Sonics Pave Way for America's Struggling Left

ETS! sports section: I know a lot of my leftie friends dismiss professional basketball as an overpriced, overpaid, and overhyped commercial spectacle (all true) consisting of nothing but a bunch of millionaire prima donnas running up and down a court in their shorts, showing off in front of a bunch of gawking spectators who have nothing better to do with their lives than to watch them (not necessarily true). All I can say is, if you live in Seattle but did not pay attention to the remarkable adventure that was the Seattle Sonics' season this year, you missed a special opportunity for sublime human experience.

Here was a team many experts picked to finish in last place, who lost most of their exhibition games and lost the first game of the season by 30 points to the friggin' Los Angeles Clippers! (If you don't follow basketball, suffice it to say that the Clippers have been the butt of many basketball jokes for their long-standing futility.)

It looked grim for the Sonics and their fans. Then something changed. The team started winning. They started beating the teams that nobody thought they could beat, more consistently than anyone thought possible. By the end of the first month they had one of the best records in the NBA. Everybody thought it was a fluke. But the Sonics paid no attention to their critics and just kept right on winning all through the season, putting on a display of character, camaraderie, and heart like I've never seen in my 30 years of watching basketball.

Everyone, it seemed, was waiting for the bubble to burst, for the imminent collapse to arrive. Then, in the last few weeks of the season, the Sonics, for the first time, were tested by adversity. Players started going down with injuries like WTO protesters during the police riots of '99. Despite a depleted squad, bench players stepped up and pulled off a few improbable wins, but the team couldn't sustain it and limped out of the season losing most of their final weeks' games.

The experts crowed, "See! We told you it would come. They're crumbling." The Sonics headed into their first playoff series in three years on a losing streak, hoping to get players healthy and regroup. It seemed that every other playoff team was expressing hopes they'd get matched up with the young, inexperienced, and stumbling Sonics, who looked to be the pushover of the first round.

The Sonics' first-round opponent was the Sacramento Kings, perennial playoff standouts. Conventional wisdom was the Sonics were no match for the Kings' playoff experience and toughness. The Sonics crushed 'em, four games to one.

But then the Sonics faced the San Antonio Spurs the second round. The Spurs have a higher winning percentage over the last decade than any team in all of professional sports. They've won the championship twice in the past five years and are perennial contenders. They've been there, done that, and are expected by many to do it again this year. The prognosticators gave the Sonics about the same odds of winning the series as they would give Ralph Nader of winning the presidency.

The first two games seemed to prove the prognosticators correct. Not only did the Sonics lose badly and seem severely overmatched, but they lost two of their top three players to injuries in the first game. Understand that most NBA teams are built around two or three stars. Remove two of the top three players and a great team becomes mediocre in a hurry. At that point, the Sonics' chances appeared closer to that of David Cobb winning the presidency.

Just as one of the injured stars returned to full strength, the third star player went down and out for the rest of the series. Unfazed, the Sonics battled back to win the next two games and tie the series. Un-fucking-believable.

That the Sonics didn't lose the series until the final second of game six last week was a testament to their character and teamwork. As I listened to the players, coaches, and sportscasters after the final game reflect on the Sonics' amazing journey this year, many of their voices choking with emotion, I never felt so proud to be a basketball fan.

This year's Sonics team showed that by sticking together and believing in yourselves when the realists and experts count you out, what seems impossible can become possible. I think those of us who struggle against long odds to change the world can learn something from that.