I NEED TICKETS!

Yep. That's me, basketball in one hand and the other grasping my "I Need Tickets" home-made sign as I dazzlingly fly through the Ford Center air making yet another of my many incredible and unbelievable and even amazing slam dunks! That's the way I pictured it, anyway, when planning to attend my 12 noon THURSDAY, September 11, appointment to go down to the Ford Center to pick out my pair of Thunder Season Tickets!

UPDATED, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 @ 11:30 A.M. I am very pleased to report that ...

... thanks to the generosity of BeeCool aka Ken Crossman at OKCNBAfans.com who allowed me to be his guest this morning at his 9:30 appointment and get my two tickets on his account! Hoo Ahh! Not only that, the tickets were exactly where I wanted them to be in the 1st place -- $30 balcony seats in Section 311.

It wasn't terribly crowded this morning and they have opened up some Club Level tickets that weren't earlier available. There are still a few good seats in the lower level, and good tickets (e.g., more balcony tickets) in the upper level.

Unless traffic changes during the day, I would not expect that all seats will be sold today, maybe not even tomorrow. We should have a better feel for that by the end of the day.

The original alarmist comments made by me and by others, e.g., Mike Baldwin, in the original text (which resumes after the final updated comments concerning the Thunder's inaugural season ticket sales) should be read in the context of this updated post!

UPDATED THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 @ 9:30 P.M. From the Thunder website this evening comes this updated season ticket sales report:

Last Chance For Thunder Season Tickets
PR STAFF September 11, 2008

The Oklahoma City Thunder is very close to selling out of season tickets for its 2008-09 season, but there is a very limited number of tickets left. The team encourages fans with Friday appointments to not pass up the final opportunity to become a Thunder season ticket member.

"We are down to a precious few remaining seats, just under 1000 of them," said team spokesman Dan Mahoney. Mahoney said the only season tickets remaining are $10 upper level seats but he encouraged fans to buy them. "We will be open and encourage fans to keep their Friday appointments. By purchasing them you become a Thunder Season Ticket member and enjoy the benefits that brings, including securing your opportunity for future upgrades. You won't have to be put on a waiting list. You can be in the Ford Center enjoying 42 nights of exciting Thunder Basketball starting with our preseason game on October 14."

In four days of its seat selection process, the Thunder has sold about 12,000 season tickets.

UPDATED FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 @ 9:00 P.M. All 13,000 full season tickets are now sold. See Mike Baldwin's 9/12/2008 Oklahoman article. Including the 2,000 corporate ticket sales which occurred before Monday past, 15,000 tickets for the season have now been sold and a waiting list now exists for those who could not make appointments scheduled after today. Baldwin reports that only Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Boston are in a similar situation.The remaining 4,000 or so seats are reserved for mini packages, group sales, individual tickets, visiting team needs, the media and the league.

The original post, Tuesday, when I had no tickets, continues ...

Problem is, it is now, on Tuesday morning, almost certainly evident that Thursday Noon will be much too late to get any! Bummer! That even though I feverishly and immediately (as immediately as I could get the on-line ticket preference thing to work) posted my preferences when the automated e-mails were sent out, that fact didn't count. There is no "early bird" getting the "worm," on this occasion. And, in such a movie, I'm sure that Doug Dawgz in a cast of thousands!

As has been widely reported at the Oklahoman, News9.com, KOCO-TV, and everywhere else in Oklahoma City, the 1st day's sale of full season tickets dwindled the season ticket pool to somewhere only around 6,500 - 7,000 left to sell, and at the rate they sold on Day 1, those could easily be gone at the close of business today. See this article from this morning's paper, for example:

Thunder tickets are such a hot item, season-ticket sales might be capped Wednesday night or sometime Thursday.

Late-in-the-week appointments will be canceled. Those fans will be placed on a waiting list and most likely have an opportunity to purchase eight-game mini packages.

"Late-in-the-week" -- ha --how about like this evening (Tuesday) or mid-morning tomorrow (Wednesday)?

Mike Balwin's blog at newsok.com pulled no punches:

Select-a-seat started Monday at the Ford Center. When the day ended there were only 7,000 season tickets left after 6,300 were sold on Monday. If you have a Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday select-a-seat appointment forget it.

So, the way it's looking, I'll be doing a game-by-game kind of thing this year ... which is what I did during the 2 years the Hornets were in town. The "personal" upside, if you can call it that, is that I wound up going to every game I wanted to, and that was a bunch, I promise you.

To be sure, there is an "upside" for Oklahoma City in this. Keep in mind that the Ford Center's NBA capacity is right around 19,200. As Baldwin's blog added,

Team officials won’t say how many "full" season tickets they could sell, but it appears 20,000-plus would be a safe bet. And that's probably conservative. The Thunder will sell around 13,000 season tickets in less than three days before the team caps season ticket sales. That doesn't include 2,500-plus season tickets for corporate sponsors. If the team didn't hold back 4,000 tickets for group sales, individual games or mini packages you can rest assured those would be gone by the weekend.

Did you notice the price for "Nicholson seats" was $105,000 ... per season ticket. Let that price tag sink in for a minute. For a cool $1 million you could purchase nine "Hollywood seats" this season. And they’re all gone.

To provide a little context, the 3,500 upper deck $10 seats will produce $1.5 million the entire season. That's what make this such an interesting story. Tickets are quickly being gobbled up in all price ranges. Hundreds of $6,300 season tickets in the six most expensive sections – $25,000 for four season tickets – sold quickly.

Can Oklahoma City support a pro franchise? The answer Monday was ABSOLUTELY.

So, take it from me, Doug Dawg:

1. Just because you are ape-shit crazy over getting an NBA team doesn't help one iota when it comes to getting season tickets.


2. You'll still get to go to a bunch of Thunder games ... or, at least, so I'm hoping!


3. Oklahoma City IS a Major League City. I'll take some comfort in that fact, while I go without my season tickets this year.

Congrats to those of you who got or will get yours today, though. I'm not jealous ... I'm not jealous ... I'm not jealous ... I may just hate you, a little, that's all!

(Just kidding, I think)

On Edit, Wednesday morning: Now that I've got my tickets, all traces of hate (! just kidding !) are fully purged from my system!