Field Gulls
The Seahawks’ Super Bowl winning season needs greater context in light of Seattle’s former NBA team winning a title.
It finally happened, much to the disappointment and bitterness of former Seattle SuperSonics fans.
The Oklahoma City Thunder, the best team all regular season, avoided what would’ve been the greatest upset in NBA Finals history with a 103-91 win in Game 7 over the inspirational underdog Indiana Pacers. OKC’s triumph cannot be told without noting the Achilles rupture suffered by Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton, who’d already been playing through a calf strain. The emotional devastation on his face is the cruelest of lasting memories for a player whose playoff run was nothing short of legendary, while the Pacers played some of the most eye-catching and logic-defying basketball in recent memory.
This is also the first time the Thunder have won a championship since Howard Schultz sold the Sonics to Clay Bennett, who moved the team to Oklahoma City in 2008. I don’t really need to rehash this story to those who’ve followed the Sonics or Seattle sports in general.
For those who haven’t paid attention to the NBA since the Sonics’ departure, the Thunder have made the playoffs 12 times in 17 seasons after leaving Seattle. Oklahoma City, home to zero other major sports teams, was handed a future contender that would reach the Western Conference Finals in 2011 and the NBA Finals by 2012. General manager Sam Presti started the rebuild during the final Sonics season and built a contender in next to no time. The current iteration of the Thunder is a potential dynasty in the making based on their extremely young core group of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (league MVP, Conference Finals MVP, and Finals MVP), Jalen Williams, and Chet Holmgren, all of whom are under 26 years old. They’re also stocked with first-round picks for seemingly centuries thanks to Presti’s trades and have built out the rest of their roster with mostly undrafted and second-round gems, which in a two-round NBA draft is like a Day 3 NFL Draft pick. OKC’s elite, physical, turnover-forcing defense is subject to scrutiny over how much of their success is just uncalled fouls, an irony given the complaints that nobody plays any defense in the NBA anymore... and perhaps a callback to a certain Seahawks team we’ll talk about later.
In an alternate universe (in which everything somehow plays out the same way, which would’ve been nigh impossible, but stay with me), Sunday could’ve been the coronation of the first Sonics championship since 1979. We’d be looking at six combined titles between the Sonics and the WNBA’s Storm, who at least are still around and have their special place in Seattle sports lore.
And it got ripped away. A city with a rich basketball history lost its men’s team, (at the time) its only major league champion, and most consistently successful team. The Sonics only missed the playoffs three consecutive seasons twice: its final years in Seattle and its first seven years as...
