When the Sonics Boomed

Kevin Calabro (broadcaster, Sonics, 1987-2008): We badly needed a point guard with this ballclub. McMillan was the incumbent point guard. But we needed a guy that could score at that position. It was pretty apparent Nate was not a scorer.

Gary Payton (Sonics guard, 1990-2003): I was just going to be happy just to get into the pros, but to stay Northwest [after playing at Oregon State], and to stay in Seattle and just make that my first place, it was great.

Barry Ackerley (Sonics owner): I'm married to a woman still who was an All-American swimmer at Arizona State, but she knew nothing about basketball. When Gary was first drafted, we were at a preseason dinner and she asked me after the dinner, "Who was that guy sitting across the table?" It happened to be Gary Payton. She looked at me and she said, "That guy’s going to be a winner. You can just see it in his eyes. He has the eye of the tiger. He's never going to let himself fail." She's very rarely ever made comments about players—except at that time—and it was a pretty bold statement.

McMillan: They announced the day that Gary was drafted that he was going to be the starting point guard. Gary really came in feeling that there was going to be a problem with he and I. It was totally opposite. I introduced myself and I told him we were going to make this work and he was going to be the starting guard and I was going to come off the bench. I think from that day forward, he and I became almost like brothers, very, very close. And I was able to talk to Gary and kind of be that big brother to him throughout his career.

Whitsitt: The moment I drafted him, he’s on the radio saying, "Point guards like Magic Johnson and I don't come along very often." Gary didn’t stop talking from the moment you drafted him until the day his career was over; probably hasn’t stopped talking today, and I mean that in a Gary way and sort of who Gary is and how he functions.

Calabro: The first game that we played in preseason, we played the Chicago Bulls up in Vancouver and he wanted to D up on [Michael] Jordan and got a couple of stops. He talked smack to Jordan, and I’m not sure if Jordan initially knew how to handle this guy.

Eddie Johnson (Sonics forward, 1990-93): I just knew I had to at least be a leader and get them refocused. The first guy that I went after was Gary. ... I just reached the point with him one day in a practice when I told him just shut up. He didn't like it, but I think he respected it and I think he accepted my leadership of me pushing and prodding he and Shawn for the three years that I was there.

Sam Perkins (Sonics forward/center, 1993-98): There’s nobody out there that talks more than Gary. Gary’s still talking to this day on Fox, making up new words that the English vocabulary has never heard of. I thought Derek Harper talked, but nah, this cat lost hands down to Gary.

Cage: Every flight. Dude, come on, man. You've got to shut up. I’m trying to sleep. Everybody’s asleep except you and the people around you that you’re keeping up. And dude never stopped talking. Talking at 1:30, 2 in the morning. He’s yakking and got something going on with somebody from the other day.

McKey: Guys thought he was arrogant and didn’t really know him. Guys did come at him harder, because they thought they knew who he was and his personality. Him being a high draft pick, it automatically made guys go harder at him.

Vincent Askew (Sonics guard, 1992-96): He really couldn’t play pool, but he talked so much that he would talk you out of your game, and that was funny to me. He’d come in bragging and can’t shoot.

Gary Payton of the Oregon State Beavers looks to pass during an NCAA game circa 1990 at the Gill Coliseum in Corvallis, Oregon. (Getty Images)

Johnson: We called each other every name in the book. But he knew and I knew that it wasn’t personal, and I think eventually he knew that I was using him as a conduit so that if everyone saw that if I was getting on him, that they would allow me to come up to them and say something to them, to try and prod them. You go after the guy that is top dog, and Gary thought he was top dog early on.

Steve Kelley (sports columnist, Seattle Times): Nate McMillan was a key. Nate had the locker next to Gary for years, and Nate would throw a bucket of water on Gary when Gary got out of hand. Once, I was interviewing Nate and Gary was sitting next to him and he was saying, "Stupid question. Stupid question. What a stupid question," after every question I’d ask. Nate finally stopped and turned his chair and looked at Gary and said, "Shut up. He's not talking to you. Shut up."

Payton: When I first got there, [Kemp and I] were hanging out and then we started practicing together. Once you hang out with somebody off the court, I think it’s a little bit easier because you get to knowing them and then you get to looking for each other on the court. … I don’t know if people realized that, but once you get close to somebody, you start knowing what he’s going to do or where he’s going to be, and then it makes the game a lot easier.

Seattle again went 41-41 during Payton’s rookie season, losing to Portland in the first round of the playoffs. By then, K.C. Jones had replaced Bernie Bickerstaff as the team’s coach. Despite a talented roster, the team sputtered to an 18-18 start to the 1991-92 season. After a third consecutive loss, Whitsitt decided to fire head coach K.C. Jones. Next up: George Karl.

George Karl (Sonics coach, 1992-98): I was at a stage in my career where I thought I was going to have to go to college.

