It Is easy to fall in love with the Oklahoma City Thunder. What’s not to love? They have three of the most dynamic players in the game, all under 25. They are run by a man, Sam Presti, who sure is on the short list of best executives in the league. They play in front of enthusiastic, collegiate crowds at home.
Seriously. How do you not love all of this?
Well, you would assume that all 48 Heat fans in South Florida would feel differently about all of that. And more to the point, so would almost all of the 3.5 million or so people who populate Seattle and its suburbs.
For them, it would be painful enough simply to know that a team formerly known as the Sonics now goes by a new name, as if it were huddled away in witness protection, in a southwestern city that very easily could be a place where a protected witness would be stowed. And to see the Thunder on the doorstep of a long and prosperous run?
How do you deal with that?
It absolutely puts Seattle on the short list of cities who have been forced to deal with this special agony, watching teams you used to suffer and bleed over move away and become precisely the kinds of teams that would have kept the suffering and bleeding to a minimum. If they aren’t right at the top, they’re close, right alongside the old standbys:
Brooklyn: Look, we know how the heart of the borough wasn’t just broken, but removed and stomped upon when the Dodgers left after the ’57 season. But desertion wasn’t bad enough. This was a fan base that had waited 71 years before Next Year finally arrived in 1955 … and then watched the Dodgers promptly win three more titles in the seven years between 1959 and ’65. That is a sporting god with a wicked sense of humor.
Cleveland: Twice abandoned by professional football, at least the Rams had the decency to lose the 1950 NFL Championship Game to the Browns — the team that helped push them west — before turning the tables and beating the Brown in ’51. That, of course, has paled to the crush of watching the old Browns, now the Baltimore Ravens, win the Super Bowl in January 2001 and remain a contender since, while the new Browns have, to be kind, floundered.
St. Louis: OK, so maybe there hasn’t been a whole lot of hand-wringing that the old NBA Hawks abandoned town and settled in Atlanta. And, sure, the Cardinals have won enough to satisfy most baseball fans. Still, the Browns were the worst of the worst for decades in the American League, and once they became the Orioles they spent 20 years (1964 -83) as the winningest team in the league. (Call it karmic payback for Baltimore, though, which lost out on the 27 titles the Yankees ultimately took north with them when they moved in 1903.)
Minneapolis: Thanks to George Mikan, the Twin Cities did hang five basketball banners between 1949-54. Still … from 1972 until now, the California version of the Lake Show has added 11 more and done so with the kind of panache the Timberwolves never have quite provided.
Kansas City: This might be the most abused city of all. Not only did K.C. serve as a 15-year stopover for the Athletics in between largely successful stays in Philadelphia (five championships) and Oakland (four), but if you follow the bouncing puck you realize that the long-lost and little-lamented Kansas City Scouts switched planes in Denver as the hockey version of the Colorado Rockies then settled in New Jersey, where the Devils have won three Stanley Cups. Add the old Kansas City Kings’ previous-incarnation title as the 1951 NBA champion Rochester Royals, that’s 13 titles by teams that once called K.C. home yet never won for K.C. Never wonder why the ’70 Chiefs and ’85 Royals are so close to K.C.’s heart.
Whack Back at Vac
Jim Scotto: In regard to the decision to rest I’ll Have Another, reader Michael Avis said, “I fully applaud the decision to put the horse first.” If people really wanted to put horses first, there would be no such thing as horse racing.
Vac: I don’t happen to agree with this perspective, but as the husband of a horse lover, I understand and respect it.
Jeff Davis: Yes, Robinson Cano is elegant in both at bat and in the field. But I would love to see him run to first elegantly. The thing every kid learns — run hard to first — is abandoned as soon as players sign their first multi-million-dollar contract.
Vac: I would like to offer a strongly-worded rebuttal to this. Cannot.
@disturbedoc: Did you feel “Mad Men” ended on a flat note? I didn’t get the shock-and-awe season finale ending we are used to.
@MikeVacc: Matthew Weiner is a “Sopranos” alum, and that show always packed more of a punch in penultimate episodes than finales. Look at Lane Pryce as just an updated version of Richie Aprile.
Joe Balitza: I read where the U.S. Postal Service is considering issuing a stamp for people that are still alive. They have never done this before! Sports figures usually have to wait 10 years. If any one deserves a current U.S. stamp, it’s Yogi Berra. He would be perfect!
Vac: And I’m sure he’d be grateful to whoever made that honor necessary.
Vac’s Whacks
Heat vs. Thunder: an NBA Finals that would’ve made Lloyd Lindsay Young and Dr. Frank Field awfully happy, you’d like to think.
* Yes. I admit it. I still watch “The Killing.” Actually, I hate-watch “The Killing.” I hate-watch “The Killing” knowing the bad mood it puts me in every week because it has become, like cigarettes for smokers and sleeves of Oreos for gluttons, the kind of thing you know you should walk away from and just can’t. And tonight, I fully expect Rosie Larson to show up alive and well and a figment of the imagination of Holder and Linden, the two detectives whose brains have been scrambled by 26 straight days of rain.
* Better to spend your time with the NBA TV documentary of the Dream Team, narrated by Eddie Burns, recounting the greatest team we’ve ever seen in any sport, at any time. If you don’t like everything the Dream Team was and everything it stood for, chances are you’ve stayed too long at the dance.
* Sometimes, even a good man and a good manager like Terry Collins can get carried away. Blaming himself for the Yankees treating Johan Santana like a tackling dummy is Exhibit 1A. Exhibit 1B is his insistence on the review of David Wright’s non-error during R.A. Dickey’s one-hit gem.