OKC Announces Ticket Prices
OKC has released ticket information, and the organization said fans who signed up for the request list will begin hearing from sales representatives this week. E-mails and phone calls are scheduled to begin over the next few days and plans are underway to schedule Ford Center appointments for fans to select their seats in early September, according to the team.
Fans who called or signed up for the request list between July 2-18 should begin receiving e-mails this week informing them of the process. But the order in which those on the ticket request list will be contacted and the assignment of appointment times have been randomly selected.
Ticket prices are as follows…
* The lower level will include 3,500 tickets at $50 per game or less.
* Three-quarters of the 8,000-seat upper level will cost $20 or less.
* OKC will offer 3,400 $10 seats, 2,900 more than the NBA-mandated minimum.
* Premium lower level tickets will range from $75 to $250.
* Single game tickets will be made available closer to the start of the season. The team also will be offering various multi-game plans and will allocate seats for group sales.
More to come.
-DM-
Thoughts on Mason Trade
Slowly but surely, Oklahoma City’s roster is drifting further away from the cast that won only 20 games last season.
Today’s acquisition of Desmond Mason and Joe Smith will add more experience, depth and, quite possibly, wins to the team this season. Having covered Mason during the two years the Hornets were, I can say without a doubt Oklahoma City just became 10 times more competitive.
Of Mason’s two seasons with the Hornets, one stretch during the 2006-07 season defined what he’s all about. With the Hornets playing without injured key cogs Chris Paul, Peja Stojakovic, David West and Bobby Jackson from late December to mid-January, Mason stepped up and became the team’s go-to guy. In one 11-game stretch over that span, he averaged 17.7 points, 6.3 rebounds and 40.4 minutes.
He did so in the face of nightly double teams, nagging injuries and being asked to defend the opposing team’s best player at the other end.
Mason did his best to steady the injury-plagued Hornets throughout most of that season. Until he sustained a broken nose and deviated septum late in the season — which ironically was the result of an elbow from new teammate Chris Wilcox – Mason was on pace to play all 82 games. He finished at 75.
“I don’t know how to tone it down,” Mason later told me during that season. ”I just play one way, and when I can’t do that I’m done.”
But the best part of the additions of Mason and Smith to me is their leadership. Surrounding Kevin Durant, Jeff Green and Russell Westbrook with those two guys will be invaluable. Mason is a gym rat who probably spends the equivalent of a season putting in extra time on the practice court and in the weight room. OKC fans will want Durant and Co. to soak up his work ethic and any nuggets he spews.
I think Smith is a veteran who could potentially start from opening night depending on how coach P.J. Carlesimo wants to use him. Roles are determined in training camp unless your last name is Durant so anything’s possible. But I would assume Carlesimo would at least want to start the season with a more veteran starting lineup of Earl Watson, Kevin Durant, Desmond Mason, Nick Collison and Joe Smith. That would allow Green, Westbrook and Wilcox to be impact players off the bench. Or, Carlesimo might insert Green into the starting lineup in place of Mason and continue to try and speed his development and allow him and Durant to keep learning each other’s tendencies. Wilcox could also start at power forward and Collison could start at center.
But that’s also part of the beauty of this move. It gives the team that much more flexibility with lineups because of the versatility and interchangeable parts.
It’s almost unbelievable how much Oklahoma City got for Luke Ridnour and Adrian Griffin. Joe Smith, the 1995 No. 1 overall pick, proved last year he has plenty left in the tank after averaging 10.1 points and 5.2 rebounds. Smith should be able to teach Robert Swift, Johan Petro and Sene (if they all return) a few tricks of the trade for the long term while improving the team’s interior defense and creating match-up problems with his shooting touch in the short term.
