Of all the memories Michael Thompson can effortlessly rattle off about the New Orleans Hornets' two-year stay, only one explains why our state eagerly opened its arms to welcome a team of outsiders 10 years ago and how that hospitality ultimately forged an invaluable relationship that would change this community forever.

Thompson, the team's former public address announcer, remembers the moment happening on an unseasonably crisp autumn day in 2005. The Hornets had arrived only weeks earlier after Hurricane Katrina ripped through their home. They were now in the opening days of training camp, and on this day Chris Paul, David West, Byron Scott and Co. packed up after practice, trekked over to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and were given an eye-opening tour.



Few in the group had known anything about Oklahoma City until, in somber silence, they snaked their way through the heartrending museum and the serene outdoor mall adjacent it.



Thompson humbly observed from a distance as each player and coach processed what their eyes were seeing. He saw them, one by one, began to realize where they had been uprooted.



They wouldn't just be playing in any city. They weren't just about to be supported by any fans. They were a part of something bigger, a community that had suffered through its own tragedy only 10 years earlier and, like New Orleans, was once in need of a pick-me-up.



“It took that tour of the memorial to really help our guys understand what it was we were doing there and how important this was to the people of Oklahoma,” Thompson recalled in a telephone interview this week.



From September 2005 to April 2007 Oklahoma then showed the world. The state dug deep and extended New Orleans a down home embrace. It showered the Hornets with unprecedented support in the form of a two-year hug that buoyed a beleaguered franchise and helped show the country once and for all that OKC was indeed a big-league city.



In just days, the people of Oklahoma transitioned from an incredulous bunch whose laps the NBA had fallen into to a rabid and raucous fan base that would soon be known throughout the league as the best around.



Tickets sold fast. Sponsorships piled up. Fans flooded the Ford Center.



Paul's wizardry with a basketball, West's incredible game-winning shots and, well, everything about Chris “Birdman” Andersen fascinated and turned us into fanatics.



But it wasn't just the game. It was the event.



From Hugo the Hornet to the Honeybees to halfcourt shots for $20,000, folks were soon hooked.



“There was excitement and there was enthusiasm, but most of all there was compassion,” said Thompson, who doubled as the director of corporate communications. “And that's what really impressed us.”



The NBA was watching what Oklahoma City was doing. How a town that months earlier wasn't anywhere on the league's radar was now providing overwhelming evidence that it could in fact support a major league franchise. Less than a month into OKC's inaugural Hornets season, then NBA commissioner David Stern proclaimed “In my view, they've moved to the top of the list if an NBA team were ready to move.”



The Seattle SuperSonics would soon become the Oklahoma City Thunder, and Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant and Serge Ibaka have now become the talk of the town. But they're here today only because this city's basketball jones started 10 years ago, with a lovable team they liked to call “your hometown Hornets.”

Hornets guard Chris Paul goes up for a shot during the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets season opening game against the Sacramento Kings, Tuesday, November 1, at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City. by John Clanton/The Oklahoman.

***



Larry Nichols sat at the head of an eight-seat conference table inside his spacious office on the 47th floor of the 50-story Devon Energy Tower.



Flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows that look east of downtown Oklahoma City, with a clear view of the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, the company's chairman couldn't believe it has been only 10 years since the Hornets were here.



It's a testament to how much has happened in Oklahoma City since.



Back then, Nichols was a pioneer. His company was among five local corporations that ponied up $1.5 million each to sponsor the Hornets. The team dubbed Devon Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Kerr-McGee, MidFirst Bank and The Oklahoman its pioneer partners.



“That was an easy decision,” Nichols said of his company's involvement.



It was one of the rare times Nichols made a business decision by first saying yes and then asking how much the investment would cost. But when Clay Bennett, now chairman of the Thunder, corralled other local business leaders in the fall of 2005 and urged them to step up and financially back the Hornets, Nichols and others quickly signed on.



“The city needed that,” Nichols said. “I don't think I've ever seen an assembly of state leaders of all walks of life get assembled so quickly for such a cause. Everyone recognized: ‘Clear your calendar. You've got to do this.'”



The public was more pumped than the private sector.



On the first day that the team began selling season tickets, the Hornets received deposits for more than 5,000 orders. Within 10 days, the Hornets had sold 10,000 season tickets. The final tally that first season was approximately 11,500 season tickets, ranking the Hornets sixth in the league.



Remember, the Hornets had just 40 days from the announcement of the temporary move to opening night.



And the team was 18-64 the previous season.



And the Hornets arrived with a roster void of a single household name.



“I wasn't really surprised,” said Desmond Mason, the former Oklahoma State standout who uniquely understood the community's response when he joined the Hornets six days prior to opening night after a trade from Milwaukee.



