It would be reasonable to expect The Oklahoman, a daily newspaper headquartered in Oklahoma City, to cover the Oklahoma City Thunder’s quest for a repeat NBA championship. A now-deleted op-ed comparing the basketball team to Israel was a bit more surprising.

The Thunder won their first NBA title in 2025 since the team was sold, relocated from Seattle, and renamed, and are currently battling the San Antonio Spurs for the Western Conference title. (The Thunder lost Game 1 shortly before publication.)

On Monday, the Thunder’s hometown paper published a “curious comparison” between the team and the state of Israel in an op-ed written by guest columnist Eitan Reshef, reported Sean Keeley at Awful Announcing.

“Always find the local angle, we suppose,” wrote Keeley.

According to Keeley’s report and screenshots he shared, the op-ed was headlined, “Like Thunder, Israel is an underdog that has become hated” and shared with an image of a basketball bearing the design of the Israeli flag, white with blue stripes and a Star of David.

“The op-ed went viral on social media and not, perhaps, in the way the author intended (or maybe exactly how the author intended, who knows),” Keeley added. “It was pulled down from The Oklahoman’s website shortly thereafter.”

The link to the op-ed on The Oklahoman’s website now has a 404 “page not found” error, and the Internet Archive did not manage to capture it before it was deleted, but several websites that syndicate the newspaper’s content still have it live, including MSN.

The Oklahoman did not comment on Reshef’s column or why it was deleted.

According to the op-ed as it was syndicated at MSN.com, Reshef, the author, is “a native Oklahoman and “a Chicago-based entrepreneur, investor and former advertising agency CEO.”

“As both a fiercely proud Oklahoman and a Jew,” wrote Reshef, “the parallels between the Thunder and the nation of Israel are difficult to ignore. Neither was supposed to become what it is.”

Reshef goes on to argue he has found “something strangely familiar abrew between the online keyboard warriors and the voices of punditry as they respond to the continued dominance of the Oklahoma City Thunder,” noting the team’s newbie status in the NBA and the resentment that the young team’s sudden success had invoked.

“The greater the Thunder’s success becomes, the more critics seem determined to diminish it or even root for its demise,” Reshef wrote, pointing out that Oklahoma City was “one of the NBA’s smallest markets,” but “built something remarkable anyway…by relying on the resources and skills we had with discipline and our own brand of resilience.”

“Israel’s story shares many of those attributes — a young, microscopic nation limited in natural resources, surrounded by hostility, perpetually under scrutiny, and constantly forced to justify its actions and existence,” he continued. “Israel nonetheless transformed itself into a global powerhouse of innovation, technology, defense, medicine and agriculture.”

Israel, the Thunder, “and even Oklahoma City” have “risen out of the ashes of a traumatic past despite all odds,” Reshef wrote, an apparent reference to the Oklahoma City bombing, and concluded by comparing the team and the country’s critics:

When dynasties emerge in sports, fanbases often cry ‘foul’ questioning the legitimacy of success. The more competent and victorious the organization becomes, the more emotionally invested outsiders hope for its failure. We are witnessing that now with the Thunder. They are young, composed, and incredibly well-managed. Instead of praising the blueprint, many fans react with disdain, espousing conspiracy theories amplified by social media.

Israel experiences a similar phenomenon on a far more consequential stage. Of course, criticism of governments and their policies is fair game. But the hyper-fixation on Israel often transcends normal criticism into deeper and darker discomfort with Jewish strength, sovereignty, and achievements. When Israel thrives across a spectrum of global stages, many observers convert healthy criticism into rabid animosity.

That reaction says less about Israel or the Thunder than it does about our human nature.

We are comfortable with underdogs. What unsettles us is when underdogs stop behaving like victims and consistently triumph. The world loves stories of perseverance until it produces an uncompromising might. Then admiration mutates into skepticism and distrust.

The Thunder are not hated because they somehow gamed the system. They are hated because they mastered it. Israel is not obsessively scrutinized because it failed, but due to its success despite deeply-rooted envy and darker historical motives.

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