Aside from all the on-the-court possibilities and potential benefits, the trade gives OKC even more opportunities in the future because of both players’ expiring contracts. You’ll hear a lot about the near $30 million in salary cap space the team will now have next summer. But consider also that the two players, because of their talents and their friendly contracts, could be attractive assets for a team looking to make a deal at the trade deadline. GM Sam Presti used Kurt Thomas in that exact fashion last year when he sent him to the Spurs at the deadline for a 2009 first-round draft pick.
Where Presti goes from here is the next question. With Collison, Wilcox, Petro, Swift, Sene, D.J. White and now Smith, veteran forward Donyell Marshall doesn’t figure to see much playing time and could be dealt or bought out. And with Mason and Kyle Weaver now added to Durant, Green, Westbrook and Watson, there doesn’t seem to be many minutes on the wing for Damien Wilkins, who could now be on the move as well.
Stay tuned.
Note: Updating a previous post, the organization is now likely to release info on tickets Thursday morning. It appears today’s trade pushed things back a day.
-DM-
Desmond Mason returning to OKC
Desmond Mason is coming back to Oklahoma City.
In a three-team trade expected to be announced later tonight, Oklahoma City will acquire Mason from the Milwaukee Bucks and veteran forward Joe Smith from the Cleveland Cavaliers, according to NBA sources. Oklahoma City will send point guard Luke Ridnour and Adrian Griffin to Milwaukee.
To complete the deal, Milwaukee will send point guard Mo Williams to Cleveland. The Cavs are also sending Damon Jones to the Bucks.
Mason, the former Oklahoma State standout who played in Oklahoma City from 2005-07 as a member of the temporarily-displaced New Orleans Hornets from 2005-07, has career averages of 12.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 1.7 assists. Mason, who will turn 31 in October, averaged 9.7 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 59 games last year with the Bucks.
Smith, the No. 1 overall pick in 1995, is entering his 14 NBA season. He has career averages of 11.9 points, 6.9 rebounds, 1.1 assists and 0.9 blocked shots. He averaged 10.1 points and 5.2 rebounds last year in Cleveland and Chicago, where he played 50 games before his mid-season trade to the Cavs.
Both Smith and Mason have expiring contracts, which will give Oklahoma City more salary cap space next summer.
Mason would have been a part of a logjam at forward in Milwaukee after the Bucks traded for Richard Jefferson this summer and drafted West Virginia’s Joe Alexander in June.
Ridnour faced the same playing time quandary with Oklahoma City after it drafted Russell Westbrook and returnd veteran Earl Watson. Ridnour has two years remaining on his contract at $13 million.
The deal will free up more minutes for Westbrook, who showed flashes of his potential as the franchise’s point guard of the future in the Orlando Pro Summer League.
Mason and Smith also add veteran players to a young Oklahoma City roster. Both players are regarded as hard-nosed defenders and locker room leaders. Mason and Smith are also versatile players who can play and defend multiple positions, which is expected to add more flexibility to coach P.J. Carlesimo’s rotation.
More to come.
-DM-
News and Notes
The preseason schedule was announced today, meaning we now know where OKC’s team will be from the start of the exhibition season on Oct. 8 through the end of the regular season on April 15. Interesting that the first (preseason) home game will be against the Clippers and the season finale will be on the road against the Clippers.
The No-Names also made a small trade on Monday, acquiring Kyle Weaver from Charlotte in exchange for a second-round draft pick. Weaver likely will be a guy who spends some time in Tulsa with the Developmental League’s 66ers. He’s got potential to be a solid all-around player but likely isn’t ready at this point.
Ticket prices are expected to be announced this week, and I’m told it will be Wednesday. The team is expected to announce pricing throughout the entire building with the exception of suites and courtside seats, info that teams rarely make public. Fans also can expect to find out the next step on when the team will begin contacting them via phone and e-mail. I’m hearing there definitely will not be priority for former Hornets season ticket holders. Not only that, but the process likely will be exclusively based on first come first serve with a select-a-seat event scheduled for the coming weeks.
