"The building buzzed with Oklahoma City pride Tuesday night.

Sitting courtside were Sam Bradford, who might prove to the best football player ever produced in OKC, and Joe Carter, as good a choice as any for greatest baseball player in city history.

They joined 18,201 other fans to see Blake Griffin, the best basketball player to ever come out of Oklahoma City. Living history, that's what this was.

You knew this night was different when Griffin received a mighty roar in the Los Angeles Clipper pregame introductions. Not an oh-my-lord-Kobe-Bryant-is-in-the-building roar. A we-love-you-Blake roar.

Then a funny thing happened. The love for Griffin stopped, rejected like a Serge Ibaka swat.

First Griffin basket: no cheer. First Griffin foul: cheer. First Griffin missed foul shot: cheer. A throng that a few minutes earlier had waved palm branches at their worshipped hero suddenly treated Griffin like some nondescript Minnesota Timberwolf.

Good for Oklahoma City. I'm proud of the crowd, which was no small reason the Thunder busted away from a monster Griffin start and waxed the Clippers 111-88 Tuesday night.

Boomtown handled this homecoming wonderfully. Great welcome for a favorite son, then absolute apathy. Griffin is the enemy now, trying to take playoff food from the Thunder table.

"You definitely sensed a lot of energy tonight," Thunder coach Scotty Brooks said, and Kevin Durant agreed with him. Durant even started talking jibberish about Griffin."