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It’s really a shame that Seattle doesn't have a basketball team because that town bonded with the Supersonics in a really great way.
Remember that the Sonics started as a small market team. We don’t guess is it anymore, but when the team started, the population of Seattle actually declined for 20 years. There was a sign at one point saying “Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn out 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 in the digital age, the team departed in 2008 and is now the Oklahoma City Thunder.
It was a fun franchise and easy to pull for. The 1979 championship team was outstanding and the Sean Kemp-Gary Payton era was incredible.
Check out this play by a young and healthy Kemp as he goes coast-to-coast and does to Bill Laimbeer what hundreds of players from California high schools to the elite in the NBA have wanted to do: Kemp charges in and soars over Laimbeer, posterizing him for the ages.
Yeah, it was a charge, but nobody this side of Rick Barry cares.
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