I was gonna write a preview about the NBA Finals. Instead, I decided to follow my heart. With the Oklahoma City Thunder in the championship round, I feel pissed. The Thunder are the favorites, led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Gilgeous-Alexander is the league MVP and an all-around good dude, but I can’t cheer for his squad. Chet Holmgren even played his college ball in the Inland Northwest, so the ties run deep. However, I grew up with the Seattle SuperSonics, and cheering for OKC feels disrespectful to me.
What Happened?
If you grew up in Seattle, the SuperSonics were a staple. The Emerald City has long been known as a basketball town, mainly due to its rainy weather.
The Seattle Seahawks are the dominant team in the marketplace now, but that wasn’t always the case.
The Seahawks sucked forever allowing basketball to rule the city of Seattle. The Sonics won an NBA Championship in 1978-79, which remained Seattle’s only title until the Seahawks won Super Bowl 48.
It felt like they couldn’t leave, but then Howard Schultz purchased the team in 2001.
Schultz probably “should’ve never owned Seattle’s only NBA team”, paraphrasing what he said in an interview with Graham Bensinger.
He also “tried to run the team like a Starbucks” instead of a basketball franchise.
By 2006, the SuperSonics were consistently losing money and had failed to secure a new arena deal. He sold the team that year to Clay Bennett and other prominent Oklahoma businessmen. Breaking my heart in the process.
Schultz understands that he ruined his legacy in Seattle, but it’s ten times worse for everyone if the Thunder achieve it this year.
We Had Talent
The Sonics were respectable from 2001 to 2005. They had three winning seasons during this timeframe, including a trip to the second round in the 2004-05 season.
It was the following three seasons that proved their demise, but it didn’t have to be this way.
Clay Bennett and the Sonics’ new ownership traded away most of their talent in preparation for their move to Oklahoma City.
In 2007, Seattle traded Ray Allen for a group of mid-level players, including Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West, and a No. 5 draft pick that would later become Jeff Green.
They signed and traded Rashard Lewis a few weeks after Allen, “which they got a conditional second-round draft pick and a trade exception believed to be in the 9 million range.”
I don’t even know what that means, but it helped the Thunder in the long run.
The Sonics had the No. 2 pick in the 2007 draft, which they used to select Kevin Durant. If you have a short attention span like me, they could’ve had Durant, Lewis, and Allen on their 2007-08 team if it weren’t for the trades.
I’m still bitter.
What’s Next?
I don’t care what’s next as long as Oklahoma City doesn’t win a ring.
We’ve long been hearing about an NBA team returning to Seattle, and it’ll happen eventually, but not yet.
What is a reality is that the Thunder are likely going to win an NBA Title, and I’m flocking to hate it.
This hurts me on a deeply personal level.
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