OKC Thunder Beat Reporter: Family, Cancer, Sports with Brandon Rahbar
Episode Summary
In this episode, David Raubach sits down with Brandon Rahbar, the longtime beat reporter behind Daily Thunder who has covered the Oklahoma City Thunder since the early rebuild days of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luguentz Dort’s rookie season. Brandon shares what it is really like to have a front-row seat to one of the most character-driven franchises in professional sports — from Shai signing over 500 autographs before a single game to players bantering with courtside fans mid-game. His first-person view of the Thunder’s journey from rebuilding squad to NBA champions gives listeners an inside perspective that TV broadcasts simply cannot capture.
Brandon’s career path to the beat is as unconventional as it is instructive. After studying journalism and broadcasting, he spent a decade at Christian radio station KFFF 91 FM in Oklahoma City before launching a personal Thunder blog around 2010 — mixing pop culture mashups (Thunder players as Walking Dead characters, Game of Thrones themes) with basketball analysis. That creative voice caught the attention of Roy Young, founder of Daily Thunder, who eventually invited Brandon to write for the site. When Young moved to ESPN, the new owners tapped Brandon as the full-time beat reporter — a path built entirely on originality, persistence, and stacking small opportunities.
The conversation takes a meaningful turn when David asks Brandon about his stepfather Gary, who raised him from age five after his biological father moved away. Gary was diagnosed with lung cancer — discovered incidentally during a stomach surgery — and given months to live. He ultimately defied that prognosis by nearly two full years. During that stretch, Gary helped Brandon and his pregnant wife paint and repair a house, attended their wedding against medical expectations, and spent time with double-digit grandchildren. Brandon credits Gary’s sheer toughness and, specifically, his care at the Oklahoma Proton Center for contributing to his extended and high-quality survival.
One of the most vivid and humanizing stories Brandon shares is Gary’s use of his radiation treatment mask at Halloween. Rather than let the mask be a symbol of illness, Gary wore it to scare the toddler grandchildren on Halloween — arriving very sick but determined to bring laughter to the family. It is a story that crystallizes Gary’s character: tough, silly, loving, and utterly unwilling to let cancer define his final years. That same spirit, Brandon reflects, is part of why Gary never needed the feeding tube doctors said he would require.
David and Brandon close with practical wisdom for anyone walking alongside a loved one through a cancer diagnosis. Brandon’s advice is direct and earned: spend the time. Work, distraction, and the logistics of daily life can crowd out the irreplaceable hours, but those hours are what remain when treatment ends. Brandon says the memories made in Gary’s final two years — far more than expected — are what he is most grateful for, and he encourages anyone in a similar position to prioritize presence above all else.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Life as an NBA Beat Reporter: Brandon Rahbar explains the day-to-day reality of covering the Oklahoma City Thunder — attending games, writing analysis, recording podcasts, and managing social media — and what it means to have witnessed the full arc from rebuild to championship.
- The Character of the Thunder Roster: Brandon describes why the Thunder stand out as people, not just players — from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander signing hundreds of autographs before games to players like Jalen Suggs placing side bets with courtside fans mid-game.
- Jared McCain’s Arrival in OKC: The newly acquired guard’s personality, his Tik Tok fame before the NBA, and why 76ers fans — to a person — were heartbroken to see him traded, all signal a strong culture fit with Oklahoma City.
- Injuries Behind OKC’s Mid-Season Slide: Brandon contextualizes the Thunder’s dip after a 24-1 start, explaining that simultaneous absences of Shai, Josh Giddey (now traded), and A.J. Mitchell — the team’s three primary ball-handlers — forced role players into positions they are not built for.
- How to Break Into Sports Writing: Brandon’s non-linear journey — Christian radio, small newspaper clips, a creative personal blog, and eventually a full-time beat role — illustrates that originality and stacking small opportunities matter more than a straight credentialed path.
- Accidental Viral Moments: Brandon recounts the now-famous story of accidentally asking Josh Giddey — on an unmuted national Zoom call during COVID — whether he had pooped, and how the resulting tweet went viral across the NBA media world.
- Stepfather Gary’s Lung Cancer Diagnosis: Gary’s cancer was discovered during a routine stomach surgery, was already advanced at detection, and carried a prognosis of months — yet he ultimately lived nearly two years beyond that timeline, a testament to both medical care and personal toughness.
- The Oklahoma Proton Center’s Role: Both Gary and his family credited the Proton Center staff’s warmth and patient-centered approach with meaningfully improving his quality of life during treatment — reflecting the center’s philosophy that treatment is about more than a cure.