Whitsitt: I did not know George. I knew of George. But let's say the number was 30 people I talked to regarding George. Twenty-nine of them said, "Don’t touch him with a 10-foot pole. You will lose your job in no time flat." They all had the same horror stories. Temper, egomaniac, drinks too much. One guy was neutral on him and he said, "Look, I can't recommend him, but I won't kill him because he is a smart basketball coach."

Karl: I never heard the real story of why Whitsitt pulled me out of the hat. He’s never told me.

Whitsitt: I do my homework. What I’m liking about George is a combination of things. He had a tiny bit of success as a very young NBA coach in Cleveland, and unfortunately that tiny bit of success he had was the wrong thing for a young George Karl, because his ego was so massive. This was like putting gas on the fire and it was like George creating more problems for George, and George became his own worst enemy and then he got a run in Golden State, and all hell broke loose and everybody in the NBA hated him, and he ended up self-destructing. He did and he deserved to self-destruct, but this is a guy who went from thinking he was the biggest hotshot in the NBA to he couldn’t get another job in the NBA, but he loved the game so much, he went and coached in the CBA. ... Then, he tried to go up to a higher level of play, because he still couldn’t get into the NBA and he was coaching over in Spain and this was a guy who would tell people he could speak Spanish. George could say hola and adios and that was about it.

Karl: He talked to me early in January when they were struggling.

Whitsitt: I went to my owner when I told them who I was thinking of hiring. I’ll never forget it. I went out to his house and all I had was a CBA media guide to show them, and my owner says, basically, "Are you kidding?" And his wife looks at me and she goes, "He does nothing for me." I’m like, "Great, now I’ve got to sell the wife too." ... I’ll give him credit, he looked at his wife and he said to her, "Honey, we don’t want George Karl. We've made that clear to Bob, but I hired the last coach in K.C. If he's really insisted on this guy, let's let him do it and this is on him and he knows his job is on the line." And she looked at me too, she goes, "You know you won't have a job if he doesn't pan out?"

Payton: [Initially I thought of Karl as] arrogant. [An] assh--e. Because he came in from overseas and was one of those cats where he wanted to come in and try to establish that he was arrogant and all that, and we were the same way and that's why we clashed heads at the beginning. … Then when you start thinking about it, we had the same personality and wanted the same thing. We just wanted to win and wanted to get better, and he had the opportunity to get back in the NBA after he had been out of the NBA for a while and went overseas.

Gary Payton talks with George Karl. (Getty Images)

Karl: Gary and I, of course, fought a lot, but Gary competed for me.

Whitsitt: Gary and Shawn once prearranged some play so they could get some footage for a shoe commercial one of them was working on. Gary had a breakaway layup and Shawn was trailing and nobody was in sight. Gary throws it off the board so Shawn could follow with one of his thunder dunks. It’s probably one of the only open dunks in Shawn’s career that he missed. It was one of those ones where the ball goes flying to half court type of deals, and the other team grabbed it and took it in to score. I thought I was going to have to call the paramedics and/or the police, because George Karl was ready to explode. He was as red as a tomato. If I had to guess, we probably won the game, but I thought, oh gosh, we are gonna have a cleanup to do in aisle 12 in the locker room after the game.

Payton: He just wanted to establish himself as being a hard-nosed coach, and we weren’t having that. We clashed heads. I think the best thing he did was bring in [assistant coach Tim Grgurich] and when Coach Grg came in, he knew how to deal with us and he would be the buffer. We’d get it, we’d cuss each other out in closed doors and then when we get out there, we’d play hard-nosed basketball. It was a great thing for us to get that.

Ricky Pierce (Sonics guard, 1991-94): George Karl would go around and he would say things like, Gary’s out of control and this and that. But it was just the fire that Gary had in him, and it was a good fire.

Steve Scheffler (Sonics forward, 1992-97): I remember [Karl] talking, saying, "Hey, I've got a revolver here with six bullets in the chamber. I can blow up six times during the season and be effective. After that, everybody realizes you're just shooting blanks. So pick and choose the times when you blow up and how you blow up."

Payton: He proved himself to me when he started letting me be the guy I wanted to be. When I stopped making mistakes and he started believing in me and pulling me over to the side and saying, "Look, this is your show. Run what you gotta run. Do what you gotta do.” And I think that was the starting point of me knowing that this guy had a lot of trust in me, and once he had a lot of trust in me like that, I knew I had to be that guy to always come through for him and win basketball games without me looking over at the bench and he's calling timeouts if I wasn’t calling the right plays.

Karl: The word I like to use is I think we sustained a commitment to a compromise. I backed off a little bit. He backed off a little bit, but I think we both had that fire that subconsciously we respected and it was a similar fire. Just win, baby. Go out there and go after people. Do what you do.