“You put an organization in place that there were no biases to so you drew fans from all over the state.”



The Hornets averaged 18,717 fans in the 36 games played inside the Ford Center that first season (three home games were played in New Orleans, one was held in Baton Rouge, La., and another was relocated to Norman). Their Ford Center attendance alone would have ranked the Hornets ninth among the league's 30 teams in 2005-06.



In New Orleans the year before, the team drew a league-worst 14,221 fans per game.



But Oklahomans were just happy to have a team. Happy to catch the visiting stars. Happy to have the chance to show it could support a major league franchise.



And supporting the Hornets was a source of pride.



Oklahoma City was now being mentioned with the nation's biggest metropolises. Talked about on national talk shows and written about in publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, on the pages of The Sporting News and Newsweek.



“The energy was incredible,” Mason said. “All you heard about was the Hornets. Everywhere you went. And how proud people were. And how excited they were for the team to be here.”

FINAL REGULAR SEASON HOME GAME: The Hornets' Chris Paul, center, falls to the court as he is fouled by Denver's Marcus Camby (23) during the NBA basketball game between the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets and the Denver Nuggets at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, Friday, April 13, 2007. By Nate Billings, The Oklahoman ORG XMIT: KOD

***



Doug Loudenback was your typical NBA fan in Oklahoma in the fall of 2005.



Typical in that he wasn't a fan at all.



“I didn't give a (expletive) about the NBA,” said Loudenback, a 72-year-old retired Oklahoma City divorce lawyer. “I had never watched a single game on television, much less cared about going to a game.”



That all changed when the Hornets arrived.



Loudenback attended 32 of the 36 home games inside the Ford Center that first season and both preseason home games. In those days, he spent much of his spare time chronicling the Hornets' history on a personal blog and chatting with fellow newbie NBA fans on message boards.



“I was totally engrossed in it. It was amazing,” Loudenback said. “I haven't been the same since.”



Like so many others, Loudenback initially walked through the turnstile simply to support the team that had planted roots in his backyard. And like so many others, he soon became captivated.



He couldn't believe the buzz in the building. Run-of-the-mill weeknights had been replaced with highly-anticipated, three-hour thrills.



There was more.



“The community coming together was totally powerful to me,” Loudenback remembered. “I mean, races and schools and economic lines all came together. None of that mattered. Everybody was just pulling together as a single community.”



By home game No. 6, though, one-time NBA novices had graduated into hardcore Hornets fans.



The exact moment is forever etched into the memory of Thompson, the PA announcer who called every game from the center of the scorer's table.



It was the night before Thanksgiving. Minnesota was in town. Leading the Wolves was the kind of superstar scores of Oklahomans were paying to see — then eight-time All-Star forward Kevin Garnett.



The Wolves pulled away late in the first quarter then pushed their lead to 18 points midway through the second period. Hornets coach Byron Scott called timeout. Thompson needed to come up with a way to energize the stunned crowd. He had 60 seconds to figure it out. Just as he was receiving his cue from Josh Richardson, the team's director of presentation and entertainment, Thompson raised his head and realized he didn't need to say a word.



“The Ford Center crowd stood up completely on its own,” Thompson still marvels as he remembers it 10 years later. “And those fans welcomed our guys back to the floor. And they stayed standing for the rest of that game.”



By halftime, the Hornets had cut the deficit to 12. Three minutes into the third, the margin was down to six. With three minutes left in the third quarter, the Hornets had the lead.



The Hornets went on to win by four, completing what at the time was the biggest come-from-behind victory in franchise history.



“We all attributed it to the energy we got from that crowd, specifically the way that they, on their own, stood up and said, ‘We're not going to lose this game tonight,'” Thompson said. “And I think they came to that game as NBA fans that were there to see Kevin Garnett. But I think they left Hornets fans. We all kind of looked back at that game as being the turning point.”



A month later the Hornets hosted San Antonio on Dec. 18. The Spurs were the defending champs. They came to town with a 19-4 record, winners of nine of their previous 10.



With a record-setting Ford Center crowd of 19,267 on hand — 104 more than the listed capacity in those days — the Hornets outscored the Spurs 29-14 in the final period to run away with a 13-point victory.



“Honest to God, it felt like there were literally people hanging from the rafters just to be in the gym that night,” Thompson said.



As the final 30 seconds ticked off the game clock, the Ford Center faithful stood and cheered. And cheered and cheered.



It was remarkable and in complete contrast to what had happened two nights earlier.