- Milestones That Drove Gary Forward: Doctors did not expect Gary to survive to Brandon’s wedding, yet he attended. He also never required the feeding tube physicians anticipated — a combination of Proton Center care and the kind of stubborn toughness that defined his whole life.
- Finding Humor Inside Illness: Gary’s decision to wear his radiation treatment mask at Halloween to frighten his toddler grandchildren — while very ill — exemplifies the power of humor and normalcy in a cancer journey, and is the story Brandon says best captures who his stepfather was.
- Legacy of a Blended Family: Gary raised five children, only two of whom were biologically his, yet all five considered him their dad. His legacy of hard work, loving discipline, and infectious humor lives on through those children and double-digit grandchildren.
- Advice for Families Facing Cancer: Brandon’s single most important recommendation for anyone whose loved one has been diagnosed: spend the time with them. Work and logistics will always compete for attention, but those hours cannot be recovered once they are gone.
Brandon Rahbar’s episode is a reminder that the stories living alongside cancer are as varied and human as the people who carry them. From a veteran reporter who found his voice through creative blogging to a son who watched his stepfather paint a house and scare grandchildren while fighting lung cancer, this conversation holds equal amounts of joy and weight. If you are in the middle of a diagnosis — yours or someone you love — Brandon’s words offer something simple and true: show up, make the memories, and let the time you spend together be the thing that lasts.
Full Transcript
Read Full Transcript
David Raubach: I want to thank you all for joining us today on this episode of the Cancer Project podcast. We’re really privileged to have Brandon Rahbar with us. Brandon is a beat writer and reporter for the Oklahoma City Thunder with a big following on social media, and he’s also had a personal experience with a family member going through cancer. So, Brandon, thank you so much for joining us.
Brandon Rahbar: Yeah, thank you for having me.
David Raubach: Tell us a little bit about what it’s like as a reporter for the Thunder. For those of us on the outside looking in, what does your day-to-day look like?
Brandon Rahbar: Yeah, so first of all, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a great gig and a great organization to be around from top to bottom. I get to go to basketball games and write about them and talk about them for a living. My first year as a beat reporter was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luguentz Dort’s first year with the team, so I kind of feel like I went through the rebuild with the team. I’ve been able to chart the beginning stages all the way through the championship and see this team grow — and so many things have stayed the same about who they are, even as the team has gotten much, much better.
David Raubach: Which of the players is your favorite interview?
Brandon Rahbar: Oh man. J-Dub is pretty great — very thoughtful but also very funny. Alex Caruso is great because he sounds like a coach when he talks. Shai is great because he always says the right thing no matter the situation, whether it’s a 20-point loss or game seven of the NBA Finals — he’s always cool, calm, and professional. Really, this is just a fun team with a lot of guys worth interviewing.
David Raubach: You’re right about Shai. He’s very well spoken, very eloquent — gives these deep, introspective answers. Have you had a chance to talk to Jared McCain since he arrived?
Brandon Rahbar: Yeah, he’s had one post-practice interview and he’s very much like J-Will. His whole 15-minute post-game presser, he was smiling the entire time. He was famous on TikTok before he became an NBA pro — he dances, he sings — but he’s also a really good basketball player and, from what I’ve seen, a great interview as well.
David Raubach: One of the things you always look at when a player gets traded is how his former team responds, and that tells you a lot about who that person is. To a person, all of the Sixers players have talked about what a big loss it was — not just on the court but culturally. He brought joy to the locker room, which makes him a great fit for the Thunder.
Brandon Rahbar: Sam Presti always talks about drafting people, not just players, and Jared McCain fits that to a tee. Any tweet or social media post about the trade — look at the comments and they’re all from Sixers fans who are devastated they lost him. I got so much joy for about 72 hours after that trade just reading Sixers fans’ reactions.
David Raubach: So for those of us worried about the Thunder after starting 24-1 and then going something like 16 and 12 since — why should we not be worried?
Brandon Rahbar: The main thing is injuries. They’ve been one of the most injured teams in the NBA. Shai is out right now — you’re missing an MVP. J-Dub has missed so much time and he was All-NBA last year. A.J. Mitchell is missing right now. Those three are the three primary ball-handlers, shot creators, and playmakers — the offensive engines of the team. When you’re missing two or three of them, role players are asked to do things they’re not normally asked to do. And on top of that, this team’s DNA is to bring 100% effort every night, and they’re playing against teams who have circled them on the calendar all year just to take down the champs.
David Raubach: What’s a story from the playoff run or the Finals that a regular fan wouldn’t be privy to?