Soon, Karl’s chaotic, trapping defense paid dividends. Karl helped rally Seattle to a 47-35 record in 1991-92. Seattle topped Golden State in the first round of the playoffs in a series that featured the official arrival of Kemp into NBA stardom with his iconic dunk over Alton Lister.

Seattle, as a team, appeared to arrive the following year by advancing all the way to the Western Conference Finals. The SuperSonics took Phoenix to a deciding seventh game. But Charles Barkley amassed 44 points and 24 rebounds in handing Seattle a 123-110 loss. Phoenix attempted 64 free throws to Seattle’s 36.

Payton: That’s all anybody ever talks about is a dunk like that and then he’s squatting down, pointing at Alton Lister. I think it's [the] No. 1 [dunk] of all time. Me being a part of that and seeing that, it was great.

Kelley: Gary and Shawn were the personality of the team. They were so dramatic. The way Gary played where he was yapping the whole game and pestering the point guards and running the show and revving up the crowd. That was unbelievable and the plays he made, his ability to get to the rim. The plays he was making in the fast break, the way he and Shawn worked together in the fast break. It was just beautiful to watch.

Whitsitt: Barkley had the game of his life and the refs decided to let them shoot twice as many free throws as us [in Game 7 of the 1993 Western Conference Finals].

Karl: I can’t talk about that. Last time I talked about it, it cost me $100,000.

Scheffler: If we could have had Eddie Johnson on the team and just smacked everybody upside the head and say, "Just forget everything. Just win this at all costs. Your lives depend on this." (Seattle traded Johnson with Dana Barros and a first-round pick to Charlotte in 1993 for Kendall Gill and a pick.)

Barry Ackerley: It hurt me very deeply. It was sort of like a death in the family. As with any severe trauma, you sort of, like, walk away from it for a while. … I think we have a very fine basketball team. I’m pleased with the way it was put together. I have no problems in that area. (Seattle Times, 1994)

Scheffler: You had more anger, more frustration, because you realized how close you were. You didn’t just lose in the first round to Denver; you lost a really good chance at winning a ring.

“You had more anger, more frustration, because you realized how close you were. You didn’t just lose in the first round to Denver. You lost a really good chance at winning a ring.”

—Steve Scheffler 

Payton: That was the most disappointing year that we ever had, because we knew we should have been closer and went to the Finals during that time.

Whitsitt: Frankly, as much as I didn’t want a setback, I knew it was the setback that I was going to use to take us to the championship the next year. The group was very high-octane and hard to manage. It’d just been getting better and better and better and they’d never really faced anything before, and I was going to use this embarrassment as a motivator and we were going to win it next year.

Kelley: I remember seeing George about a week-and-a-half later. I went to his office and asked, "How are you doing?" And he said, “Well, on a good day, I feel s---ty.”

Robert Pack shoots a layup in Game 5 of the Western Conference Quarterfinals against the Seattle SuperSonics (Getty Images)

After the embarrassing loss, Whitsitt was out as GM and Wally Walker was in for the 1994 draft.

Tony Dutt (Kemp’s agent): Chicago had supposedly traded [Kemp] for [Scottie] Pippen [on draft night of 1994]. If that trade would have went through, it would have taken Shawn to a whole other level marketing-wise. You think about him and Jordan playing together. That would have been pretty special.

Scottie Pippen, exchanges team caps as he gets traded to the Chicago Bulls (Getty Images)

Karl: I was a huge Pippen fan and I was a huge Shawn fan. We, at that stage, were seeing Shawn wearing out a little bit. Not dipping, but the slant was not like this [motions up], it was kind of going this way [motions down]. It was kind of pretty quick, so you started worrying about maybe his off-the-court habits. My voice was, at that time, a very difficult choice, but I would have made the trade. I would have gone with the speed and athleticism and great defense. Shawn was a good defender, but not a great defender. Pippen, I think is an elite, top, maybe, 10 defender of all time.

Kelley: George and Tim Grgurich wanted to do it. And then Wally Walker had his finger in the air and felt the breeze and decided that it wasn’t a good thing to do. So Wally kiboshed the trade and George and Grg were distraught and we were sitting in George’s office, and that night they began the renovation. (The NBA wanted the Seattle Center Coliseum updated to NBA standards. The renovation forced Seattle to play the 1994-95 season at the Tacoma Dome, about 30 miles away.) You could hear the bulldozers coming in and they were literally coming down the hallway into George’s office. I mean, it was time to get out of there. You could hear the crashing of walls and George was talking about how metaphorical it was. It was sort of an apoplectic [sic] scene and George was talking about how apropos it was, because he thought that by not making that trade, they had kind of sealed their fate for the future in a bad way.

Wally Walker (Sonics general manager, 1994-2006): That was an odd situation, because there wasn’t a general manager in place. I was just a consultant who was asked to come in temporarily. I had no designs for the job, but there wasn’t a full-time GM, so it made for a very odd dynamic in the draft room.