The Hornets traveled back to Louisiana for their first post-Katrina game in the state. With their New Orleans arena still being renovated, the contest was played inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on the campus of Louisiana State University in nearby Baton Rouge. On this night, the opponent was Phoenix.



Only 7,302 attended the game.



And that was the announced attendance.



The Hornets started the fourth quarter with a 14-point lead. The Suns then outscored them 37-10 in the final period. Eddie House got hot and scored 16 of his 26 points in that final frame.



After the game, Scott didn't mince his words.



“We had that game in hand. We thoroughly outplayed them for 36 minutes,” the Hornets coach started. “In the back of my mind when I went into the locker room, I said, ‘If this game would have been in Oklahoma City, it wouldn't have been this close.' If we would have had a 14-point lead going into the fourth quarter, we'd have won the game.”



The comments ruffled feathers in Louisiana but substantiated the enormous home-court advantage the Hornets had enjoyed in Oklahoma.



“He took a lot of heat,” said Thompson. “But you know what? If everybody's being honest with themselves, I don't think anybody really disagreed.”



Said Mason: “It was an honest statement.”



Then came that San Antonio thriller two nights later.



Then came West's game-winning shots, three of them over the next two months, each dagger dropping inside the Ford Center: Houston on Dec. 28, Milwaukee on Jan. 30, Washington on Feb. 13.



The Hornets suddenly had an avid fan base.



The Ford Center suddenly had an undeniable mystique.

Hornet Desdmond Mason (24) high-fives Tyson Chandler (6) next to Chris Paul (3) after Mason made two free throws with less than a minute in regulation during the NBA basketball game between the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets and the New York Knicks at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, Saturday, March 31, 2007. The Hornets won in overtime, 103-94. By Nate Billings, The Oklahoman ORG XMIT: KOD

***



George Shinn was a showman.



More than that, the former Hornets owner was a salesman.



And there was one sales pitch that Shinn was particularly fond of.



“I can't guarantee that we're going to win,” Shinn would say. “But I can guarantee you're going to have a good time.”



Shinn always made good on that promise.



When fans went to see the Hornets they didn't just get a basketball game, they got an experience. Oklahomans were exposed to entertainment unlike anything they had ever seen. Staples in the Thunder's current game-night presentation were introduced way back then: a pre-game invocation, a tradition of the fans standing until the home team scores its first basket, nightly tributes to the boisterous fans in the nose bleeds, the sections that affectionately came to be called Loud City.



There was also the Kiss Cam and the Dance Cam, pulsating Hip-Hop music one second and a familiar jingle that played the next to signify when a specific player had scored. There were spirited timeout skits like the wildly popular “MidFirst Bank Show me the Money” contest in which fans went to ridiculous lengths to decorate the most creative sign for a shot at winning $300, and there were bat spin relays and trampoline dunk artists and makeshift Mardi Gras parties.



There was Rob Nice, the incomparable in-arena emcee, Hugo the Hornet, the team's daredevil of a mascot, and OKC's first dance team darlings, the Honeybees.



It was one big spectacle, all of it designed to keep fans entertained and engaged.



“The one thing that we could control, the one thing we could make sure of, is that everybody who paid for a ticket and came into that game left knowing that they had a great time whether or not the team won,” Thompson said.



Thompson played a big part.



He is the creator of the revered call-and-response “Whose ball is it? — Hornets ball.” The Thunder still utilizes the call.



“Really, it just came out of capitalizing on a big momentum swing,” Thompson said, recalling that he first used the catchphrase opening night against Sacramento.



“I remember we trapped somebody and turned them over. And I can remember Byron Scott jumping up off the bench clapping. And that was the first time I did it. I said, ‘Whose ball is it?' And it wasn't the entire crowd. But there were enough people that kind of said “Hornets ball.” And we looked at each other and we said, ‘That actually worked.'”



The Hornets sucked us in by rolling out so many endearing features that made Oklahomans feel ownership in New Orleans' team. They raised a “Loud City” banner to the rafters, wore an “OKC” patch on their jerseys, played the season finale that first year by wearing actual “Oklahoma City” jerseys and unveiled a red commemorative Oklahoma City jersey.



“There was no better way to say thank you to the people of Oklahoma and especially Oklahoma City for the way that they supported us and embraced us,” Thompson said.



It was an improbable yet sensational 17-month stretch. The smashing success of the Hornets paved the way for the Thunder and showed the world that Oklahoma City was in fact a big-league city.



“We all take tremendous pride in helping Oklahoma City put its best foot forward and show the rest of the world that it is a major league city,” Thompson said. “And then Oklahoma City did the rest. All we did was give them a platform and help them along a little bit. And they got a franchise that they absolutely deserve.”