Brandon Rahbar: After they win the championship, these guys are being swarmed by everyone, and they really do take the time on an individual level — talking to fans, giving hugs, taking pictures. You see the stuff with Shai where he’ll sign every single autograph before a game. The NBA counted one time and it was over 500 autographs he did before a single game. Seeing these superstars interact with people on a personal, one-on-one level behind the scenes has been really, really cool.
David Raubach: It’s as genuine as it looks on TV, then.
Brandon Rahbar: 100%. Yes.
David Raubach: I went to the Magic game recently — we were in the second row — and because the game got out of hand so quickly, players from both teams were interacting with the front row almost the entire game. Jalen Suggs made a side bet with a fan that he’d make a three-pointer the next time down the court. He went down, made it, came back and told the fan, “You owe me ten dollars.”
Brandon Rahbar: Yeah, it really has been fun because these guys just haven’t changed. When you win a championship, everyone’s stature rises — you’re an NBA champion, you’re on national TV more. But who they are as people has remained the same, and I’ve gotten a front-row seat to see that behind the scenes.
David Raubach: Have you gotten to try on a ring or seen the rings?
Brandon Rahbar: I have, and they are very, very nice. They’re so detailed and specific to this team — the whole zero-zero mindset inscribed into it, all those things. There’s actually a ring inside of a ring for the players — something more practical they can actually wear around — which I thought was a great idea. And we had a nurse practitioner at the Proton Center whose husband is an attorney for the Thunder, so he got a ring as part of the leadership team. She brought it to work for show-and-tell and people were lining up to try it on and take pictures.
David Raubach: So for kids in middle school or high school thinking they want to be a beat writer for a professional team — how do you become a beat reporter for the Thunder?
Brandon Rahbar: My journey was a little different. I always wanted to be a writer from the time I was in fifth grade — I wrote an eight-page short story about the magician David Copperfield making all the kids in class disappear, and that got passed around the classroom. I went to college, majored in journalism and broadcasting, and got a job with a Christian radio station — KFFF 91 FM in Oklahoma City — right out of school, and I was there for a decade. We started a sports show and interviewed Christian athletes — people like Shaun Alexander, Tommy Harris from OU. That gave me a taste of combining sports with writing and broadcasting.
Brandon Rahbar: I eventually started my own blog about the Thunder around 2010 — early Westbrook and Durant days. My thing was mixing sports with pop culture, so I’d write stories casting Thunder players as Walking Dead characters or Game of Thrones themes. Roy Young, who started Daily Thunder, saw my stuff and asked if I’d like to write for his site. When he moved to ESPN and couldn’t also run the blog, he sold the site, and the guys who took over asked me to become the beat writer. The long-winded advice is: start your own blog, make it your unique voice, and don’t be afraid to take every small opportunity — intern, write for anyone who’ll give you the time.
David Raubach: What’s the most viral post you’ve had or the biggest accidental controversy you can remember?
Brandon Rahbar: The Josh Giddey story comes to mind first. This was before the Thunder drafted him, during COVID, when every Thunder Zoom call I was on was automatically muted. So I get on this national rookie interview Zoom call with NBA writers from all over the country — and I’m used to being muted. My one-year-old son walks in, I smell something, and I say, “Did you poop?” On a national call. Josh Giddey stops in his tracks and looks at the camera — that’s when I realized I was unmuted. I tweeted afterward that I think Josh Giddey just thinks I asked him if he pooped, and that got picked up everywhere. I like to think Sam Presti saw how professionally Josh handled it and thought there was something to this kid — and they ended up drafting him.
David Raubach: What’s the biggest rumor you thought was definitely going to be true — a free agent signing or a trade — that never played out?
Brandon Rahbar: The summer Kevin Durant went to the Warriors, the rumor was that Al Horford was going to sign with the Thunder if KD had stayed. And that was actually true — he would have signed here. So you would have had Russell Westbrook, Victor Oladipo, Al Horford, Kevin Durant, and Serge Ibaka. And there’s another layer people forget: the pieces to trade for Paul George were still in place even after signing KD. So they could have had Al Horford and Paul George added to that core. But I also believe in the butterfly effect — had that happened, this current dynasty might never have been built.
David Raubach: I want to shift gears and get more personal. You’ve been gracious enough to talk about your stepdad going through cancer. If you don’t mind, just start at the beginning — the relationship and then what that process was like.
