Sonicsgate: A Night of Remembrance in Seattle

Yesterday morning, I woke up, showered, put on some Sonics’ warm-up pants, a Nick Collison jersey and a Sonics’ shooting shirt and headed to my car. 

On my way to the car, I was stopped by a garbage man who said, “You’re a die-hard Sonics fan aren’t you?”  I smiled and told him they were my all-time favorite team, and told him about Sonicsgate, and that he needed to check it out.

As I was heading to work, I stopped at the gas station and got a spot of gas.  One guy honked, threw a hand in the air and yelled, “GO SONICS!”

The day was definitely starting off better than imagined.

So I go to work, a few of my coworkers expressed their jealousy for what I was wearing, and to top it off, since my ankle has been swelling a lot lately, I had my laptop in my lap and my feet up to reduce swelling, but it really looked like I was lounging all day.

So perfect.

After work, I drove from Madison Beach to Seattle Center, and stole my best friend’s parking spot at his apartment since he was heading to Aberdeen for the weekend.

There is nothing like free parking in a city that charges too much for parking, with non-parking and paid zones everywhere, to begin with.

I am so happy Nickels is finally on his way out.

So I joined Jeremy, Eric, David and a few others at McMenamins for a burger, and a few drinks.  Well, quite a few drinks.

We headed across the way to the SIFF Theater, waited outside for a bit, said hi to some more friends, shared a few stories, then made our way inside to get our seats…well, made a couple trips to the bathroom first.  Like I said, there were a lot of drinks to be had at dinner.

Finally, we sat down, AB and JR introduced themselves, the lights dimmed, and the show started.

I will proceed to not ruin the movie for those who have yet to see it, but I thought it was well-told.  Basically, it started with the franchise's beginnings, and progressed all the way to the end.  The story told was well put together, flowed extremely well, and overall did a nice job at giving us fans a bit of closure.  We never had our wake/funeral for the team.

The Sonics just up and left on an extremely dreary July afternoon.

It wasn’t really dreary, but it seemed like it.  I mean, what can you say when your city and state Government lied to you just about every step of the way.  They said they would do everything they possibly could, which, in the end, was absolutely nothing.

Well, aside from the fact of turning around, dropping their pants and taking it from Clay Bennett and David Stern.

Then we all headed over to the Spitfire Bar and Grill to hang out, drink some more, have a good time.

It was though, a great end to a really fun, yet sobering night.

There was a moment after bumping into Rob Sims of the Seattle Seahawks and sharing a quick drink and pleasantries, that I looked around, saw groups of Sonics fan standing around in different areas of the bar, talking, smiles on their faces, yet in their eyes, sadness at the same time.

A year later, as another NBA is about to start another season, we have officially said goodbye to the Sonics.

Sonicsgate will hopefully make its rounds all over America, with the rest of the public seeing what happened here, and trying to avoid those exact circumstances in the future.

Sacramento, Milwaukee and Indiana are cities that come to mind.

And, if you see Jason Reid, Adam Brown, Camp Jones and anyone else that was involved with the film, stop them, tell them thank you, buy them a drink, buy them lunch, or buy them seasons tickets for when we get a new team.

Sherman Alexie said it best in the film, and I have to paraphrase here because I don’t remember the exact wording and know that I cannot put it as so eloquently as he, but here it goes.

When Seattle gets a new team, it’s going to be at the expense of another city and the pain they will feel will be the same as we felt.  And that sucks.

Please visit http://www.sonicsgate.org