Curtain Call - Sonic Bust

When the Seattle Pilots fled for Milwaukee, they had hardly spent enough time there to build any kind of long lasting ties in the community - there was no such thing as a lifelong Pilots fan. So even though their departure left the city with just one team in the four major North-American sports leagues, perhaps there was some mercy in the fact that it was difficult to feel too emotional about such a brief fling. That was certainly not the case nearly four decades later when Seattle again suffered the loss of a franchise much nearer and dearer to their hearts. 

Two years before the Pilots had opened play in 1969 (nice), the Seattle Center Coliseum hosted the inaugural season of a brand new NBA franchise, the very first major pro franchise for the city. It was one of a number of legitimizing moments for the still relatively young metropolis happening in that year: in August of 1967, the Boeing Development Center in the area had been awarded a contract for developing an SST, or supersonic transport.

So if you didn’t know before, that’s how the Seattle SuperSonics came to bear that name when they kicked off with the 1967/68 season.

For 41 years the Sonics (as they were more typically called) called Seattle their home, and all in all it was a pretty sweet home for them. During that span they reached the NBA Finals 3 times, with their first trip coming just 10 years after their inception in 1977/78 when they lost to the Washington Bullets. Luckily, they didn’t need to wait long for a shot at redemption: the Finals matchup the next year was a rematch that ended with the Sonics hoisting the first trophy in the team and city’s history.

That would be the franchise’s only title (their third trip to the Finals saw them face off against the ‘90s Jordan Bulls, and it ended the same way that every Finals featuring the ‘90s Jordan Bulls did) but the Sonics remained a perennial playoff team that could provide the city of Seattle with a measure of unique civic pride. Even as the city gained two more team in the Mariners and Seahawks, the Sonics were special to Seattle because of a legitimization similar to what they’d represented when they first came into being - only now, that legitimacy was in the form of the championship pedigree that only they could provide to Seattle.

Even during a fallow period at the start of the 21st century, there was still plenty to love: the team had recently acquired all-star Ray Allen to play under coach Nate McMillan, who had been with the team either as a player or coach for his entire pro career dating back to 1986 (you wanna talk about civic pride). The 2004/05 season saw the Sonics post a 52-30 record, good enough for a division title that got them into the playoffs where they would eventually bow out in the 2nd round. Despite this being the best finish of McMillan’s tenure as coach, it would be his final season in the city, though not in the Pacific Northwest: he instead took the head coaching job with the nearby Portland Trail Blazers. And with that, the downfall of the SuperSonics began in earnest.

Now the good thing about the NBA is a downfall will usually reap some rewards in the form of high draft picks. As Seattle sank lower in the standings, they saw their standing in the draft order climb until it culminated with the 2nd overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft. This allowed them to select a lanky freshman fresh off of a March Madness run with the Texas Longhorns: Kevin Durant, a potentially game-changing prospect for a franchise desperately in need of a shot in the arm. To see him in the green and gold was to envision a return to the heights of the late ‘70s, and a chance at a championship that at this point in time would still be only the second in Seattle history.

The Sonics were owners of as rosy an outlook as any in terms of their on-court situation. The one problem was the ownership situation. Since the turn of the 21st century, the team’s primary owner had been coffee mogul Howard Schulz. Schulz and the the franchise’s original owner, Sam Schulman, had something in common other than just the first five letters of their last names: both came into ownership with very little basketball knowledge. Both also strove to run the team “like a business”, but they differed in that for Schulman, “like a business” meant eventually figuring out a way to slowly build a team from the ground up:

For Schulz on the other hand, business seemed to mean more along the lines of cutting costs to maximize short term revenue rather than investing at a loss with the expectation of long term dividends. Schulman grew along with the franchise, whereas Schulz…you know what, how about we just let disgruntled former Sonics star Gary Payton say it:

In terms of understanding the game of basketball as more than a product to be sold: one of these men entered the job willing to learn the game they didn’t know, and one didn’t. Schulz eventually divested of the team in 2006 due to an inability to come to an agreement over a new arena, given that Seattle at the time had the smallest capacity of any NBA market. The eventual buyers were a group led by Oklahoma-based businessman Clay Bennett, and as arena talks continued to stall between the city and their new negotiating partners, those Oklahoma ties turned ominous for the Seattle faithful. 

Talks did not progress any further regarding public funding of a new arena, and just to add to the overall ominous tone, it was on Halloween 2007 that Bennett officially informed commissioner David Stern of the group’s intention to relocate the Sonics. The fight continued, but if you’re reading this you already know how it ended: Bennett and his allies did indeed plan to move the franchise to Oklahoma City beginning with the 2008/09 season, which meant that the 2007/08 season would be the final one in Seattle.

You know that, but in Seattle entering the final month of the season hope still lives. The city is divided between those who are holding onto that hope that the team’s time hasn’t come to an end, and those who have resigned themselves to this being the end for the team as they know it. I wonder if the latter take any solace in having treated these final evenings with the gravitas that circumstances would retroactively bestow upon them. Which brings us to our last players to tread the hardwood boards before the curtain came down on the Sonics franchise.

