It’s really a shame that Seattle doesn’t have a basketball team because that town bonded with the Supersonics in a very good way.
Keep in mind that the Sonics began as a small market team. We don’t guess is it anymore, but when the team began, the population of Seattle actually declined for 20 years. There was an indication at one point saying “Will the last person leaving Seattle please prove the lights?”
So getting – and keeping – a team was huge for a town that seemed in terminal decline.
The irony was that when Seattle took off again within the digital age, the team departed in 2008 and is now the Oklahoma City Thunder.
It was a fun franchise and straightforward to drag for. The 1979 championship team was outstanding and the Sean Kemp-Gary Payton era was incredible.
Take a look at this play by a young and healthy Kemp as he goes coast-to-coast and does to Bill Laimbeer what a whole lot of players from California high schools to the elite within the NBA have desired to do: Kemp charges in and soars over Laimbeer, posterizing him for the ages.
Yeah, it was a charge, but no one this side of Rick Barry cares.
