Before sports overload, Sonics were world champs

Thirty years ago today, the SuperSonics became the first and only Seattle team to win a world championship in a major sport. They clinched their title in a Landover, Md., arena, since demolished, known as the Capital Centre, against a team that used to be called, in that pre-politically correct era, the Bullets.

The Sonics, of course, are no longer with us. Nor is the Kingdome, the mammoth building that enabled Seattle to lead the league in attendance. The MVP of the 1979 finals, the versatile and electrifying Dennis Johnson, died of a heart attack two years ago.

Although they needed only five games in the finals to dethrone Washington as NBA champs, the ’79 Sonics are not regarded as elite – their only Hall of Famer was coach Lenny Wilkens – but they own a distinction as the last team to win a world title before the sports landscape changed.

The Sonics’ 97-93 victory on June 1, 1979, predated the debut of ESPN by 99 days. There were whispers about a cable-TV operation launching an all-sports format, but nobody had the ESP to envision that ESPN eventually would lead to the extinction of sports anchors on the 11 p.m. news.

For that matter, the Sonics’ title-clinching victory predated all-sports radio by eight years. New York’s WFAN went on the air with its then-radical notion of ’round-the-clock gabbing about trade rumors and contract negotiations and inept officiating during the summer of 1987.

It’s hard to imagine, no? A team wins an NBA championship, and there were no pundits on TV to break down Gus Williams’ turnover-to-assist ratio, no callers on the radio to fret about Jack Sikma’s contract status. The 1979 Sonics weren’t even invited to the White House.

I’m disinclined to argue sports fans were better off those days – I watch ESPN now and then, and happen to enjoy all-sports radio – but the world sure was different 30 years ago, and I’ve got to admit I miss some of it.

Take roster construction: Virtually everybody in the NBA played college ball for four years. True, the Rockets’ Moses Malone, who was named the regular-season MVP in 1979, signed with the ABA’s Utah Stars out of high school. That made Malone among the handful of players – as in five – to have gone pro directly from high school.

The youngest guy on the Sonics, for instance, was Sikma. He was 23, a fundamentally sound low-post force who’d honed his skills at a small college in central Illinois. Removed from the bright lights of the big city, never tempted to forgo his college eligibility for instant wealth, Sikma concentrated on basketball.

Three weeks after Seattle won the NBA championship, the Lakers took Michigan State sophomore Magic Johnson as the first overall choice of the 1979 draft. He was a rare talent, to be sure: Of the 22 players selected in the first round, 19 were seniors.

Conventional wisdom holds that the NBA’s popularity soared after Magic and Larry Bird came into the league as rookies. In other words, the NBA’s popularity soared the season after the Sonics won it all.

“The most exciting part of the 1978-79 season involved a couple of collegians,” begins an overview from the Official NBA Encyclopedia, published in 1989. “At Indiana State, there was a remarkably versatile 6-9 forward named Larry Bird. He had been eligible for the 1978 draft and had been chosen by the Boston Celtics, but had decided to continue his college career.

“At Michigan State, there was a sophomore named Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson – a 6-9 guard, no less. He had the right to declare himself eligible for the 1979 draft if he wanted to.”

The encyclopedia’s summation of the season that concluded with the Sonics’ five-game victory in the NBA finals contains 13 paragraphs. The Sonics aren’t mentioned until paragraph No. 10.

Magic and Larry transformed the NBA into a superstar-driven league.

David Stern, a marketing genius, took over as commissioner in 1984, just as Michael Jordan arrived in Chicago.

Pro basketball never would be the same. The theatrics on the floor created noise in the arena, and during those occasional interludes when time was called for everybody to take a breath, even more noise blared from the sound system.

The 1979 Sonics won their championship in another era, when Freddie Brown’s 30-foot shots from downtown were worth no more than two points, and bonus-penalty free throws gave players three chances to make two shots.

The ’79 Sonics wore shorts above the knees, and high white socks to the knees, and they made noise in the Kingdome the old-fashioned way, by executing their half-court offense and applying suffocating defense.

Thirty years ago today, before all-sports TV networks and all-sports talk radio, before teamwork on a basketball floor was considered more pertinent than the acrobatic dunks celebrated on ESPN’s SportsCenter, the Seattle SuperSonics were the best basketball team in the world.

They should have gone to the White House.

John McGrath: 253-597-8742; ext. 6154

john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com