They looked up at the TVs with the same angle that players look at baskets. There's never a better time to have a beard, even if you have to inflate it. The game plan was clearly spelled out on the chalkboard, and everyone in the bar was on the same page. Almost everyone.
"A lot of people have been giving me a lot of grief," said Marcus Paul. He's been a heat fan since 1988, and was literally the only guy in the bar clapping when the Heat would score.
"I hear so much of this Thunder Up that I don't even know what to do anymore," he said.
To counter-act the catch phrase he's come up with one of his own.
"I turned it around and just said Heat It Up. Heat It Up. Thunder Up, Heat It Up. I gotta do something man," he smiled.
"I think it's brought everybody together," said Marcus' wife, Mary, talking about the Thunder's effect on Oklahoma, and not her husband's passion for that other team.
"I know, we don't go out, we usually stay at home for this kind of thing just in case, you know, people can get pretty passionate about it," he said.
But cooler heads prevailed at the Dust Bowl, or, as future generations will know it; the place where Marcus Paul shared with the world his catch phrase that the Miami Heat would eventually make their own.
"Heat It Up! Heat It Up," he smiled.