Team chairman Clay Bennett has recently said the number of fans who’ve signed up for the ticket request list is approaching 18,000. He’s said the team will not sell out the building with season tickets, but rather leave plenty of single season tickets available and enough for ample mini-plans and group sales. Also, the team has repeatedly said more than the league-mandated 500 $10 seats will be available. Although the organization has said ticket prices will be higher, I’m told the number of $10 seats will be more than 3,000. That certainly should help out a lot of folks.
In case you missed it on Sunday, I wrote about how GM Sam Presti is looking to rebuild the roster. On Monday, Presti weighed in on the growing trend of NBA players signing overseas.
In national news, Andre Iguodala reportedly has re-signed with the Sixers for six years and $80 mil. The Grizzlies would have been the only other team that could have offered him even reasonable money, likely the $58 million they offered Josh Smith last week. But that bit of news is good for OKC, which didn’t need a player like him coming to the West and adding more competition. Chicago’s Ben Gordon is now the last big name on the free agent market. We’ll see what happens with him.
-DM-
BOK Center vs. Ford Center
I got the opportunity to tour the new BOK Center in Tulsa earlier this month and couldn’t help but make comparisons to the Ford Center every step of the way. The building is absolutely gorgeous, with small details throughout the venue that make the place very warm and inviting. Taxpayers in Tulsa paid $178 million for the multi-purpose arena and an additional $30 million in private donations allowed for more enhancements. You can clearly see what more than twice as much as the $90 million price tag of the Ford Center gets you.
The outside of the 18,000-seat arena will blow you away. The design sort of reminds me of Portland’s Rose Garden, only with a lot more glass, (50,000 square feet of it to be exact), which is really the most impressive aspect of the arena in my opinion. Once inside, you’re greeted by a wide and bright atrium, highlighted by the icon glass wall, an adjacent ramp that allows you to walk alongside the icon wall and up to the second level and finally a centerpiece of what will be some sort of art structure. This is the feel the Ford Center is going for by expanding the building in the renovations and building a new grand entrance on the southwest side of the arena.
Not much special about the inside of the arena, by that I mean the actual room in which events take place not the inside of the entire building, save the extremely impressive scoreboard. To say the scoreboard is nice is like saying LeBron James is a good NBA player. This thing is amazing. It has three levels, highlighted by eight LED screens instead of the typical four. Four of the screens are 8-by-14 foot and the other four are 8-by-8 foot. On the scoreboard’s second level is a nine-foot tall wraparound HD screen and another three-foot tall wraparound screen below it on the third level. This is the type of scoreboard you get for a grand total of $3.5 million.
The tour guide did say that there is more space between seats at the BOK center’s lower bowl than the Ford Center’s lower bowl. And the BOK Center managed to do so while leaving cup holders in every seat of the lower bowl. Personally, I didn’t see or feel a big difference, but then again, I’ve never had any complaints about the Ford Center’s seating although I’ve heard a lot of grumbling.
The building’s concourses are also what sets it apart from the Ford Center. I walked into one of the restrooms to see if they were anything special and the answer is yes. I always shook my head and laughed on the inside whenever I heard OKC officials talk about renovations to the restrooms. But after seeing fresh paint, bright lights, modern mirrors, commodes and sinks in the BOK Center, it’s the little things like that that make arenas more inviting.
The BOK Center’s concourses also have more impressive finishes than the Ford Center. The first level has terrazzo flooring with mother of pearl, the second level is completely carpeted and the third level is a standard sealed concrete. (The common man in the upper deck never gets the good stuff. The seats are also said to be a lot more narrow upstairs.) Another impressive feature is stainless steel concessions. This is something the Ford Center is looking to upgrade, with its remodel including permanent concessions.
