For 17 years, Seattle Sonics fans have hoped.
Hoped that maybe this will be the year the NBA finally comes to its senses and announces the beloved green and gold is coming back via expansion.
Or hoped that a small-market franchise will bottom out, sell to a billionaire Seattle savior and relocate to the Emerald City.
Or just hoped for any sort of rumbling that the league’s Board of Governors is finally getting serious about just thinking about adding to its stable of 30 teams.
For 17 years, all of those hopes have run into dead ends. But even when the flame of hope has been only as strong as the flick of a BIC lighter, there was always the Oklahoma City Thunder to take the edge off of the disappointment.
The Zombie Sonics (their much more appropriate nickname) have been pretty reliable over the years in providing some sort of embarrassing end to their season, giving Seattle sports fans an opportunity to get their pound of flesh.
Like when OKC finished in the top two of the Western Conference three years in a row, and always fell in some playoff series in six games or less – including the 2012 NBA Finals.
Or when it failed to get past the first round of the postseason for seven consecutive seasons after Kevin Durant left for Golden State (thank you always, KD).
And most importantly when Portland’s Damian Lillard, aptly soundtracked by longtime voice of the Sonics Kevin Calabro, walked off the Thunder in the 2018 playoffs with a cool, calm and collected buzzer-beating 3 from near half-court.
Well, there goes that dream. The Thunder won their first NBA championship (don’t you dare say it’s their first since 1979, because it’s not) only after the Indiana Pacers lost star Tyrese Haliburton to an apparent Achilles injury in Game 7 on Sunday night. And all that Sonics fans are left with now is pain.
Of course we are.
This was supposed to be the year when the Sonics coming back became really real. The NBA wrapped up its massive new media rights deal last summer, long seen as the final hurdle to the league expanding by two teams – which have been longe been speculated to be going to Seattle, where shiny and state of the art Climate Pledge Arena awaits, and Las Vegas.
Instead, the attention has turned to NBA franchises selling left and right, while the expansion prospects in Seattle have only gone backwards.
And now NBA commissioner Adam Silver is being exceedingly vague about expansion talks. Even when he has talked about it this year, he’s mentioned Seattle in a weird way, like the fact that the city still talks about its undying dedication to bringing the Sonics back is an affront to the league’s process. Well, if that’s the case, the league’s process has been an affront to the city for so long that the grudge could graduate high school next spring. So touché.
The latest on NBA expansion? Maybe the league will do it. Or maybe they’ll decide the record-setting fees it will surely net by creating two new teams won’t be worth the rest of the league’s owners sharing revenue with two more franchises.
Yeah. It’s gross. But that’s the NBA for you.
Gross is a good way to describe what went down Sunday night, too, when the Zombie Sonics crossed over to the Vampire Sonics. The Thunder are immortal now, having finally won a championship in the most blood-sucking way after Haliburton’s injury – and officially sucking all of the blood out of Seattle’s remaining NBA fans in the process.
Not that there was much left, because Sonics fans have been through the wringer over the last two decades.
We’ve lived through Howard Schultz and Clay Bennett.
We’ve watched Kevin Durant, who began his career as a 19-year-old rookie in Seattle, turn into one of the best players in NBA history while wearing jerseys devoid of green and gold (including a tour of old Sonics rivals that is now going through Houston).
We saw Russell Westbrook put on a Sonics hat on draft day in 2008, then go with the franchise to Oklahoma City less than a week later, where he would begin a first-ballot Hall of Fame career.
We’ve seen Sam Presti, the last Sonics general manager, be the architect of not one but now two championship-contending roster cores in OKC, where he has earned the reputation as one of the great executives in pro basketball.
Perhaps most poignantly, we endured the agony of defeat that was hedge fund manager Chris Hansen’s bid to bring back the Sonics, complete with his agreement to buy the Sacramento Kings in 2013 in order to relocate them to Seattle that was unanimously rejected by the league’s owners. He tried, but the league didn’t want to see another city go through the pain of losing a team – you know, like Seattle did.
And now, while the league continues to drag its feet on what no longer seems like a sure expansion announcement, salt is poured in those old wounds as the same trophy that the Sonics won 46 years ago is lifted in OKC 17 years after it stole its team from Seattle.
Pain. At every turn, that’s what the NBA has inflicted upon Seattle.
And no matter what happens in the future, after all this time, all those rugs pulled out from under us, that’s the NBA’s rotten legacy here. Just pain.
Previously: No love lost for Seattle Sonics fans with Thunder in NBA Finals