These Sonics lost a lot of games. 62, to be precise, with two different double digit losing streaks accounting for more than a third of them. It’s not a shock: the season had after all been about showcasing their star rookie and getting him acclimated to the NBA game and lifestyle. But for two games at the end of an otherwise abysmal season by W-L record, there was at least some catharsis to be found.

First came the final home game, when the Sonics hosted the Dallas Mavericks on April 13, 2008. After the two teams combined for 159 points through 3 quarters, with Seattle holding onto an 81-78 lead, the 4th quarter devolved into a rock fight with just 35 combined points. KD was there at the end to be sure, sinking the last field goal Sonics fans would ever see at home with a driving layup assisted by Jeff Green to retake the lead, 97-95; but after Dallas got the ball back with 14.3 seconds remaining, a missed 3 pointer was corralled by Seattle’s Nick Collison for his 11th rebound of the night. What’s more, an immediate personal foul on Collison meant that he got to step to the line for a pair of free throws. A make and miss gave the game its final score of 99-95, put a bow on his double-double performance, and gave Collison the last point ever scored by an NBA player in Seattle as of writing this.

Three days later, the Sonics traveled down the west coast to Oakland’s Oracle Arena for a matchup against the Golden State Warriors. Even after Seattle jumped out to an 11 point lead by the end of the first quarter, they were still raw enough as to crack the door open towards the end for the Warriors. Twice Golden State got within 3 points late in the 4th; but following a tip shot that made it 124-121, Golden State fouled Kevin Durant who promptly sank both free throws to ice the game. 

Those were the final points in the 126-121 win as well as in Sonics history, and given the bright future KD represented it feels right that he got to be the last one to shine a little bit. However, that was not the final statistic recorded for Seattle. 15.3 seconds still remained, and out of a Golden State timeout the ball found its way to Baron Davis who proceeded to hoist up a 27-foot three pointer that missed. And there, coming down with the defensive rebound to put an end to the game and the franchise, was Nick Collison once again.

Nick Collison himself was from the same plains where the team would soon relocate following a drawn out series of attempted legal challenges by various Seattle parties. Born in Orange City, Iowa, Collison had spent his entire four-year college career with the Kansas Jayhawks, and his 2003 senior season was one for the history books. The Jayhawks reached the national title game before falling to Carmelo Anthony’s Syracuse and Collison took home a hoard of honors including: his second All-Big 12 First Team selection, his first All-American selection, Big-12 Player of the Year Award, and the National Association of Basketball Coaches Player of the Year Award. Kansas even retired his #4 jersey later in in November of that year, before he’d even played a minute of pro ball.

Unfortunately he hadn’t played in the NBA yet because of an injury sustained shortly after being taken by the Sonics in the star-studded 2003 Draft, an injury that would end up costing him his entire would-be rookie season. Including that season lost to injury he still spent four total years in Seattle before the franchise picked up and moved to OKC. There he would spend another ten years with the Thunder following the move during which time he acquired a beloved cult status despite averaging just 4.7 points and 4.3 rebounds in 18.5 minutes a night during that span.

Usually when one watches their team lose over an extended period of time as seeds are sown into piles of shit that you hope serve as fertilizer, there is eventually a reaping. And to the credit of the organization, all that losing by the Sonics in their final years did start paying off… shortly after the move. Seattle at least got a taste of the future MVP Kevin Durant - the only memories they had of their next high draft pick earned on the back of the 20-62 season, fellow future MVP Russell Westbrook, would be of him wearing the team’s colors on draft night.

Russ never suited up for the Sonics, so even though he lasted one more year with the Thunder than Collison, the thoroughly midwestern “Mr. Thunder” Nick Collison is the player that served as the last remaining vestige of that erstwhile Sonics legacy in OKC until his retirement following the 2017/18 season. Almost immediately following Collison’s retirement it was announced that his #4 jersey would again be retired as it was with Kansas, this time as a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder and as the first ever player to have their jersey be hung from the rafters of Chesapeake Energy Arena.

Some on the internet have claimed that this is maybe the most egregious jersey retirement in NBA history (for the record, I agree wholeheartedly with the top comment to this reddit thread that starts with that example but eventually concludes that the answer is instead the Magic retiring #6 “for the fans”). It’s an admittedly understandable reaction for a career role player who started fewer than a fifth of their career games and ne. But Thunder fans loved him for what he had brought to the team for the entirety of its existence to that point - loved him for something akin to the legitimacy that the Sonics had provided to Seattle all those years ago. And after all, when has love ever made sense.

With Collison retired left, only Jeff Green and Kevin Durant remain as active players to have worn a Sonics jersey as we enter the 2023/24 season. And while Collison was the very last person to record a statistic for the Sonics both at home and on the road, it’s completely possible that the Thunder career that came in the wake or even the Kansas career that preceded it reduce his stint in Seattle to a curiosity or footnote or afterthought. But not for him: he had returned to the city every summer since being drafted, had ingratiated himself fully into the community even as the team left it behind. When it came time to hang it up, Nick Collison - the man who had the distinction, the privilege of being the one to turn the lights off on the way out - had accumulated just enough clout during his time to get the glowing ESPN career retrospective treatment. In it, he had some final words for the city: