SEATTLE – It was a cold, gray and wet Thursday in Seattle, just perfect for longtime fans of the Seattle Supersonics to mourn the NBA franchise that morphed into the Oklahoma City Thunder and dispatched the San Antonio Spurs to make the NBA Finals.
It has been a series of gray days and "what ifs" for fans of NBA basketball in the Pacific Northwest.
For four decades the Sonics were Seattle. They brought home the first hardware with the 1978-79 NBA championship, and as such were as deeply ingrained in the Puget Sound psyche as Boeing, Microsoft and Starbucks.
Then Clay Bennett came from Oklahoma City with a big bundle of cash when Starbucks founder and then-Sonics owner Howard Schulz wanted to sell. Bennett said he would work to keep the team in Seattle, but he bolted for his hometown almost as soon as the ink dried.
Just like that the Sonics were no more.
"It's horribly painful for us," said Adam Brown, the Seattle-based producer of the documentary Sonicsgate, which chronicled the history of the franchise and the gaping hole that was left when the team relocated — a much politer word than some Sonics fans use.
"It's painful knowing that Seattle drafted all the key players —Russell Westbrook, Nick Collison, Serge Ibaka and Kevin Durant. … In This team was built on the backs of Sonics fans. This was our team for 41 years. They ripped it away, and it's one of the biggest (sports) scandals of our time."
That has led to some cross loyalties for those who grew up on the Sonics. Or, in the case of Slick Watts, someone who grew up as a Sonic. He spent the first 4½ years of his career with Seattle and still lives in the area.
"The first thing you do is to try not to be a hater," said Watts, who is helping to lobby for a return of the NBA. "You understand in life that things have to have a perfect setting, and right now, Oklahoma is going through a perfect setting.
"They have some good young kids in Kevin Durant and the kid from UCLA (Russell Westbrook). They play hard, and you have to respect any team that comes together and plays with heart and desire the way they do.
"But as a fan, you feel they should be here."
Bartender Priscilla Angelico, a lifelong Oklahoma City resident whose "thunder thighs" are covered in Thunder-themed tattoos, doesn't feel guilty at all that her city, not Seattle, has the NBA Finals team.
"If there's any guilt, it's maybe about the way the team got here. Even that's worn away with time. You forget," Angelico said. "Here's the deal: They could've kept their team there if they raised the money. I don't know what they were doing. They were at the coffee shop. They dropped the ball."
One of those with a chance to go to Oklahoma City with the team was longtime radio announcer Kevin Calabro. He spent two decades as the voice of the team and chose to stay in Seattle, although, as it happens, he called Wednesday's game for ESPN Radio.
"There was a twinge of envy when they won last night," Calabro said. "I watched the celebration and I flashed back to 1996, when we beat a really tremendous Utah team to make the finals. As I walked out of the building, I realized what a great asset the team is for Oklahoma City and the state of Oklahoma.
"I view this not as a failure for Seattle but as a catalyst to bring NBA basketball back. This will get the debate going about bringing the NBA and the NHL to Seattle."
The timing is about right. San Francisco-based hedge fund manager Chris Hansen, who grew up in Seattle, is trying to get the political birds in line to build an arena in SoDo, the same Seattle area that is home to the MLB Mariners and NFL Seahawks. June 14 will see Hansen host a rally in support of the return of the NBA to Seattle. Calabro will be the emcee.
That rally will come in advance of a June 20 meeting of the Seattle City Council, when Hansen is to appear to pitch the idea. Hansen and other as-yet-unnamed private investors say they would contribute $290 million if the city, King County and the state can come up with another $200 million.
"We are one act away from getting an arena approved," said Brian Robinson, the president of arenasolutions.org. "There has been resentment over what happened, but we have to move on. We have to stop complaining about what happened and work toward bringing a team back."
Any team that comes to Seattle — the troubled Sacramento Kings are a possibility — will be the Sonics. As part of the deal with Bennett, the "Sonics" name belongs to the city.
"If this is the motivation we need to get the Chris Hansen deal passed, it'll be good," Brown said. "We have never said anything bad about the fans of Oklahoma City. They have great fans there. They support the team very well. They deserve a team.
"It just shouldn't have come from Seattle."
Derek Knowlton, a lifelong Oklahoma City resident, is co-owner of the Warpaint Store, which has been printing t-shirts with "OKC" on the front and "Thank you Seattle" on the back. The store's Twitter account got 7,000 mentions about the T-shirts, mostly negative.
"We definitely did not expect this kind of backlash, but it's all good," Knowlton said. "Even as hateful as they're being, it's whatever. It's fine. We wanted to have a little something funny on the shirt. It was not a malicious intent. Everyone knows that. There's no way around it. …
"The only thing I feel guilty about is, I don't understand why we bought their legacy. I want to start over. We don't need their championship banner. We don't need their trophies. We don't need their history, at all. It's not ours. We should just start over. And when they get a team back, they can have all that back. We don't need their history because we're about to create our own."
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