Seattle’s Second NBA Championship

A quorum of the SSSBDA gathered to watch Game 5 of the NBA Finals at Oskar’s Kitchen in Queen Anne last night. Shawn Kemp’s bar seemed like an appropriate place to watch the Miami Heat possibly knock off the Oklahoma City Thunder. As compared to the group that came to Oskar’s after the pre-Game 2 rally for a new arena, the people at Oskar’s Thursday seemed to be NBA fans more than jilted Sonics fans.

The KOMO camera crew that came to gather reaction got precious little footage, as the reaction at the buzzer—with the outcome long since decided—was subdued at best. I thought we might get some kind of toast when the TV feed was turned down, but the announcement turned out to be that someone’s lights were on. So we just enjoyed our French Dip sandwiches and a classic closeout performance by LeBron James.

Nonetheless, there’s an eerie parallel between the Sonics’ lone championship, won in 1979, and the Heat’s path to the title. I first noticed during SSSBDA member Seth Kolloen’s live tweets of the ‘79 Finals that the series followed the same pattern—the home team winning Game 1, followed by the lower-seeded team winning the next four. That’s only happened one other time in NBA history (the 1973 New York Knicks over the Los Angeles Lakers).

Beyond that, the ‘79 Sonics and ‘12 Heat also had identical results in the conference finals, making them the lone teams in NBA history to share the same last two rounds. Like Miami, Seattle lost three in a row in Games 3-5 and had to win a do-or-die Game 6 on the road in Phoenix, beating the Suns on Mother’s Day after Paul Westphal’s mom sung the National Anthem.

I’ll even note that the Sonics won their opening series (after a bye) by a 4-1 margin, just like the Heat over the Knicks, though the losses came in different games.

Alas, I’m not expecting 300,000 fans to pack downtown Seattle for a parade to celebrate this championship.

- Kevin Pelton