Oklahoma’s biggest sports story? Jeremie Poplin on Thunder, Pacers and NCAA shakeup

News On 6 Sports Analyst Jeremie Poplin joins Dave Davis to discuss the Oklahoma City Thunder’s postseason run, Tulsa’s ties to the Indiana Pacers, and the new NCAA revenue-sharing model.

Dave Davis: The Thunder are three wins away from their first-ever NBA championship, and college football players are getting paid again. News On 6 Sports Analyst Jeremie Poplin is here to break it all down. Good morning, Jeremie.

Jeremie Poplin: Morning. Good morning, Dave.

Davis: Let’s contextualize this Thunder run. If they win, how big of a deal is it in Oklahoma sports history?

Poplin: I think it instantly becomes the biggest sports story in the history of the state, and I know that's saying a lot, considering the championships at Southern Hills, the national titles OU has won in football, and you could go down the list. But when we start talking about the first-ever professional franchise to win a championship in this state, I think it automatically starts to creep up toward the top. With professional sports being in this state now, it's crazy from when I first got into the business 25 years ago. To see how much focus we have now on the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Davis: It’s amazing to be in a state with an NBA team, even if it's not in Tulsa. It just feels like the state’s team. And I think it always has. There’s some connection between Tulsa and the Pacers, right?

Poplin: Yeah, so we’ll start with ORU. A couple of players who graduated from ORU eventually made it to the Indiana Pacers. Moses Ehambe played briefly there. But the big one is Haywoode Workman. If you're an old-school basketball fan, you remember him from the late ’80s and ’90s. He transferred to ORU and finished his college career there. He’s probably the most well-known Pacers player with Tulsa ties.

The biggest connection, though, is Kevin Pritchard, the Pacers’ President of Basketball Operations. He’s a Tulsa Edison graduate, played at Kansas, and was part of the Jayhawks team that beat OU in the 1988 national championship game. His high school coach, John Phillips, is still in town, who ultimately went on to coach the University of Tulsa. But yeah, there are a lot of people who have some deep ties to Kevin Pritchard here.

Davis: He played for the Heat briefly. I mean, this is a pro basketball player.

Poplin: And one little trivia. Kevin Pritchard was actually the first player ever signed by the Vancouver Grizzlies. He never played a minute for them. He got let go, but he was the first ever.

Davis: Coach Phillips told our reporter, Chloe Abbott, that Kevin’s hair was a little long back then.

Poplin: Yes, there’s no doubt. [Laughs]

Davis: All the best to Kevin Pritchard, except we hope he doesn't win this particular championship. Let’s talk about the Pacers themselves. What they’re doing is unbelievable. They were 50-to-1 odds to win it all before the season.

Poplin: We’ve never seen anything like this. Go back and watch the buzzer-beaters, it’s wild. Just through the first two games of the Finals, they’ve only led for a few seconds compared to the Thunder leading most of the time. Tyrese Haliburton has been clutch.

There have been four games this postseason where they had less than a 3% chance to win in the final moments. The odds of them winning all four? One in 75 million.

Davis: That includes wins over the Thunder, Bucks, Cavs, and Knicks, right? And OKC has been so dominant. How long had it been since they lost a home game to an East team?

Poplin: Yeah, so this is crazy: before that Game 1 loss to the Pacers, the last time Oklahoma City lost to an Eastern Conference team at home was in March 2024. It was exactly 450 days apart.

Davis: That’s just wild. All these improbable things. So, shifting gears: I thought college athletes were already getting paid. What’s new with this new revenue-sharing deal?

Poplin: This is different, it’s not just NIL anymore. This is actual revenue sharing. Since it passed, universities can now share their TV and athletic department revenue—up to $20.5 million a year.

It’s up to each school whether they want to opt in for the full amount and how they split it up. Football will probably get the biggest share, followed by men’s and women’s basketball. But this brings up a lot of questions about Olympic sports. No one really knows yet—it’ll be something schools figure out as they go.

Davis: So, schools like OU gymnastics will be watching closely. Olympic sports are really going to have to pay attention.

Poplin: No doubt.

Davis: Jeremie Poplin, News On 6 Sports Analyst—you can catch him on News 9’s YouTube page and X account for the Thunder halftime “Hang Out.”

Poplin: Yep! It’s just a chill space. Come hang out, hear what we think of the game, share some stories, then we roll into the third quarter.