By Bill Haisten
OKLAHOMA CITY — As a 10-year-old during the summer of 2008, Terrance Ferguson was part of a group that was given a tour of the then-brand-new BOK Center in downtown Tulsa.
As the building enters its 10th year of operation, Ferguson has never attended an event in the arena. He finally gets to experience the BOK Center on Tuesday, but he won’t need a ticket.
As a Thunder rookie shooting guard, Ferguson is a part of the show as Oklahoma City is matched with Houston in a 7 p.m. NBA preseason game.
“That’s crazy,” the 19-year-old Ferguson said before a Thunder training-camp practice session. “My mom even worked at the BOK Center when it first opened. She worked in the ticket office.”
From kindergarten through fifth grade, Ferguson attended Tulsa’s Hawthorne and Emerson elementary schools. As a sixth-grader, he and his mother Rachelle Holdman moved to Dallas.
As a little guy, Ferguson played countless hours of tournament basketball at ORU’s Aerobics Center, and in gyms at the North Mabee Boys & Girls Club and the Mabee Red Shield Boys & Girls Club.
His next game occurs in the city’s biggest room — the BOK Center.
In a spectacularly cool bit of happenstance, Ferguson’s first NBA game is played in Tulsa.
“When we were younger, you could see Terrance’s potential, and now he’s in the NBA,” R.J. Fuqua said. “The kid I played basketball with is in the NBA.”
When Ferguson’s family moved next door to Fuqua’s family, the result was a permanent friendship. When Ferguson was a second-grader, he and Fuqua began a five-year run as Tulsa Bulldogs teammates.
After having driven Booker T. Washington to last season’s Class 6A championship game, Fuqua now is a freshman member of the Oral Roberts University basketball team.
Caleb Nero, who would become an All-State performer for a state title team at Memorial, also was a Bulldog with Ferguson and Fuqua.
Had Ferguson not moved to Dallas, he says he also would have been a Booker T. Washington Hornet. His 6-foot-5 father, Terrance Ferguson Sr., played football at Booker T. Washington and Oklahoma State.
“The day I moved next door to R.J., I saw him sitting on the curb,” the younger Ferguson recalled. “He had a basketball goal set up, so we played every day. His dad (ORU basketball legend Richard Fuqua) would shoot with us. His dad would take us to school and pick us up. We would do homework at R.J.’s house. He and I were super close. We still are.”
Fuqua says that when he and Ferguson were neighbors, every summer morning was the same.
“You would hear a basketball bouncing outside. It was Terrance,” Fuqua remembers. “We would play all day. We would play until our parents dragged us into the house.”
After having been a McDonald’s All-American at Advanced Prep International in Dallas, Ferguson committed to Arizona.
By NBA rule, players are not eligible for the draft until they are one year removed from high school. Instead of playing college basketball, Ferguson decided to sign with an Australian professional team — the Adelaide 36ers — for one season.
While he averaged only 15 minutes and 4.6 points per game with the 36ers, Thunder general manager Sam Presti liked Ferguson’s upside as a possibly elite defender who can develop into a 15-point contributor in the NBA.
Arizona’s Sean Miller coached an unbeaten Team USA Under-19 squad. Ferguson was on the roster. Miller described Ferguson as the best defender he had ever coached at that level.
“I’m a defender first,” Ferguson said. “(OKC) needs that from me. Defend first, score second.”
At Florida, Billy Donovan coached 19-year-old athletes. With the Thunder, Donovan coaches a Ferguson who is the same age as those Gator freshmen.
With a group of 20 family members and friends, Ferguson watched the draft telecast from his Dallas home.
For the entire article logon to www.tulsaworld.com
