The NBA is back.

So is the NBA talk.

Watch my latest video commentary or read below:

Maybe it’s just me, but it sure seems like just about everyone who lives outside the 405 area code has decided

Oklahoma City is going to fail.

The NBA in OKC? That’ll never work.

At least that’s what it seems the pundits and the prognosticators have determined. The market, they say, is too small. The corporate support, they lament, is too limited.

They have written off the city’s chances.

Who knows? Maybe

Oklahoma City will fail in the end.

More than 10,000 season ticket requests would suggest otherwise. That’s how many folks indicated they were interested in tickets in the 24 hours after the team formerly known as the Sonics announced it was moving to Oklahoma City.

Did Memphis have such scrutiny? Or Sacramento or San Antonio or Salt Lake City? Those cities were once smaller markets that had never had pro sports when the NBA granted them teams, and none of them had ever had a test drive like Oklahoma City. It had the Hornets for two years, and everyone saw how well that went. Big crowds. Corporate involvement. And still, OKC has nagging naysayers.

The biggest difference between OKC and the other cities —  the team coming to the city spent 40-plus years in another city and had great success there.

Hey, I’ll be the first to say that it stinks for

Seattle that its NBA franchise is gone. But that has nothing to do with OKC’s NBA viability. Some folks, perhaps, have gotten the two issues confused.

Oklahoma City has just as good a chance of succeeding as Sacramento, San Antone and

Salt

Lake. The naysayers can doubt that if they want, but they should remember not to confuse the loss in one city with the promise in another.