Hitting anything while you are in the sky is scary enough, but it was arguably worse for Nick Collison when the Oklahoma City Thunder team plane hit a bird on its way to Chicago early Saturday morning.
The Thunder forward said he was watching the Netflix show Stranger Things when the plane felt like it hit turbulence. Season 2 of the show had just been released on the streaming network on Friday, but it certainly made for a strange moment on the airplane when trouble hit.
Collison met with the media on Saturday and talked about the harrowing plane ride and how the team learned that something terribly wrong had happened while they were in the air.
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“The guy came on and said there was a malfunction and he wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to land,” Collison said. “Then we landed OK and saw the nose when we got off. I don’t think anyone had realized that that had happened.”
Collison said the plane dropped briefly, causing a quick sensation like a roller coaster. But he said it wasn’t all that alarming given how often he flies.
“It was strange. It wasn’t really that scary,” he said. “We had that one kind of turbulence — it felt like turbulence. But that was it.”
One reporter asked him what he was doing during the incident, which is where things actually got scary.
“I was just sitting there watching Stranger Things,” Collison said, who was then asked which season he was watching.
“Two,” he said, smiling as reporter laughed. “I downloaded a few episodes.”
Collison speculated that it must have been a “pretty big bird,” suggesting that it was maybe a “pterodactyl.” Thankfully, everyone is safe and can make jokes like this. It definitely could have gone a lot worse.
