017, the day George arrived in Oklahoma City following a June 30 trade from the Indiana Pacers, he was greeted by a throng of fans at the airport. Later that night, he celebrated with a party at The Jones Assembly, a hot downtown nightspot, and a dinner that included new teammate Russell Westbrook, team owner Clay Bennett and general manager Sam Presti.

In between all that, just after fans roared their approval at the airport, George and his family were whisked away to the Memorial. And maybe more than anything that day, it gave him an understanding of his new home.

“It is a great transition because you immediately understand what it takes and what it is to be an Oklahoma citizen,” George told The Athletic. “The hard work, helping the man next to you, giving everything you have — I think it’s a direct line between the team, the community and the history. All of it comes together, and you realize and you understand what it takes to be an Oklahoman.”

George chose to re-sign with the Thunder in July, for a whole host of reasons. He formed a bond with Westbrook. He felt a sense of unfinished business on the court after a first-round playoff exit. He grew comfortable with the Thunder’s culture.

But his connection to Oklahoma City played a part, too. And he began to forge that bond on that very first day.

Paul George and his family on the observation deck at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. (Photo courtesy of the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum)

Early in a tour of the Memorial Museum, visitors stand in a replica of an office space and listen to an actual recording from an April 19, 1995 Oklahoma Water Board Resources Meeting.

It’s mundane stuff at the start. Then there’s the sound of the explosion, and the ensuing panic. The lights in the museum flicker, and doors swing open for entry into an exhibit about the horror of the immediate aftermath.

George wasn’t yet five years old at the time of the bombing. The basics he knew about the incident — a building, a bomb and Timothy McVeigh — he learned in history class.

“I didn’t know all the details,” George said. “I didn’t know necessarily where it was, what happened, all the little things between. It was unique to be able to experience that, to have somebody explain it to you as you go through the simulations.”

The museum offers staggering specifics about the bombing. Visit and you’ll learn that 312 buildings in downtown were impacted, that 14 of them had to be torn down, that the bombing wrought $652 million in damage.

But what stuck with George beyond the toll of damage and death — 168 killed, 30 children left orphaned — was what happened next. The museum details not only the investigation and arrests that came in the days after the bombing, but the recovery efforts in the hours and days that followed.

“We don’t think Oklahomans acted any different that day,” Watkins said. “It’s just the world stopped and took notice of how we take care of each other.”

By early afternoon the day of the bombing, lines at blood donation centers were out the door and into parking lots. Donations of food and water came from all over the state, and businesses offered work gloves, flashlights batteries — anything that might help police and firefighters searching the scene for survivors.

The community effort continued for weeks and became known as “The Oklahoma Standard,” a sprit of generosity that the city strives to embody even now.

“Seeing (the Memorial Museum) helped me realize the culture of the state, let alone the city,” George said. “The people of Oklahoma City, whether they know me on a personal level or not, I feel like if I needed help with anything — if I needed a question answered — they would be there. I just feel like they embody that so much, being there for one another.”

Zack Fowler of the Oklahoma City Memorial Museum points out a detail to Paul George. (Photo courtesy of the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum)

That spirit of connection is strong between the city and the Thunder, and it’s been that way since the franchise relocated from Seattle. In a meeting soon after the move, Watkins told Presti, “If you’re going to wear the words ‘Oklahoma City’ across your chest, you need to know the history here.”

That notion resonated, which is why a visit to the Memorial Museum is such an important part of the Thunder experience.

Fans in the stands even today are citizens touched by the bombing. Some of the policemen and firefighters who work at Chesapeake Energy Arena on game nights were surveying the damage at the Murrah Building in 1995. That’s not lost on Presti.

Zac Fowler, the museum’s community coordinator, was one of George’s tour guides. This year, he walked new Thunder assistant coach Bob Beyer through the museum soon after Beyer was hired.

“He would have closed the place down if he had the time,” Fowler said. “He told me, ‘I will make it a point to come back.’ He really wanted to find more out about the story, but also understand almost the psyche of what it is to be an Oklahoman.”

George began to understand that right away.

Near the end of his tour, George and his entire family stood in the observation deck that overlooks the chairs of the Outdoor Symbolic Memorial, the city skyline overhead.

It’s a place, Watkins said, where visitors often let the experience sink in, where they begin to equate the children and parents lost that April morning to their own. Maybe it was too soon to say so, but George told his tour guides, “I already feel like an Oklahoman.”

Maybe it’s a reach to say that first meeting played a major part in George’s decision to re-sign with the Thunder. But George stressed throughout his first season in Oklahoma City that he needed to feel at home in the next place he chose to play.

And the Memorial was a significant first step.

“I’m a person who loves history, and you go through it and sort of feel what they felt here,” George said. “You get a sense of the history of the whole city. It was a good way to start to understand Oklahoma.

“It was like opening the front door and them telling me, ‘Drop your bags. Make yourself at home.’”

(Top photo: Courtesy of Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum)