OKC company pulls Seattle-taunting Thunder shirt after receiving death threats
An Oklahoma City apparel company says it has pulled a Thunder T-shirt from its website after receiving death threats from angry SuperSonics fans.
The insensitive shirt (seen above) features the Seattle Supersonics logo and says “OKC Thunder” on the front. The back taunts Thunder fans with a mean-spirited message: “Thank you Seattle – Okc.”
The shirt apparently has been around for a few years but didn’t receive much attention until it was mentioned on Twitter by New York Times NBA writer Howard Beck and then highly publicized by Yahoo! NBA blog Ball Don’t Lie.
The shirt’s maker, Warpaint Clothing Co., says it began receiving hate mail on Monday and initially laughed about rubbing it in for Sonics fans. They expressed a more conciliatory tone several hours later:
So much hate in the world. No disrespect meant. We appreciate where our team came from actually. Put your energy into something positive.
— warpaint clothing co (@warpaintrags) May 21, 2012
They also reportedly announced they were removing the shirt from their site because of death threats, but that tweet has been deleted. A different version of the shirt seems to be available on the site.
I’m glad the company received some backlash and decided to pull the shirt. Tasteful taunting is fair game when your team beats another city’s, but mocking fans for their owner selling to another who moved the team out of the city is overboard.
