The Oklahoma City Thunder-Los Angeles Clippers game at 7 tonight is a homecoming for former Sooner and NBA rookie Blake Griffin — a rarity for professional athletes and hometown fans of professional athletes, alike.

But this one is special.

Since his high school days at Oklahoma Christian School in Edmond, we watched him grow bigger, stronger and more mature on the hardwood from an ungainly, raw talent into one of the best technically efficient and powerful big men in the NBA.

At Oklahoma, we watched Griffin make his presence known to a national audience that would soon include his name among the top college basketball players in the country.

We reveled in being able to tell the world during his freshman year, “We’ve known him all along.”

We watched the Sooners orchestrate an assault on the NCAA — with Griffin leading the siege — and took pride in every big play made, every double-digit box score and every TV highlight reel during the Griffin brothers’ time here.

We watched the rest of the world validate Griffin’s efforts as he collected Big 12 Player of the Year awards, was named a unanimous first-team All-American and took home the consensus National Player of the Year award in the 2008-09 season.

We watched (sadly) as he went pro after his sophomore year, because — quite honestly — he had already accomplished all he could as a collegiate player, short of winning a national title.

He finally outgrew his city, his college and his home.

The NBA knew what it was getting when Griffin left for a bigger, better platform to showcase his skills. The Los Angeles Clippers took him with the first overall pick in the 2009 NBA Draft.

Then the worst happened.

In the final game of the Clippers’ 2009-10 preseason schedule, Griffin blew out his left knee and missed the entire regular season due to season-ending surgery.

Not many professional athletes are as gifted mentally as they are physically. They never had to be.

Blake Griffin had to be.

He gritted his teeth, worked through the rehab, hit the weights and learned the pro game from the end of the Clippers’ bench.

It’s not often basketball fans are witnesses to a man with as much skill and character as Griffin.

Griffin overcame a career-defining setback during his first year in the NBA, and he is now in the driver’s seat to claim NBA Rookie of the Year honors, in addition to being named to his first All-Stars team and winning the 2011 Slam Dunk Contest.

Those are great accomplishments — there’s no doubt about it.

But greater still will be the intimate moment the Thunder fans and Blake Griffin fans — who are more often than not one and the same — will share tonight.

One of the Sooner nation’s favorite sons is returning to his roots, to the place he rested his head for so many years.

Welcome home, Blake. Won’t you stay awhile?

BLAKE GRIFFIN'S CAREER STATS

College (OU)

2007-08
28.4 minutes per game
.568 field goal percentage
.589 free throw percentage
9.1 rebounds per game
0.8 blocks per game
14.7 points per game

2008-09
33.3 minutes per game
.654 field goal percentage
.590 free throw percentage
14.4 rebounds per game
1.2 blocks per game
22.7 points per game

Pro (LA Clippers)

2010-11
37.9 minutes per game
.510 field goal percentage
.617 free throw percentage
12.6 rebounds per game
0.5 blocks per game
22.8 points per game

Source: ESPN.com

— RJ Young, professional writing grad student