SEATTLE — It’s logical to think someone like Danny Ball is a fair representation of Seattle these days.
Ball, a hoops fan who runs an Instagram account called “Iconic Sonics,” is pulling for the Indiana Pacers over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals.
There are no deep ties between Seattle and Indianapolis. The Seahawks play the Colts this December, so the cities will be foes that weekend. Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever probably won’t be warmly welcomed when they visit the Emerald City later this month to play the Seattle Storm.
But right now, Seattle may as well be an Indy suburb.
Seattle fans lost their NBA franchise, the SuperSonics, in 2008 when it was stolen from them and rebranded in Oklahoma City.
For the scornful, that means one thing: Go Pacers.
“I’d love to see the Pacers pull it off in six games,” Ball said.
The NBA Finals begin Thursday night. For some in Seattle, it’ll be a heaping helping of fresh salt on the wounds that opened when the Sonics were taken away. And people like Ball, who grew up in Seattle hearing stories of Sonics legends like Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton, aren’t exactly rooting for Oklahoma City right now.
The Thunder are heavy favorites to beat the Pacers. Should they pull it off, the Thunder would claim their first NBA title in Oklahoma City, but technically their second as a franchise after Seattle won the title in 1979.
It’s no secret the city wants the league to come back. Expansion is on the NBA’s to-do list, and it’s likely that talks — the first of many, many steps in this process — could start in earnest with interested cities in the next few months. Commissioner Adam Silver, however, hasn’t fully committed to adding new teams.
“The issue I would not have anticipated at the time I sort of began talking about the timeline is how much unknown there is about local media right now,” Silver said earlier this year. “Having said that, though, I would just say again to our many fans in Seattle, and I hear from them often, and the legacy of the Sonics is still very strong and it’s a fantastic basketball market, is that we are very focused on it. We don’t take those fans for granted. We’re thankful that the interest has remained over all these years.”
Any mention of expansion sends fans into a tizzy. Steve Ballmer, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, spoke to the crowd before a preseason game in Seattle — his hometown — in 2023, and made a thinly veiled reference to how fans need to remind the league’s New York office how much the city loves the game.
“All night long, it better be loud enough in this building to hear us all the way back in New York, if you get me,” Ballmer told the crowd. “Let’s make sure we’re loud tonight.”
And then came the Ballmer bellow: “Go Seattle,” he screamed.
It’s something Seattle takes seriously, as Mayor Bruce Harrell learned earlier this year in his address to the city.
“Right now, at this moment, I have an announcement to make,” Harrell said, reaching into the lectern where he was standing and pulling out a basketball, spinning it in his hands as he displayed it to the crowd — which began roaring. “Ah, I’m just kidding.”
The crowd wasn’t amused. Harrell later was interviewed by Seattle’s KOMO News and apologized for the attempt at humor, getting reminded that residents of the city aren’t happy that the NBA hasn’t returned yet.
“Count me among them,” Harrell said.
A very real void has been left in the SuperSonics’ absence. The NHL’s Seattle Kraken entering the fold has helped, as has the success of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, both of whom play at Climate Pledge Arena, which sits on the site of the SuperSonics’ former home.
That same arena received a significant remodel ahead of the Kraken arriving, which could make it suitable for NBA games. That would ultimately be up to the association to decide one day, but Ball hopes it would be the Sonics’ former home in the Queen Anne neighborhood they get to triumphantly return to one day.
“A lot of Sonics fans that I know I’m sure never got over the wounds of what happened here 17 years ago with them leaving (for) Oklahoma City,” SuperSonics fan Eric Phan said. “All of the Sonics fanbase (is) rooting for the Indiana Pacers.”
Seattle seemed to have a chance at getting a team back in 2013 when the Maloof family put the Sacramento Kings up for sale. But investor Chris Hansen’s bid to relocate the team to Seattle was rejected by the NBA’s Board of Governors.
For fans like Ball and Phan, hope lives on. Ball recognizes that’s partially because he is an inherently positive person, and he’s hoping for a Hollywood ending.
“It would be poetic if the year that OKC wins the finals — if that occurs — is in the same summer that the league comes out and says, ‘Hey, we’re forming an expansion committee to start really exploring this process,’” Ball said. “I think that would help damper or therapize the feelings and emotions that would come along with seeing the Thunder hoist the Larry O’Brien.”
Phan pointed out that just because the Sonics don’t play in Seattle, it doesn’t mean the team is truly gone.
“You can see people walking the sidewalks and streets of Seattle, and even the suburbs,” Phan said. “People are wearing Sonics gear like they never really left.”
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AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds in Oklahoma City contributed.
