Kevin Durant is a lot of things, an MVP, scoring champion, NBA champion, multiple-time all-star, and all-NBA player. However, there is one thing that makes him different from all the other players in the league. He was the last player to be drafted and played for the Seattle Supersonics.
The Seattle Supersonics were relocated to the OKC Thunder in 2008, after Kevin Durant’s rookie season. The Supersonics were in Seattle for over 40 years and even won an NBA title. However, that culture seemed to end after the move.
Kevin Durant reveals how he was lied to about the move
Rookie Kevin Durant was the best player on the Seattle Supersonics in the 2007-8 season. He averaged a team-high 20 points per game and won the ROTY award.
However, whilst KD was building his legacy, he was a small part of a bigger story. Howard Schultz, who owned the Seattle Supersonics and was forced to sell the team to Clay Bennet due to all the losses Howards was incurring. The KeyArena was the smallest team in the NBA and the capacity was not enough to be profitable to the owners.
Howard wanted to build a new stadium in Seattle but could not find the funding. However, Clay Bennet had no intention of keeping the team in Seattle and was planning to move it to OKC, where his company was based, from the beginning. That’s what made him one of the most hated men in Seattle.
The city and the players were all in the dark about this and that included Kevin Durant.
“See, they told us we will be there for at least three of four years so I settled in…. Towards the end of the year we just kept hearing, ‘Hold up, I think they making the change sooner than we thought… Clay Bennett came out and gave us three options for cities that they were looking at. San Jose, I think it was San Diego and then OKC. We was just like alright, you’re from OKC like we know what this is now.”
Kevin Durant, the star of the team, himself had no idea showing how out of the blue that entire ordeal was for the fans and players alike. Would Seattle ever get a team in their city again? The fans of Seattle would genuinely hope so.