The Oklahoma City Thunder villain arc is great for the NBA

Come playoff time, I am in the most important demographic for TV ratings for the NBA. I’m a casual NBA fan. The league is not one of the top three or four sports I follow.

I never fully adopted a team over the years, despite rubbernecking Michael Jordan and the Bulls in the ’90s, and now, pretending to be an adult, my viewership of NBA playoff games varies widely. I know the teams, I know the players, and I’ll watch headlines and highlights and even look at box scores. But will I actually choose to watch large chunks of games? Or will I be like many of you who, with a partner and kids, will do or watch something else, and perhaps just watch a little bit of a game if it’s close in the 4th quarter?

There are tens of millions of us. We are half-assed basketball fans who need a reason to go out of our way to watch. When given one, ratings generally go up. Without one, ratings generally go down.

Bulls and Lakers dynasties in progress? We’re either for or against that in a big way, and we’ll watch.

Rooting against the Miami Heat super team? Sign us up.

LeBron turning face and trying to disrupt a Warriors dynasty? Yes, you can count on us to watch.

But it’s been a while since we casuals have really cared to the point where we dependably show up. The last seven years of the NBA Finals have seen seven different teams win. Only one of those years had audiences averaging over 15 million viewers for the series. The nine years before that ALL averaged above 15 million viewers, with 2015 and 2016 notching over 20 million viewers on average. The rotating door of teams and talent hasn’t given enough story and familiarity to suck in casual NBA fans.

But maybe that’s about to change. The Knicks are in the NBA Finals and that’s a massive fanbase. More importantly, I am re-enlisting in the casual-NBA-playoff-watching reserves. My reason? I hate the Oklahoma City Thunder and want them to fail, and will watch with that rooting interest. Spite. It’s great for viewership.

Did they do something to me? No.

But my feed the last few weeks has been full of videos of their lame-ass playing style, stats about their dependence on getting foul calls, and montages of the obvious flops they do. I could largely ignore a lot of this. The world is nuts. You can’t get mad at everything. Why have I decided to care?

Over the long weekend, I saw more and more levelheaded, good-follow accounts on social media seemingly getting increasingly angry at the Thunder. In a world where bad guys are getting worse and worse, I kind of miss just having a low-stakes thing to hate. I miss feeling a part of something. Hating the Thunder is something we can do together. It’s already fun and meaningful, and honestly…why not?

The Thunder have already won a championship. Their best player is a free-throw merchant. Oklahoma City is the rare city where, without any pro teams and without visiting, it’s a blank slate for most. You can just hate it because you can’t really name anything else about it, nor have you heard anything about it. Say it with me, “F*ck Oklahoma City.”

Other cities, you may know people from there, have a soft spot for a TV show or movie that takes place in that city, you may have visited, or maybe you like one of the other pro teams from there, so it’s hard to just suddenly hate it. But not Oklahoma City. You can easily flip a switch and hate it. And if you want to play the card that they stole the SuperSonics from Seattle, you’re more entitled to do that as well.

On paper, nobody should be rooting for the Spurs. They’ve won a bunch of championships. They keep getting the number-one overall pick and 15 more years of championship contention. And yet, because they don’t play like a bunch of pansies, NBA diehards and us casuals are behind them because they play “ethical basketball.” And if the Thunder win, we’ll somehow root for the Knicks. And next year, come playoff time, when the Thunder should once again be playing late into May, we’ll continue to hate them and root against them.

This is good for the NBA. Social media gave the league a villain. You have my attention, and I hope you fail miserably.