Boom Times

One of the initial people Sam Anderson talked to when he first traveled York Times Magazine, had come to the state to write an article about the rise of the Oklahoma City Thunder after the team had made a surprising run to the 2012 NBA Finals. And he still wasn’t sure why so many people urged him to speak with the legendary meteorologist.

More than a decade after they first met, Anderson was back in Oklahoma City attending England’s celebration of life, which was held on June 20 of this year. England had passed away 10 days earlier, amid the hysteria of the Thunder taking on the Indiana Pacers in the 2025 NBA Finals.

While Anderson had been in and out of OKC covering the championship series, he made sure to be present at the funeral services—that’s the type of impression England had made on him. Their relationship was a microcosm of the connection Anderson made with Oklahoma City, as well. It was one that was unexpected and career-altering.

Instead of the kind of 2,000- or 3,000-word, long-form magazine article that Anderson was known for and fond of, he spent five years researching and penning the highly acclaimed book Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis.

“I’d been waiting for a book. I always dreamed of writing a book that I could make just like I wanted it and be really proud of it,” says Anderson. “This was the subject that just grabbed me and made me do it. The whole thing felt charmed, and I felt, like, sucked in.”

Boom Town was released in 2018, and told about much more than just how the Thunder arrived in Oklahoma City and its band of young superstars. It’s a combination history lesson, sports docudrama and reality TV show put in book form.

“What I found is that OKC is one of the great weirdo cities of the world — it holds, compressed, the entire history of our nation. I tried to cram it all in: outlaws, sit-ins, tornadoes, Durant & Westbrook, The Flaming Lips, city planners gone wild, a capitalism propaganda museum, roadside trash, megachurches, grown men stoically weeping.”
–Sam Anderson

Along with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and Sam Presti, Anderson focused on England, the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, Stanley Draper, Clara Luper and the Oklahoma City Bombing, and these figures’ and events’ combined influence on the city. The 448-page epic was named best book of the year by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Economist and Deadspin. Despite being born in Oregon and living most of his professional career in New York, Anderson had found something in Oklahoma, as Boom Town became requisite reading for locals and out-of-staters.

Yet, when Anderson was first handed the assignment by his Times editor in 2012, neither of them knew what he would be writing about. “One day we were talking in his office and he said, ‘I want you to write a big, colorful cover story about something; what’s it going to be?’” Anderson recalls. “I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He then said, ‘Well, you’re a basketball fan, right?’ I said yeah, I had a stepdad who was this blue-collar Chicago guy who was crazy about sports, who got me into basketball and taught me how the game works. And I fell in love with it when I was a kid and had been a pickup player all my life. I love basketball. He said this team in Oklahoma City, they just lost in the Finals, but they shocked everyone by getting there. Fascinating personalities. But why does the city have a team?” Anderson’s writer’s sense knew immediately there was a story to be told.

“He said, ‘Just go out there and see what you see and see what’s going on and write about the relationship between the city and the team and the personalities on the team, and take it whatever direction you want to take it,’” Anderson said.

After the Thunder lost to LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat in the 2012 NBA Finals, it looked like the franchise was a dynasty in the making. With Durant, Westbrook, James Harden and Serge Ibaka, the core of the team had yet to even enter their prime. It seemed to be a given that they would win an NBA championship in the near future, if not the very next season. At least, that is what Anderson thought.

“I remember there were all these lists. ESPN ranked the Thunder the number one franchise in all of sports,” Anderson recalls. “There are all these like future power rankings, and they were always number one. I remember talking to Sam Presti at the (OKC) Memorial back in 2012 and having this kind of a conversation and saying, ‘You’re like the envy of the league.’ And him saying, very cautiously, ‘You don’t know what’s going to happen. Everyone says we’ll be back five times to the Finals.’ Like, ‘You have injuries.’ He then listed all the things that versions of which did eventually happen.”

Along with critical injuries, Oklahoma City endured a crushing playoff loss to Golden State in 2016, Durant then surprising the league by signing as a free agent with the same Warriors team, Damian Lillard’s buzzer-beater to end the Thunder season in 2019 and Westbrook leaving two months later with no title to show for it. Through it all, Anderson watched from afar. With Boom Town on the shelves in bookstores around the country, he found himself keeping abreast of what was going on with the team and the city he had informally adopted.

He had no idea it would take 13 years for league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and a new cast of stars to put it all together and bring Oklahoma its first professional title. But this season, when the clock struck zero and the confetti dropped, Anderson watched their story and his come full circle from his media seat in the Paycom Center.

“So for me, this is without question, like the great magical experience of my writing career,” Anderson says. “I don’t think anything will ever approach it, which is a little sad. But also, I’m just endlessly proud of what I was there to see. And I’m proud of the book and the writing I did.”

Anderson is fully aware that he caught lightning in a bottle with Boom Town. While he would love to pen another novel that reaches the same level of satisfaction, he is under no illusion that he will be put in a similar situation, with a similar cast of characters and the type of access he earned. For that one moment in time, it all seemed to come together for him.

“Media has changed so much, even since I first came out in 2012. People’s relationship to reading has changed so much since then, and it’s going to keep changing,” Anderson says. “I don’t know if that kind of book will exist anymore or if I’ll ever write another one. I don’t know. So, I have looked back many times and been like, ‘I’m so glad I did that when I did that.’ It came out the way it did, and I’m just really proud of it.” Anderson went into this project as just a writer looking for a story.

Looking back on the journey of Boom Town, he got much more than he could have ever imagined. “I feel such affection for Oklahoma City and the bizarre history of that place and the people I’ve connected with,” Anderson said. “I find myself, like, really watching games with my son, who’s now about to turn 18. We’re watching games at home and he’s like, ‘God, you really are a Thunder fan now.’” •