Thunder thrive at the expense of forgotton Seattle souls

By Bob Herman

If I were a Seattle Supersonics fan, man, would I hate former owner Clay Bennett and others for moving the team to Oklahoma City.

For those unfamiliar with the situation, Bennett (who was an Oklahoma City "investor") and others bought the Sonics in 2006 but never intended to keep them in Seattle. So in 2008, when the lease was up on the Sonics' arena, the team was hightailed to OKC, where it floundered last year but is flourishing now.

Think that upset some people, to lose a team that won an NBA championship and three conference titles? You have no idea. It was as if a mobster took arbitrarily away the collective child of millions of diehard Sonics fans. In the process, it was as though this mobster ripped out their hearts, stepped on them, and then put out his filthy cigarette in them.

Yes, the Sonics played poorly in their final year, going 20-62, but there was so much hope for the team. Kevin Durant and Jeff Green were rookies at the time, and Durant was quickly budding into the star he is. It was not going to be a long rebuilding process, yet Bennett had his own financial interests in mind, over a stupid arena, and moved things to his backyard. All of this occurred, mind you, right underneath NBA Commisioner David Stern's nose, who is notorious for suspending players at the glimmer of wrongdoing yet didn't even try to impede the theft of the Sonics to Oklahoma City.

Fast forward to today. The Oklahoma City Thunder are currently sitting in fifth place in the Western Conference at 33-21 and have three rising stars in Green, "Durantula," and Russell "Jet Zero" Westbrook. Durant is having a career year, having scored at least 25 points in each of his last 28 games. This team is poised to win now. Yet, it doesn't seem right.

I have no affiliation with Seattle or Oklahoma City, and the Thunder, for me, is simply nothing more than an entertaing team to watch. But it's impossible to not think that something's askew, that Sonics fans are cursing the situation every night before they go to bed, watching Durant drop 30 points and Westbrook flirting with triple-doubles...that they don't deserve this.

Maybe I'm being overdramatic--but really, I'm not.

Put yourself in the shoes of a Sonics fan, though. What if your team in any sport was moved because a sleazy investor wanted his, all the while his greedy efforts went unimpeded.

Nothing could've be done after that. Poof, gone.

I love watching the Thunder play when they hit cable here and there, and I will continue to do so. It's a fun team to watch with a core group of good leaders, good lead-by-example players. But I always think of those Sonics fans, who sit 2,000 miles away from me and who are still trying to pick the cigarettes out of their hearts, wondering what could have been in Seattle.