It Was 25 Years Ago This Month: Seattle Hosts the NBA All-Star Game

February 8, 1987: My big sister Linda and I attend the 35th NBA All-Star Game at the Seattle Kingdome. My Dad and I went to the 50th MLB All-Star Game at the same venue eight years earlier, when I was ten. Now I was a high-school senior, and my sister a college graduate, on her way to a Peace Corps assignment in Ecuador. Here's a picture I took from our seats (click to embiggen)...

A crowd of 34,275 sorta filled the cavernous multi-puropse stadium. A bunch of last-minute, relatively cheap tickets were released in the 300 level, up high and far away from the court. We snagged a pair, pretty much on a whim. I sneaked a bit closer for a better photo...

The game itself featured 14 future Hall-of-Famers, including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas and, in his final season, Julius Erving. They all wore '80s short shorts, as was the style at the time. The hometown Sonics were represented by non-HoF-er Tom Chambers, who scored 34 points and was named MVP. For those keeping score, the West team beat the East in overtime, 154-149. I bought this program, which I still have...

Here's a link to a recap and some cool video.
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Seattle's Sports Poster Boys

Over the summer, Manhattan gallery Salon 94 ran the exhibition For the Kids, displaying these once-ubiquitous, athlete-worshipping posters cranked out by West Seattle's Costacos brothers. John and Tock Costacos enjoyed early success selling "Purple Reign" T-shirts to Washington Husky football fans in the mid-'80s, before getting Seahawks star safety Kenny Easley to pose for their first poster as "The Enforcer." The Costacoses then convinced other star athletes to do the same, and by the time they sold their company in the mid-'90s, they had moved some 25 million posters featuring over 700 athletes. Their most popular poster was of Michael Jordan, selling 1.2 million copies. Probably the most popular poster here in the Emerald City celebrated notorious Seahawk flop Brian Bosworth (above).

The brothers initially didn't own licensing rights to display logos and game uniforms, so they instead relied on the color schemes of the subjects' respective teams, like the green and gold in this poster of Seattle SuperSonic Xavier McDaniel...

Nowadays these pre-Photoshop posters look pretty campy, with their garish colors and weird, non-ironic themes. However, for better or worse, they did help turn pro athletes into larger-than-life celebrities. Here's Giants-licensed hothead Kevin Mitchell (N.L. MVP in '89, the same year Tim Burton's Batman was released) before he joined the Mariners...

I never actually owned any of 'em -- I was more partial to Sports Illustrated's straightforward posters, like the one I had of Steve Garvey.
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More New Flickr Sets!

Media guides for the Seahawks and the Sonics.
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Happy 30th, NBA Champion Seattle SuperSonics!

It was 30 years ago today that the late Sonics won the NBA Finals, becoming the only professional Seattle team to win any major sports championship (unless you count the 1917 Seattle Metropolitans).

The 1978-'79 Supes had a 52-30 regular-season record and drew a whopping 747,000 fans to their home games, many of which were held at the Kingdome. After knocking off the Lakers and Suns in the playoffs, they avenged their '78 finals loss to Washington, beating the Bullets in five games. I vividly remember watching that final game on TV, with Brent Musberger counting down the final seconds as Gus Williams launched a celebratory granny shot into the Capital Centre rafters.

Good times (sigh).
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The Worst-Ever Year in Seattle Sports?

Perhaps. It's gotten to the point where Calvin feels the need to urinate on a Seahawk. Check it out:

Hawks: Off to a 1-5 start, last place in the NFC West.

Huskies: Off to an 0-6 start, tied with Washington State for last place in the Pac-10.

Mariners: Finished with a 61-101 record, last place in the AL West. Worst season in 25 years.

Thunderbirds: Moved to Kent.

Sonics: Moved to Oklahoma.
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Postage Stamp of the Week: Sasquatch

In 1990, Canada issued this stamp of Le Sasquatch (rough English translation: "The Sasquatch"). The artwork blows, but you gotta give credit to them donut-eating hosers for putting Bigfoot on a stamp, something we wack-ass Americans have yet to do...

