The Oklahoma City Thunder are one win away from popping bottles in the locker room for the first time since making the move from Seattle.
The SuperSonics won the NBA title in 1979, but when Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden made up the new Big 3 in Oklahoma City, the newest fan base thought it would be a matter of time before they would see a potential dynasty.
However, it never came – and the Thunder, instead, were bottom-dwellers.
Today, however, they are a powerhouse led by MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and a deep rotation where anybody can go off at any given time.
This year’s NBA champions will be celebrating their title with special bottles from Michelob Ultra, featuring a wearable pendant and diamonds and real gold that were used in the creation of the Larry O’Brien and other NBA trophies. The bottles were designed by Victor Solomon, who works on those trophies.
Solomon even put the pendants on by himself – “all the final touches for all the things that are extra important to me, I do it by hand personally,” he told FOX Business in a recent interview.
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“Obviously, my background in designing and producing all the trophies for the NBA led to a very logical connection with these guys to adorn the bottle with something at least to continue the tradition that they have been developing,” Solomon said. “An idea we came up with was sort of recycling all the reused material that goes into our trophy production year after year and creating the pendant. So it’s like all of those pieces are sort of children of my handy work and things around the shop – it felt very organic to bridge the gap into this piece.”
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For Solomon, as well, there is a bit of a parallel between his own execution of a successful product and the future NBA champs’ execution to bring home the title. However, at the very least, those champs deserved his A+ stuff.
“The narrative, the story we want to tell with the foundation of it, the actual bottle itself, is the actual realization of that idea and execution and delivery of it. It needs to carry the weight of that journey to the final product,” Solomon said. “So, I am very much a perfectionist in what I make for the athletes who will celebrate the journey that they have been in pursuit of since they were 10 years old. They deserve the level of care, and thoughtfulness, and honor that falls in the same order.”
“An interior designer’s clients are going to sit in that bedroom every night, these athletes are sitting with these trophies for the rest of their careers,” he continued. “So for them, you don’t want the wallpaper to not line up right in the corner, they would stay up at night staring at it. These sort of details and perfection parallels to athletes’ discipline I think that is very important.”
Game 6 of the NBA Finals is in Indiana on Thursday night – a win for the Pacers would force a Game 7 back in Oklahoma City on Sunday night.
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