'Bigger than us': In Oklahoma City, the Thunder and their fans form NBA's closest bond

In Oklahoma City, fans, city officials and the team itself are intertwined more closely than perhaps any other NBA market.

OKLAHOMA CITY — 6501 S. Meridian Ave. is not the type of place where a championship parade would be expected to kick off.

Twenty minutes southwest of downtown Oklahoma City, along a little-used road just outside the city’s international airport, a chain-link fence separates a parking lot with a few dozen spaces from an airplane hangar and a small runway.

Yet should the Thunder win an NBA championship Thursday night in Game 6 of the NBA Finals in Indianapolis, the celebration that ensues across Oklahoma will symbolically, and logistically, start here, where every Thunder road trip ends and the city's embrace of the team begins.

The first time Devin Newsom drove to South Meridian to stand at the chain-link fence, it was 2012, when the Thunder, who had relocated from Seattle to Oklahoma City only four years earlier, were in the midst of a breakout playoff run that enthralled their new home. A Thunder employee at the time, Newsom wanted to celebrate a critical playoff win and asked friends who also worked for the team when the plane carrying coaches and players home from Dallas would land. He spread the word, and when the Thunder stepped off their charter jet well after midnight, they did so to cheers.

A young fan holds up a photo of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander at a Western Conference playoff game against the Memphis Grizzlies in Oklahoma City on April 20.William Purnell / Getty ImagesNewsom has been organizing “airport welcomes,” as they are called, ever since.