The suites are extremely plush, more so than the Ford Center’s, which also are slated to see upgrades to make them more lavish. The seats are oversized leather chairs with a wood board in between each seat to give you space to put your drinks or food or whatever else. Unlike the Ford Center, which has suites enclosed by glass, the BOK Center’s suites are completely open to allow unobstructed views and make the patrons feel more a part of the action. The BOK Center also has loge seats at one end of the arena, something the Ford Center will have after the remodel. There are 20 loge suites with four seats in each box. They’re a little more private and plush than the lower bowl and club seats but less lavish than a suite.
One of the last things I saw was the locker room for the Tulsa Oilers. They did it real big with oversized wooden cubicles in a spacious main locker room. They added another room called the “Street locker” room with even more cubicles for the players to store items such as backpacks, laptops and street clothes etc. They also have a player’s lounge and a high-tech training room. They even had a “Stick repair” room in the locker room.
It all made me anticipate the completion of the Ford Center even more. We’ll see how Oklahoma City’s arena compares when it’s all said and done.
Thanks to Ben Edwards and Kelli Bailey for the tour and Carolyn Kubiak for the photos.
-DM-
NBA releases schedule
Oklahoma City will open the 2008-09 NBA season at home against the Milwaukee Bucks on Oct. 29, the league announced Wednesday.
The team will then travel to Houston on Nov. 1 before hosting Minnesota on Nov. 2 and the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics on Nov. 5.
The New Orleans Hornets make their first Ford Center appearance on Nov. 21, which will be broadcast on at 8:30 p.m. on ESPN, Oklahoma City’s only appearance on nation television. Oklahoma City will travel to New Orleans to face the Hornets on Nov. 22.
Other home games of note include the Cleveland Cavaliers on Dec. 21, the Phoenix Suns on Dec. 29 and the Los Angeles Lakers on Feb. 24.
2008 No. 1 overall pick Derrick Rose and the Chicago Bulls will make their only visit to Oklahoma City on March 18. No. 2 overall pick Michael Beasley, teammate Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat come to town on Jan. 18.
Oklahoma City will host the Yao Ming, Tracy McGrady and the Houston Rockets on Jan. 9, the night of the BCS National Championship game. OKC also hosts the Denver Nuggets on Jan. 2, the night of the Sugar Bowl.
Former OU coach Kelvin Sampson, who is now an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks, will return to Oklahoma on opening night. Former OSU standout Desmond Mason is also a member of the Bucks.
-DM-
OKC to play Hornets on consecutive nights
The NBA will announce its league-wide 2008-09 schedule today at 11 a.m., according to multiple league sources, and Oklahoma City will play the New Orleans Hornets in a home and away on back-to-back nights this season, The Oklahoman has learned.
It’s unclear which team Oklahoma City will play in its home and season opener, which will be Oct. 29. But Oklahoma City appears destined to open the season against an Eastern Conference team. Indiana and Milwaukee are the two most likely possibilities.
It would be the first time the franchise formerly known as the Seattle SuperSonics opened the season against an Eastern Conference opponent since opening at hoome against the New York Nets to start the 1976-77 season.
The Hornets, who played two displaced seasons at the Ford Center from 2005-07, will make the first of two appearances in Oklahoma City on Nov. 21. Oklahoma City will then travel to New Orleans on Nov. 22. The Hornets make their second trip to the Ford Center on Feb. 17.
Kobe Bryant and the Western Conference champion Los Angeles Lakers are scheduled to come to town on Feb. 24. The Lakers will return in March.
The Minnesota Timberwolves, a Northwest Division opponent, will be the second team to visit Oklahoma City on Nov. 2. The Atlanta Hawks are scheduled on Nov. 9.
LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers are scheduled to make their lone visit to the Ford Center in late November. The exact date is unclear, but it could be Nov. 25 or 28.
The Dallas Mavericks and the Sacramento Kings are the only Western Conference teams that won’t make two trips to Oklahoma City.
Every Eastern Conference team will come to town once.
-DM-
NBA to release schedule Wednesday
The NBA will announce the league-wide schedule Wednesday at 11 a.m. central time, according to multiple league sources.
More to come.
-DM-