At a recent Sonics game, my upstairs neighbor/PUSA frontman Chris Ballew celebrated mascot Squatch's birthday with his original song, "The Theme from S.Q.U.A.T.C.H." The video below was filmed at KING-5 studios. Note that the "U" in the Squatch Squad is Sonic legend Slick Watts; of course, Squatch plays drums.


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1, 10, 19, 24, 32, 43

These are the uniform numbers retired by the Sonics, honoring former stars Gus Williams, Nate McMillan, Lenny Wilkens, Spencer Haywood, Fred Brown and Jack Sikma, respectively. (Note that none of 'em were retired to pander to the fans, like the Seahawks's stupid 12th Man.)

The latest addition to the Key Arena rafters is #24, retired just last night. Though the number was worn by both Dennis Johnson, MVP of the '79 NBA Finals when Sonics won their only championship (and who, coincidentally, died last week), and Tom Chambers, MVP of the '87 NBA All-Star Game that I attended at the Kingdome, #24 was retired for Spencer Haywood. His 29.2 points per game during the 1972-73 season and 24.9 points per game in his five years as a Sonic (1970-75) both remain franchise records.

For me, my knowledge of pro sports pretty much began when the expansion Seahawks began play in '76, and the expansion Mariners began play in '77, both during my seventh year. The Sonics started up a decade earlier, in '67, but I was oblivious to them 'til after I started paying attention to the 'Hawks and M's. By then, Haywood had already been traded away to the Knicks. Yet I like that Seattle has this small amount of major-league history that went down before my sports awareness came into being, something cool that happened before my time but that I can learn about after the fact.

Read more about Spencer Haywood here.
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The Viaduct, the Sonics, NASCAR

Please indulge me as I rant about three hot local topics, bearing in mind that none of this is based on economics or politics so much as simple aesthetics...

The Alaskan Way Viaduct. I’m gonna miss that killer elevated view you get when driving northbound through downtown on the viaduct, but the thing's gotta go. The question is how to replace it -- with a tunnel? Or with a new, bigger viaduct? As The Stranger so succinctly says, No and Hell No. Instead, I strongly prefer a street-level, tree-lined boulevard, like San Francisco's Embarcadero. Above is an artist's rendering of what we most definitely should have.

The Sonics. It appears they'll soon be leaving Seattle for a bigger, better arena elsewhere, but it remains to be seen whether it’ll be in suburban Renton or faraway Oklahoma City. Same diff, I say. I love having the three major pro sports teams playing in the heart of the city, but since the 40-year-old Sonics -- our oldest and still our only big-league championship-winners (unless you count the 1917 Seattle Mets) -- couldn't get an arena built in the downtown area, then it doesn't much matter where they go. (I always thought that waste-of-space parking lot north of Qwest Field would make a great place for a new arena -- one that might also lure an NHL team -- but that's neither here nor there.) I guess I'd prefer the Sonics to at least stay in the area than move to another state altogether. Like, it'd still be sorta cool that my, uh, region could boast of having an NBA team, then again, I can recall just one Sonics game I attended in the 20 years since Xavier McDaniel killed a guy.

A NASCAR track. I can't believe there's even a debate as to whether we want such a big, loud, stupid monstrosity celebrating that gas-guzzling, flag-waving, Ricky Bobby-style culture that NASCAR represents, be it in Bremerton or anywhere else in the Northwest. Call me a snob, but let's leave that crap in the Bible Belt. If we’re gonna throw a kajillion dollars at any sort of entertainment, let’s use it to keep Ichiro in Seattle.
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Xavier McDaniel Kills a Guy

I went to this game at the Coliseum in the fall of '87. The Sonics beat the Lakers, but the best part was this ridiculous photo that appeared in the next day's Seattle Times, and again today.
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