Brandon Rahbar: Yeah. I was very close to him. My biological dad moved away when I was five, so my stepdad Gary raised me — I consider him my dad. We were very, very close. We even played soccer together later on. He was hilarious, loving, great. He ended up having lung cancer. He went in for a stomach surgery and during that surgery they revealed the cancer diagnosis. He was given a certain amount of time to live because it was already pretty progressed. He beat that expectation by about a year — they were saying months to a year, and he ended up living about two years past that, which was incredible.
Brandon Rahbar: Throughout the process he was just so tough and strong. He never let it affect him. I was selling a house during his last few months and he came over and helped us paint it and work on the woodwork. He wanted to see our wedding and he did — the doctors didn’t think he would make it to our wedding, but he made it. And then I had my pregnant wife, and my dad who had cancer, all working on this house together, and he probably did more work than both of us. That was just the kind of guy he was.
David Raubach: When he got diagnosed, what was that conversation like? How did you initially find out?
Brandon Rahbar: He called me and told me, and he was very tough about it. He just said, “Hey, I went in for the surgery and I found out I have lung cancer, but I’m going to do everything I can to live as long as I can — don’t worry about it.” He’s very blunt, very strong. Of course I was worried about it, but that’s how I found out.
David Raubach: What did you feel like you needed to do at that point?
Brandon Rahbar: Just spend as much time with him as I could. And it just so happened that I was getting married and trying to sell a house, so we ended up spending a lot of time together, especially those last six months. That was my main thing — make as many memories as I can in these last however many months. I thought it was going to be months at the time. I was so blessed to get a couple of years more than I thought.
David Raubach: Did you start asking questions about what treatments he was going to do? Did you get involved in that process at all?
Brandon Rahbar: Yeah, I talked to my mom about that — what is happening now, what’s the plan, is there any way to beat the timeline, what is his quality of life going to look like? And then like anybody else who doesn’t know anything medically, I started Googling everything. I was just trying to scramble and find how I could help — maybe I could give my dad some ideas, look I found this, maybe you can go to this place or try this treatment. Of course I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I was just doing my best to either prolong the timeline or improve the quality of life any way I could.
David Raubach: Did the doctors ever talk about why they thought he got lung cancer?
Brandon Rahbar: He was a smoker when he was younger, but he had stopped — by the time he got diagnosed, he hadn’t smoked for at least a dozen years. He was also a painter for a long time, so being around fumes. The doctors weren’t entirely sure, but the smoking in his former years was probably a factor.
David Raubach: Do you recall what types of treatments he went through?
Brandon Rahbar: He went to the Oklahoma Proton Center, and I just have to say — he always talked about how nice the staff was and how it made the treatment a lot easier and a lot less stressful. That’s something my mom told me about too. I do think that going there improved his quality of life and helped him beat those timelines he was given.
David Raubach: I really appreciate you saying that about quality of life and the experience, because we talk at the Proton Center about treatment being more than a cure — there’s a quality-of-life focus. We know patients do better going through treatment and after treatment when they have a better experience. So that element is really, really important. What can you share about the legacy your dad left?
Brandon Rahbar: There were five kids — three weren’t biologically his — but you ask any of the five of us and that was our dad. He instilled discipline, but a loving discipline. When he became a grandpa, he became the most loving, doting grandpa there was — to many, many grandkids. He was hilarious. I think some of my sense of humor comes from him. He was this cool combination of old-school tough dad and silly, goofy guy, but also very loving. And through the treatment, that toughness showed out. The doctors gave him a feeding tube and said he was going to need it — he never had to use it. I think some of that was the Oklahoma Proton Center, and some of that was just his toughness.
David Raubach: Is there a story that personifies who he was?
Brandon Rahbar: He got a radiation mask as part of his treatment, and he was really, really excited — not to wear the mask for treatment, but to wear it at Halloween to scare all the grandkids. He showed up to Halloween very, very sick at that point, but he showed up with that radiation mask and sure enough, it scared the grandkids — including some who were toddlers. That absolutely personifies who he was.
David Raubach: That is such a good story and such a good example of finding humor in even the worst situation. Brandon, to wrap up — is there any advice you’d give to somebody facing what you went through, finding out that someone so close to them was going through cancer?
Brandon Rahbar: Yeah, absolutely. I would go back to just spending the time with them, because you can’t get that back. I’m so glad that in those last couple of years I made a point to be present, because we made a lot of memories together. There’s work and there are a hundred things to distract you, but you can’t get that time back. That’s what I’d say — just the time.
David Raubach: That’s great. I really appreciate that, and I appreciate you being so transparent and coming on here today. Thank you, Brandon.
Brandon Rahbar: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
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