Lakers beat Oklahoma City Thunder, 105-98

The mighty Los Angeles Lakers beat the Oklahoma City Thunder yesterday, 105-98. Kobe Bryant made a little history; he is the youngest player to reach 23,000 points. That's a lot of points, but normally I wouldn't post about an everyday Lakers game, even with Kobe notching another milestone. What caught my eye was that they played the Oklahoma City Thunder. Let me repeat that:

Oklahoma City has a basketball team called the Thunder.

Oklahoma City has a basketball team called the Thunder?

When did this happen? How did this happen? Did some team in some obscure city move over the last year and I completely missed it? And here I thot I was paying more attention to sports. This is what I get for letting my subscription to Sports Illustrated lapse.

"Oklahoma City Thunder" sounds like a minor league hockey team, or maybe an arena football team. Triple-A baseball, maybe. NBA team? Huh?

And I like to think of myself as one of the people in a blue state who tries not to ignore what happens in the flyover red states. I've been close to Oklahoma in the last year; I visited Denver twice. I'm not quite sure how close to Oklahoma that is, but it's a lot closer than LA is, that's for damn sure. Hello, friends and relatives in Denver! You're supposed to let me know about these major developments in your time zone!

I'm guessing that the Oklahoma City Thunder won't be playing in the playoffs, so I doubt I'll be paying them much attention again, unless the Lakers play them again. But now I'm curious about where this team came from. Not quite curious enough to do any research, but maybe curious enough to pay more attention the next time I see the name in the media.

Update: a co-worker suspects that maybe the LA Times made a mistake, and the Lakers actually played another team, and the copy editor didn't catch that the name of the team was wrong. That's possible, but it seems unlikely. This same co-worker thinks that maybe the Oklahoma City Thunder were just created, sort of like spontaneous combustion, and we didn't notice because there has been so much in the news lately. Again, unlikely, but maybe possible. The mystery deepens.