Sonics end 11-game slump in potential last Seattle matchup with Blazers
SEATTLE (AP) — During any lull in the action, the chant of “Save Our Sonics!” began its crescendo, until it seemed the entire building was chanting at times. Timeouts, dead balls, it didn’t matter. Even during free throws, as Seattle’s Kevin Durant found out…. “Messed me up a little bit,” Durant said. “But I heard them and that’s something I love. The crowd was into it tonight and that shows they’re going to stick behind us.”…. Durant scored 23 points and the SuperSonics snapped their 11-game losing streak with a 97-84 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Monday night.
I’ve lived through a franchise pulling up stakes and relocating. My beloved Minnesota North Stars left Minnesota after the 1993 season to become the Dallas Stars. Yes, 15 years later, and NORM GREEN STILL SUCKS! When Dallas won the Stanley Cup in 1999, I was happy, but it was a very hollow feeling. If they’d done it while they were still in Minnesota, I would have been over the moon drunk for a week. Now, though, they’re just another team looking for a big payday. The fact that I hate Dallas doesn’t help the team’s cause.
Those of you outside the Pacific Northwest will no doubt neither take notice of, nor much care about, Monday night’s Trailblazers-Sonics game in Seattle. An ugly, thoroughly forgettable game it would have been under normal circumstances, but these were hardly normal circumstances. The Sonics, who are likely as good as gone to Oklahoma City (Oklahoma City or Seattle? Hmm…now there’s a comparison that should be a no-brainer, eh?) after this season, may have hosted the last act in this I-5 rivalry. OK, so it’s not Duke- North Carolina or Ohio State- Michigan, and to call it a rivalry may be to overstate things a bit. After all, in the laid-back Northwest, a rivalry is “regular or decaf?”. It’s difficult to gin up much antipathy between Portland and Seattle, because it’s not as if there’s any history of athletic dominance in either city…never mind anything resembling a passionate fan base. The Trailblazers won the ‘77 NBA title, the Sonics won it in ‘78…and since then there’s been a whole lot of mediocrity, which doesn’t really seem to bother anyone here very much.
I went to a Portland-Seattle game at Seattle’s Key Arena once, about 20 years ago, and while there were a few Trailblazer fans on hand, they were about as somnolent as the Sonic fans on hand. Still, why the Sonics’ owner may be nice enough to leave the team’s name behind for another franchise that may or may not come to Seattle, most Seattle residents have barely taken notice that their local basketball team is about to hightail it to Oklahoma. (Now if their neighborhood Starbucks were to close, all Hell would break loose.) Perhaps it’s just that no one believes that anyone would leave Seattle for Oklahoma City. That’s not arrogance, but if you’ve been to both places, which would you choose? Yeah, I didn’t think it would be Oklahoma City….
No, it may not been much as die-hard rivalries go, but it’s still sad to see it come to an end…not that anyone outside of Portland or Seattle will actually notice….
Oh, and for those of you who were wondering, the Pacific Northwest isn’t the end of the Earth…but you can certainly see it from here.
