| Seattle Supersonics On My Mind Authored by Neema Hodjat - November 10, 2008 - 11:37 pm
| Current Featured Columns | | Merry Christmas, Raptors Fans The Raptors might not be playing good basketball right now, but there are plenty of things for Toronto fans to be thankful for this holiday season.
A Melo Behind The SuperstarsCarmelo Anthony has never been one of the league's most efficient offensive players.
 |
Maynor Using Utah’s Resources
Eric Maynor is an increasingly rare four-year, small college rookie. He sat down with RealGM to discuss how his first few weeks of NBA life has gone and what he has learned from Deron Williams and Jerry Sloan.
|
 |
Why LeBron To The Clippers Makes Sense
LeBron James already plays for a perennial underdog in Cleveland, but moving to the Clippers would allow him to do so in a huge market and with a core that will immediately compete for championships while also having an encouraging long term outlook.
|
 |
‘Home-Heavy Schedule’ Brings Question Marks
The Heat have been plagued by inconsistencies, making it difficult to determine how good they really are this season.
|
|
More from RealGM's Columnists
|
| |
You must excuse me for the typo. I meant to ponder how big of a leap second year pro Kevin Durant will take this season with the Oklahoma City Thunder. While the typo has been fixed, something about the previous sentence still doesn’t feel quite right.
Lyndon B. Johnson resided in the White House the last season that the NBA operated without a franchise in Seattle. With a struggling U.S. economy, coupled with the league’s thirst for expanding its presence in China, it would behoove the NBA to have a presence in not only the thirteenth largest market in the U.S., but also one of the prime gateway cities to China. Also, what happened to the significance of deep historical roots in a city? Seattle had supported this team for forty-one seasons. Think about that for a second. To take away Seattle’s only professional sports franchise from the big three leagues (NFL, MLB and NBA) to win a championship reeks of undue cruelty, and sends a bad message not only to Seattle’s suffering fans, but also to fans of teams in other NBA cities. David Stern threatened to take this team from Seattle, and furthermore, verbally insulted Seattle on several occasions. When was the last time you can remember a commissioner trash one of its league cities like that? A marriage of forty-one years ended up in a bitter divorce. Stern, the commissioner with an ego the size of Mount Rainier, delivered on his promise to push forward the Sonics move to the highly desirable Oklahoma City (just ask visiting players how happy they are to replace Seattle with OKC on the schedule). A lesson for NBA fans: don’t think that your hometown team has immunity from relocation, no matter how well the team has been supported. No city should feel completely safe from losing its team one day.
While plenty of blame has been flung around for this travesty (former owner Howard Schultz and league commissioner David Stern are villains 1 and 1A), this column asks NBA fans not to look at which parties are at fault, but instead to continue to remember Seattle’s place in NBA history. Several terrific players have donned the Sonic uniform, including the likes of Lenny Wilkins, Spencer Haywood, Gus Williams, Slick Watts, Dennis Johnson, “Downtown” Freddy Brown, Jack Sikma, X-Man (Xavier McDaniel for those who don’t know), Dale Ellis, Ricky Pierce and more recently, Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, Detlef Schrempf, Steve Scheffler (you Sonics fans know who this is), Ray Allen, Rashard Lewis, and several others. Don’t you dare tell me that these players are part of the Oklahoma City Thunder’s history.
Looking back, I can’t help but remember my youth growing up in the Seattle area. My friends and I would get together and shoot hoops in the back yard. We would each pick which NBA player we were, which usually meant arguing about who got to be Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp. We watched our team go to the NBA Finals in 1996 and push the Chicago Bulls to six games, only to fall short. There was no louder place to watch a game than Key Arena.
On the flip side, we also watched Dikembe Mutombo lay on the Seattle Coliseum floor in 1993, clenching the ball over his head after Mutombo’s Denver Nuggets became the first ever 8th seed to beat a 1st seed in playoff history. Sonic fans were left picking up the pieces of our broken hearts. I thought at that time that the loss to the Nuggets would be the worst moment in Sonics history.
Well, unfortunately I was wrong. The Sonics were THE team in Seattle in the 1990’s. My generation greatly benefited from having the Sonics in the community. And now, although I no longer live there, I can’t help but be disturbed by the thought of kids growing up in Seattle and not having the same chance to follow the hometown basketball team as my generation did. That’s an absolute shame, and those kids deserve the same opportunity that we had.
The abbreviated version of a long story, local efforts to keep the team in Seattle came up short. A group named Save Our Sonics worked tirelessly to try to keep the team in Seattle. Save Our Sonics worked with government officials to secure funding for a revised Key Arena. A promising local ownership group also emerged, led by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who hoped to purchase the Sonics and keep the team in Seattle. The current ownership group, based out of Oklahoma City, refused to enter into discussions regarding the sale of the team, however. Also, while progress was made with respect to a plan for the renovation of Key Arena through public and private financing, the parties were unable to secure approval of a portion of the public financing from the Washington state legislature. Members of Save Our Sonics will continue to work with state officials and the Ballmer ownership group in hopes of finalizing the arena renovation plan and securing another franchise. Obtaining another team will be difficult and costly, however. The NBA has stated on several occasions that it has no plans to expand, as several of its teams currently have serious financial problems. Seattle officials attempted to negotiate a promise of another team with the NBA, such as the promise given by the NFL to Cleveland when that team moved to Baltimore, but failed to get such a commitment from the NBA. If and when the NBA does indeed return to Seattle, franchise relocation will be the most likely scenario.
So now, Seattle stands without NBA basketball, left only to hold on to its many memories of the Sonics. Some Sonics fans have decided to continue following the Oklahoma City Thunder, but now with the hope that the team would go 0-82 for the season and Kevin Durant would bolt from the team as soon as he becomes an unrestricted free agent. The Thunder does not have to worry about completing a winless season, but will have to worry keeping its star players from leaving for larger cities when they become free agents. A few Sonics fans now look south to the Portland Trailblazers, while several others have cut the NBA out of their lives entirely.
With all of this, I just have a simple request for all NBA fans: each time you watch, read, hear or come across the Oklahoma City Thunder in any manner (not sure referring to the team by this name will ever feel normal), please think of the Seattle Supersonics. Seattle belongs in the NBA, and in order to right this wrong, the NBA needs to return the Sonics to the city. While Oklahoma City will keep the Thunder (go ahead and keep that 20-62 team), Seattle’s history in the NBA must not be forgotten, and its future as part of the NBA needs to be addressed in short order. Sonic fans deserve much better that to have their team ripped out from under them, and the NBA knows this.
- Neema.Hodjat@RealGM.com |
