Tag: jack sikma

Round 2: SuperSonics/Thunder March Madness bracket

The second round of the Seattle SuperSonics/Oklahoma City Thunder March Madness bracket is underway.

Round Two: ’79 vs. ’19 / ’96 vs. ’05 / ’12 vs. ’93 / ’16 vs. ’20

In the first round of voting to decide the best SuperSonics or Thunder team in the organization’s history, the recent teams did much better than their older opponents.

Most notably, the No. 12 2020 Thunder team upset the No. 5 1998 Sonics.

In Round 2, there are no more byes, meaning the NBA Champion 1979 SuperSonics, the 1993 Gary Payton/Shawn Kemp team, the Kevin Durant-Russell Westbrook-James Harden Thunder and the final Durant-Westbrook team are competing.

The following pages have a description of each team followed by a poll to vote for the winner.

Round One: Closed March 23, 11:59 p.m.
Round Two: Closes March 27, 11:59 p.m.
Semifinals: Closes March 31, 11:59 p.m.
Championship: Closes April 4, 11:59 p.m.

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5

5 archived Sonics/Thunder games available for free on NBA League Pass

You can watch five Seattle SuperSonics and Oklahoma City Thunder games for free on NBA League Pass.

The NBA may be suspended, but Oklahoma City Thunder and Seattle SuperSonics fans can take a blast into the past with NBA League Pass.

The streaming service is offering a handful of old games to viewers for free. Guests just need a login, which is free to create.

There are four Sonics games and one Thunder game available for viewing. All the games are located here.

Sonics vs. Phoenix Suns: May 17, 1979

Western Conference Finals Game 7

After going 52-30 and finishing in first place in the Pacific Division, the SuperSonics beat the Los Angeles Lakers in five games to advance to the Western Conference Finals and face the Phoenix Suns.

The Sonics fell behind 3-2 in the series but eeked out a 106-105 win on the road to force the series back home for a Game 7.

Hall of Fame center Jack Sikma finished with 33 points and 11 rebounds, Hall of Fame guard Dennis Johnson had 26 points, eight rebounds and two blocks and guard Gus Williams had 29 points, three assists, two steals and two blocks.

Setting the stage: The season before, the Sonics had made the NBA Finals but lost to the Washington Bullets in seven games.

This year, they were tasked against the Suns, who had not lost a home game since March 2. Those 10 weeks made Game 6 all the more worrisome for Seattle and Sikma, who told the Seattle Times in 2019 that he had a panic attack in a hotel room the night before that game.

But in Game 6, Seattle staved off Phoenix as Gar Heard, who made the “Shot Heard ‘Round The World” against the Boston Celtics in the Finals three years prior, missed a buzzer-beater attempt. That ended the home streak and gave the Sonics life for Game 7 and a rematch against the Bullets, which Seattle won.

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March Madness: What is the best SuperSonics/Thunder team ever?

With the absence of the NCAA Tournament, let’s do some Thunder Madness. Vote in the bracket for the best Seattle/OKC team of all time.

Without the NCAA Tournament, sports fans have been missing the joys of March. That got Thunder Wire to thinking — if there was a bracket with just Seattle SuperSonic and Oklahoma City Thunder teams, which would win?

With the bracket above, fans are invited to vote in the polls on each page to decide the best SuperSonics or Thunder team in the organization’s history.

Seeding was based on a variety of criteria, the most important of which were the team’s playoff performance and the regular-season record.

Here is a breakdown of each team ordered by first-round matchup. The first page is the first four seeds, which have byes, and the next pages are about teams in the first round.

Included is regular-season finish, playoff result and a short rundown of key players on the roster.

Round One: Closes March 23, 11:59 p.m.
Round Two: Closes March 27, 11:59 p.m.
Semifinals: Closes March 31, 11:59 p.m.
Championship: Closes April 4, 11:59 p.m.

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6

In the first 11 seasons of his career, …

In the first 11 seasons of his career, Sikma had attempted 68 3-pointers. He had made just seven of those attempts. Despite those struggles, Sikma understood what his coach was thinking and decided to take up the challenge. In his 12th NBA season, Sikma attempted 216 3-pointers, easily the most by an NBA center in a single season to that point. The following season, the future NBA Hall of Famer took 199 more before taking 135 in a smaller role in his 14th and final NBA season.

It wasn’t your first year in Milwaukee …

It wasn’t your first year in Milwaukee and it wasn’t Del Harris’ first year as coach, so what made you two decide it was time for you to start shooting threes in 1988? Jack Sikma: It really had to do with my skill set and the roster makeup. I think there were some matchups from some of the other positional players where we felt they had advantages in the post and they were good post players. I’m talking about Terry Cummings. A lot of times we’d put him in the post to get his matchup. Ricky Pierce, Paul Pressey. By then, Sidney (Moncrief) was gone, but we had a number of guys that from a matchup standpoint, Del felt we could use that in the post.

How did defenses react to it? You …

How did defenses react to it? You mentioned not having many contested 3-point attempts. As the season came on, did defenses respect you as a shooter? Jack Sikma: It was pick your poison. Teams that decided they were going to stop the 3-point shot made themselves more vulnerable to whatever teammate I had that we wanted to use in the post-up situation. It was dictated by the gameplan of the opposing team. In the pick-and-roll game at that time, the way that it was played, they didn’t really worry too much about the big popping to the three. That didn’t happen. You were going to stop the penetration of the ballhandler with some help and then once that’s under control, you’d recover late. It’s played a little bit differently nowadays for those guys that can drill the three. The bigs gotta get back to them a little bit quicker. And when I say wide-open threes, it’s just I never tried to make a basketball move where I would free myself up off the dribble to get a three. That just didn’t make sense.