On Becoming a Fan

Remembering the Sonics' 1979 championship

The tagline for Taking Bearings is “Reflecting on Place, History, and Writing.” I try to stick to those themes. But when the weekly theme rotation lands at The Wild Card, like this week, I sometimes get a bit more personal. And that can stray a bit off-topic. I beg readers’ patience. Read on!

Coverage in the local press, kept for 45 years. (author photo)

Origins of a Fan

When I turned six, my birthday presents included a basketball hoop, bolted to a homemade plywood backboard, nailed to a big apple tree. For years, I played there, wearing down the soil beneath the rim so much so that a large root surfaced. When a made shot fell just right, the ball hit that root and immediately launched across the driveway toward the mud puddles that pooled where Western Washington’s ubiquitous rain dripped off the shed where we parked our tractors. I got fast racing to catch balls before they got soaked.

I made up entire teams (“Troy Summers” was one of my teammates) and scenarios where I could be the last-second hero of a big game, re-running it as many times as necessary for me to hit the shot. When I first got the hoop, my imagination was constrained to real basketball players: the Seattle SuperSonics.

Just before that birthday, the Sonics became NBA champions for the first, and only, time. I can still tick off the starting five: Jack Sikma (center), John “JJ” Johnson and Lonnie Shelton (forwards), and Gus Williams and Dennis “DJ” Johnson (guards). I can name some key reserves and even some of the coaching and training staff. This team sunk into my memory, and basketball became my favorite major professional sport.

Playoff Memories

I’m thinking about this because it is NBA playoff time, and I’m watching. During most of the year, I rarely watch sports. I don’t usually have access, but this year I splurged on a streaming service so I could follow the playoffs. I would never do this for baseball or football or any other sport.

I found the first couple rounds exciting (subsequent rounds have gotten increasingly disappointing). The teams I rooted for have fallen out by now, and I’m tempering my mild disappointment by watching very skilled people at the top of their game.

Surely, I was too young to remember any significant details from the Sonics’ championship run just as I was finishing kindergarten, but surprisingly I can pull up some memories:

• I recall talking to friends on the school bus about the previous night’s results.

• I recall seeing news coverage of crowds waiting at the airport for the team to return from Washington, D.C. where they defeated the Bullets, led by Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes who I developed a deep antipathy for.

• I recall players pouring alcohol in celebration. (Coming from a nondrinking family, I felt the pull of the celebration but thinking they shouldn’t be using such forbidden substances!)

• I also can recall the players and their looks, including who wore gold chains (DJ) and the style of their play (Shelton was a brute).

In the coming months and years, my fascination with the team was fed and deepened.

Tangible Memories

Besides the apple-tree hoop, I received a Wilson basketball complete with a Sonics emblem, which was like half a basketball with a Seattle skyline. For Christmas, I believe, I received a book about the championship year that I looked through endlessly. I hung posters and pennants in my room, where they stayed for years. I still have some of these.

Once, at a local mall store opening, my favorite player came to sign autographs. Jack Sikma was the team’s 6’11" center in his second year. We waited in line at the Frederick & Nelson store. I remember that he was, perhaps, wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt. What I am certain of is he wore flip-flops. I’m certain of that because my mom, on seeing his feet, exclaimed, “Your feet are huge!” As factual as her comment might have been, I’m sure I was shyly embarrassed. However, I got a signed autograph:

A prized childhood possession and memory. (author photo)

The Sonics roster changed, and Magic Johnson joined the Lakers the next year to dominate the Western Conference. I followed along, but I cannot recall strong memories of them like those of my initial sports awakening until I was older.

Historical Contexts

The Sonics, Seahawks, and Mariners all started within a few years of each other in the 1970s. This was a time of expanding professional sports. But also it was a sign of Seattle’s up-and-coming stature—despite the Boeing Bust that launched the decade unceremoniously.

I’m not a sports historian, so I cannot call on a deep well of knowledge to explain this. However, in my specialty of environmental history, I did once come across a reference to the Sonics much to my surprise.

After characterizing Oregon as conservative and insular, historian Robert Bunting contrasted it with Washington as more cosmopolitan and heterogenous: “It is not surprising that Seattle has a space needle and calls its professional basketball team the Supersonics, while Portland has no such symbol and has named its ball club the Trailblazers.”¹

Randomness of Fandom

Being a fan of a team or a sport seems fairly natural but is quite random.

I often wonder if I might have become a baseball fan if the Mariners had won the World Series when I was little. This was never an option, of course; the Mariners did not have a winning record until I graduated from high school and no playoff appearances until I graduated from college. (And no World Series appearance yet.) The Seahawks did not find much consistent success until much later. Other Seattle teams and sports—the Sounders and the Thunderbirds—simply were not in the running. Basketball and the Sonics held my loyalties.

Unearthed from boxes, signs of a childhood fan. (author photo)

Having lived most of my life in Seattle’s orbit, I’ve never had to consider how to choose a team like Chicago or New York fans have to. Or what you do if you grow up in Billings, hundreds of miles from any professional sports team? Since the Sonics were sold and relocated to Oklahoma City, my fandom has wandered and will continue to do so until the Sonics return home. There is some freedom in not being tied to a single team, but I also feel unmoored. I can only conjure up so much enthusiasm to root for the Celtics.

Closing Words

Relevant Reruns

I wrote a bit about my own experience with sports once before here. I wrote a column once about the history of Boeing, which tangentially connects to this week’s newsletter.

New Writing

At long last, a new reported piece is out with Salish Current. Check out my story about local flower farmers.

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As always, you can find my books, and books where some of my work is included, at my Bookshop affiliate page (where, if you order, I get a small benefit).

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Taking Bearings Next Week

I’m returning to The Classroom next week. Stay tuned!

1. Robert Bunting, The Pacific Raincoast: Environment and Culture in an American Eden, 1778-1900 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 159.