Boeing 757's nose smashed in during Oklahoma City Thunder flight

NBA basketball team Oklahoma City Thunder's Friday night loss to the Timberwolves may have left fans wondering what happened in those final seconds.

But as the NBA players deplaned after landing in Chicago early Saturday after a bumpy flight to Midway, they took to social media demanding answers to an entirely different question.

"We had a rough flight to say the least," tweeted Steven Adams as he addressed NASA, Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye the Science Guy. "30,000 feet in the air. Flying to Chicago. What caused this?" Adams attached a photo of the nose of the twinjet Boeing 757-200, which appeared dented as if the plane hit something so hard it caused the nose to invert.

Elizabeth Wolf, a spokeswoman for Delta, said she believes the plane hit a bird as the plane descended into Chicago about 12:45 a.m.

Wolf, in an email, said no one was hurt and the plane landed without incident. She also said maintenance workers will continue to investigate exactly what happened.

It didn't immediately appear that Nye or Tyson had responded to 213-cm centre Adams' question, and neither immediately returned calls requesting comment. Although, as many pointed out on Twitter, if the plane did hit a bird, that hardly calls for an explanation from a world-renowned astrophysicist.

Carmelo Anthony also posted a photo of the plane, but on Instagram. "What possibly could we have hit in the SKY at this time of night?" Anthony wanted to know.

His followers, like Adams', were happy to provide answers (and more than 180,000 likes). Top contenders: A bird - Big Bird from Sesame Street, specifically - a plane, an alien or, of course, Superman.