Remember when an ownership group called The Professional Basketball Club, LLC—headed up by Oklahoma City businessman Clayton Bennett—purchased the Seattle SuperSonics back in 2006 and proceeded to move the team to OKC in 2008 despite promising the people of Seattle it wouldn't do it?
At this point, most casual NBA fans have probably forgotten about it, but it happened and Sonics fans will never forget it. Over the last decade, there has been talk about bringing an NBA franchise back to the city of Seattle, but it hasn’t happened yet and it probably won’t happen anytime soon. So Sonics fans have been left to stew in their own anger with regards to losing the NBA team that played in their city from 1967 through 2008. And some of them have even gone out of their way to openly cheer against Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and the Thunder for the last eight years. The term #Sonicgate has been used early and often by many Seattle sports fans on Twitter:
With #Sonicgate still fresh on their minds, there were a lot of Seattle sports fans who were paying close attention to Kevin Durant’s free agency this summer. They've actually had it on their radar for several years now. So when KD announced that he plans on playing for the Warriors next season on Monday, quite a few of them started sending out tweets to Thunder fans who were angry about Golden State "stealing" KD from them. We have to believe that not all Sonics fans took joy in OKC’s misery, but many of them did. Here are some of the tweets that those in and around Seattle sent out throughout the day on Monday and into Tuesday:
Petty? Sure. But Seattle did miss out on witnessing one of the greatest, er, two of the greatest players of their era playing together. So can you really blame them for being a little upset about it and celebrating OKC's huge loss?
Go here to see how people outside of Seattle reacted to KD taking his talents to the Warriors.
