One week until training camp

Can you believe it? NBA media day is one week from today. It will be the first team appearance for your new Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder will then begin training camp with the first day of practice one day later on Tuesday, Sept. 30.

I’ve finally returned from vacation and I’m excited and can’t wait to get started, getting to know this new team, its players, coaches and front office personnel and delivering readers news on the franchise on a daily basis. For those who don’t remember our coverage from the Hornets’ two-year stay, we essentially had a daily story and a notebook every day. That format will be revved up times 10 with the Thunder, partly because this team is a permanent one, but also because The Oklahoman is constantly striving to utilize more story-telling methods and take advantage of all the multimedia formats we have at our disposal.

Having said that, this will be the place I will blog throughout the season on all things Thunder and NBA as it relates to Oklahoma City. Thundermadness.com, which I’m sure most of you are familiar with by now, is The Oklahoman’s new fan message board dedicated specifically to the Thunder. My partner on the NBA/Thunder beat will be Mike Baldwin, who you’ll learn is an excellent reporter who I’m sure will gain a reputation for getting you news first. Mike will be a regular contributor to Thundermadness, and I will occasionally weigh in on that forum as well.

In addition to this space and Thundermadness, we’re planning on bringing you a heavy dose of videos and podcasts on the Thunder/NBA. We’ll have regular weekly videos, as many as four a week, including one live weekly roundtable that is in the works. And get this, I’m even scheduled to shoot video from the road to give readers/viewers a sense of what some of these other cities and arenas are like. That should be interesting to say the least. There also will be live chats with myself and Mike, podcasts with writers and columnists and sometimes with players and national media members as well.

That’s all in addition to the bevy of information we’ll have for the paper every day. We’ll kickoff our coverage Sunday with a training camp/preseason preview. Then you can expect to see a story on the Thunder every day in The Oklahoman through the end of the season. It should be a great inaugural season, one in which we hope to answer all your questions about this team and many more you never knew you had.