The Oklahoman

I don't have my tab open for the thesaurus.

Justin Martinez, beat reporter and writer for the Oklahoman covering the Thunder.

Justin, how you doing?

Good, man.

Now, the Gaylord family made its money in newspapers, not entertainment.

Edward inherited ownership of the Daily Oklahoman newspaper from his father, who was also named Edward.

Gaylord's dad lived a very long life and headed up the company right until his death at age 101.

By the time the younger Edward took over, he'd had many years to do his own thing and cultivate his own interests.

You know? It's just like you gotta find a way to pay all sides of the team.

Well, and Sam Presti said in an in- interview with The Oklahoman earlier this summer, after they traded away Lu Dort specifically, um, because he said that was a financially motivated move.

Like he is-

Mm-hmm

Um, but I think for the rest of people, um, you- we're gonna be, like, looking for information.

And, you know, The, The Oklahoman, the newspaper, the editorial board publicly came out and opposed both of these state questions.

They said, "These are, these are not good for the myriad of reasons that we've addressed here." Right? Like, "This introduces partisanship."

Well-

... season predictions.

He's competing with Justin Martinez, the beat writer for The Oklahoman.

Joe Mazzato's the columnist for The Oklahoman, the tastemaker in the market.

Brennan Rabar and Nick Craine.

And whoever gets closest to the pin on, on as many questions, the majority of questions, Joe, they receive a gift basket from Locked On Thunder.

...

this prestigious award.

Now, you've already started to roll out your previews at The Oklahoman, including your annual bold predictions.

I was thinking about just, uh, in advance of this, uh, th- thinking about how all of that h- materialized, and, um, I think it started back in, I don't know, maybe eighth or ninth grade.

The county seat where I was from was a town, it was just one town over, and they had a pretty good daily local newspaper.

And, uh, my friends and I always read the sports pages and would, and would go to the sports pages to see how our rivals were doing in football and basketball.

But there was v- there was very rarely coverage of our school.

I think one night after a, a, uh, pretty intense, I didn't play football but would, would watch all the game, w- and one night after an intense football game, I just wrote a few paragraphs on the game and sent it to them and said, "Would you consider printing this?" And they did, and they said, "Can you do this again? Can you do this again next week? And then can you cover basketball? And so, and, you know, we'll pay you a little bit to do it." And so I, um, that's how I became interested in, in sports writing and journalism.

And, and actually the, the publisher of, it's called The Claremore Daily Progress, um, asked me, I was supposed to go to, I, I was slated to go to Oklahoma, the University of Oklahoma in Norman after graduating high school, and he asked, "Will you, will you just consider coming to work here full time and delaying going to Oklahoma?" And, and I did for a semester.

And so, um, and that was a really great experience and set me up really well, uh, when I got to, um, he was really well connected, and when I got to Norman, um, I landed, um, w- was able to land a, a position at Oklahoma's statewide newspaper, The Oklahoman, on the sports agate desk, which led to reporting on high school sports and college sports and a lot of golf, um-

Mm