So I gave everything I had, not just because it was my job, but because it was a responsibility.
People talk about culture in sports as something that is created through discipline, habits, and accountability. Oklahoma taught me that culture runs deeper than that.
Culture is memory.
It is understanding what a community has been through and choosing to honor it, not with words, but with how you show up every day.
I came to Oklahoma City to play basketball, but before I played a single game, this state showed me something far more important than wins or losses.
It showed me what it means to carry the weight of a place with dignity.
It showed me that there are people in those arenas who have lived through the unthinkable and still choose to stand, to cheer, to believe.
And it taught me that when you step onto that court in Oklahoma, you are not just playing a game.
You are honoring 168 lives.
You are stepping into a story that did not begin with you and will not end with you.
I played 180 games for the Oklahoma City Thunder, and before every single one, I reminded myself of that responsibility.
Each night, I dedicated the game to one of the 168 people who lost their lives in that attack.
Every time I stepped onto the court, I carried a name with me.
A life.
A story that was taken too soon.
And over time, I realized something I will never forget.
For me, those were games.
For them, there were no second chances.
And if you truly understand that, then giving anything less than everything you have is not just a mistake.
It is a failure to honor who they are.
To my Oklahoma family;
this piece comes straight from the heart.
I hope you’ll take a moment to read it and feel what I felt.
Thank you for allowing me to be a small part of it.
I came to @okcthunder to play basketball. I left carrying 168 lives.
When I was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder, I was thinking about basketball, nothing more.
I didn’t know that before I ever stepped on the court, this place would show me something that would stay with me far longer than any game.
Like any player, my mind was on the game. A new team, a new city, a new opportunity. I expected the usual routine when I landed in Oklahoma City. Physicals, practices, meetings, and a jersey waiting in a locker.
But before any of that, Sam Presti pulled me aside and told me there was somewhere we needed to go.
He didn’t explain much, and I didn’t think to ask. I was focused on the next step in my career.
What I didn’t understand was that, before I could represent the place I was about to play for, I needed to understand it.
So instead of heading to the facility, he took me to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.
I walked in without knowing what I was about to see, and within minutes, everything slowed down.
There are 168 chairs at the memorial, each one representing a life lost on April 19, 1995. They are arranged in quiet rows, each engraved with a name, each standing where a person once stood in that building. Then you notice something that is impossible to process the first time you see it. Some of the chairs are smaller.
They belong to children.
There is no speech that prepares you for that, no headline that captures it. You simply stand there, and the silence carries a kind of weight that is hard to describe but impossible to ignore.
As you walk through the memorial, you pass between two gates marked 9:01 and 9:03. At first, they seem like simple numbers, but then you understand what they hold. One marks the last minute before the attack. The other marks the first minute after. And in between those two gates is 9:02, the moment when everything changed.
That minute does not feel like history when you are standing there. It feels present.
The reflecting pool stretches across what used to be a city street, its surface calm and still. When you look into it, you do not just see water. You see yourself standing in a place where unimaginable loss occurred, and for a moment, everything else in your life becomes quieter.
Nearby stands the Survivor Tree, an American elm that was damaged in the blast but endured. It is not untouched. Its scars are part of what it represents. But it is still standing, and in that, it carries a kind of strength that does not need to be explained.
We did not speak much while we were inside. It did not feel like a place for conversation. Some places ask for words. This one asks for reflection.
When we stepped outside, Sam Presti looked me in the eye and said, “This is what this state has been through.”
Then he said something I will never forget.
“Every time you step on that court, you are not just playing in front of fans. You are playing for a state that carries this with it. Give them everything you have. They deserve that.”
In that moment, basketball felt different.
Not smaller, but clearer.
Because what I had just seen was not only about what was lost. It was about what remained. A state that had experienced unimaginable pain and still chose to come together, to rebuild, and to move forward without losing its humanity.
From that day on, every time I stepped on the court, I carried that with me.
On the nights when I was tired, when I was hurt, when I was dealing with challenges that felt heavy in the moment, I would think about those chairs, about that minute, about the people behind those names. And I was reminded that what I was going through did not compare to what this state had endured.
https://t.co/XfNLliRVaO
Vaccines never saved us.
Vaccines cripple humanity so pedophiles in power can perform their satanic death rituals unabated. Consider this: Congress even passed a law that allows vaccine makers to cripple and kill as many humans as they please. Case in point: autism is now 1 in 12 in California, where the strictest vaccine mandates are upheld.
Democrats lead the way in this depravity.
"CO₂ is the gas of life."
Renowned astrophysicist and geoscientist Dr. Willie Soon refutes claims that CO₂ is a harmful gas responsible for global warming, hurricanes, and extreme weather events.
He dismisses such claims as "nonsense".
"I've published scientific papers refuting all of these arguments."
Shai on the response after getting beaten three straight times:
“Nobody likes that feeling. If you don’t like it, you’ve got to do something about it. Tonight showed that when we play with urgency, force, and attention to detail, it doesn’t matter who’s on the other side.”
Heads need to roll..
🚨The CDC Held a Secret Meeting, known as ‘Simpsonwood’, after a Study showed the Hepatitis B Vaccine was Causing Autism in Children
• A study was conducted, comparing babies who got the Hepatitis B Vaccine (loaded with mercury, Thiomersal) within the first 30 days to babies who never got it at all.. ⬇️
🔴 WHAT THEY
FOUND WAS SHOCKING!
• The CDC’s own data containing the medical records of 100,000+ children, showed that a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines known as, Thimerosal, was responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children.
—— speech delays
—— attention-deficit disorder
—— hyperactivity
—— Autism
⬆️ For comparison, the relative risk of developing lung cancer from smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for 20 years, is 10….
But if your child was vaccinated with the Hepatitis B Vaccine, the likelihood of your child developing autism was 11.35!
🔴 THE CDC PUSHED THE PANIC BUTTON
• The CDC held a secret meeting, later to be known as “Simpsonwood”, with top government public health officials, all major agencies (FDA, CDC, NIH, WHO, HHS), as well vaccine manufacturers, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur.
—— There were ZERO public announcements of the session, only private invitations.
• The CDC was afraid the meeting would be subjected to Freedom of Information Requests (FOIA)… so In June 2000, they gathered everyone for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood Methodist retreat conference center in Norcross, Georgia, along Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy.
🔴 BUT SOMEBODY RECORDED THAT MEETING…
• RFK Jr got ahold of those transcripts in 2005 and says,
—— “it’s horrific! It’s a nightmare! They looked at the science and said it’s 100% bulletproof, WE ARE CAUSING AUTISM!”
• Instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry’s bottom line.
🔴 COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION
• Despite clear evidence from their own mouths, a Senate Committee investigation found these claims to be “unsubstantiated”… from individuals who had clear financial ties to the industry.
—— Dr. Sam Katz, the committee’s chair, was a paid consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and was part of a team that developed the measles vaccine and brought it to licensure in 1963.
—— Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.
—— The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisers who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine “had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.”
• Rep. Dan Burton, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal and found there was a coverup and vaccines with Thimerosal caused autism
—— “Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic,” his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report.
🔴 FAST FORWARD
Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants — in one case, within hours of birth.
The estimated number of cases of autism has since increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 36 children.
When President Trump took office, shortly thereafter appointing RFK JR, these vaccines no longer contain mercury — which is a victory from God.
https://t.co/i7H8kVdUuU