Kelley: Wally sided with Ackerley instead of with George and the basketball people.

Walker: The owner, Barry Ackerley, had to get involved and I can remember calling him, because I was really reporting to him as a consultant that was there, to say, "Well, the coaches want to do this trade and you've got to make a call as to whether this trade happens or not." Obviously a huge blockbuster trade. I remember Barry’s response was, "Do I have to?" And it was one of those. It was agonizing. People in Seattle love Shawn. They should. He was an exciting, dynamic young player and Pippen was a great player, and there you go.

Dutt: At the end, we were told it was done and then it wasn’t done and then who knows? I remember telling Shawn, "Look, under the rules of the game if you would have gotten traded there, they had a history that they weren't going to redo [his contract]." So we knew that going in, but I also felt like he would go to another level marketing-wise too that would have compensated him in a much higher way.

Walker: Barry decided ultimately not to do it. Obviously, it was his call. I remember he had a quote—I’m paraphrasing it at best—but it was, "I’m 0-for-3 in trades with Chicago.” Because he was in the draft-and-trade where the Bulls got Pippen with Seattle’s pick. He was feeling timid about doing another deal.

McMillan: The biggest obstacle was the Jazz. The Jazz, we left so much in that series that getting to the Finals, it was just a relief that we had made it. We were happy to be there as opposed to knowing how to win once we got there. … Leading up to the NBA Finals, I started experiencing the back spasms during the Utah series. I just kept asking why. And mothers have a way of answering all questions, and I remember talking to my mother. We had all the All-Stars. Shawn Kemp. We had Gary Payton. We had Sam Perkins. She told me, Baby, God wants people to see that team without you, to see how important you are. But I never understood why.

Casey: We knew we had to go through a dogfight just to get there and then there’s the Bulls waiting for you with Jordan, Pippen, that group. They won 72 that year.

Snow: They won 72, you look at it, but at the same time, we won 64.

Casey: The biggest thing is, "Who’s going to match up with Jordan and try to watch him and try to stay in front of him?”

Payton: I was hurt in the beginning of the series. I wish that I would have guarded Michael a little earlier and probably started off on him and we could have changed things.

They won 72, you look at it, but at the same time, we won 64.

— Eric Snow

Casey: I think we started Detlef on him, and I don’t think that worked out too well. Gary was probably our most fierce defender, competitor, but at that time in Jordan’s career, it didn't matter who you put on him. He was going to find a way to score or help somebody else get a shot.

Payton: Everybody was always putting him as the No. 1 competitor to go against and you always wanted to prove that you could guard this guy. At that time, I was the top defender and I was known for the defense, and they made a big deal about it and I had to come and perform.

Casey: We tried Detlef. We tried Gary. We even tried David Wingate. We tried Hersey Hawkins. We tried everybody on him and the triangle was so difficult to double-team with him in the low post or mid post or low-goal isos. At that time, Jordan was such a good passer and willing passer, it made it really tough to double-team.

Calabro: Frank Brickowski’s matchup against [Dennis] Rodman was always very entertaining.

Brickowski: If I had done something to get ejected [two minutes after entering Game 1], it would have been one thing and I would take responsibility for that, but the league never fined me and when I got ejected, I was telling Jack Haley to shut the f--k up and sit down in his street clothes, and I had just gotten into it with Dennis.

Casey: We came back that night [after Game 2] and we probably should have spent the night that night, because it was a long night and a late game and we didn't get back into Seattle until late, late. The next day was kind of a blur for us and then we played them again. … I know we were still a little groggy in Game 3.

Brickowski: [Rodman] was shooting a foul shot [in Game 3] and I’m on the foul lane. Shawn and Michael and Scottie, they’re across the lane from me and one of the referees had the ball. I said, "Dennis, I'm a little confused, the wedding dress and all that. What do you do after the game?” ... The next foul shot, he stands next to me, looking at me like that. And I said to him, "Dennis, I was just curious. I'm not judging. I'm just curious.” … You could say something like I questioned his sexuality after seeing him in a dress.

Scheffler: In the Finals, he wouldn’t back down.

Brickowski: The second time I got ejected was in Seattle [in Game 3] and it was for nothing again, just Dennis tangling me up and falling down like something attacked him, but I don't get fined for that either. … It was really disheartening to wait that long to get into the Finals and to have referees do that to me, to us.

Johnson: That’s the worst thing you can do is get baited into Dennis Rodman’s mind games, and I think Frank got baited into it and it ain’t turn out the way it should have, not in a good way.

Brickowski: He was the best rebounder, pound-for-pound, the game has seen, and when he’s getting those flop calls and playing like that, it was nearly impossible [to guard him]. He wasn’t physical. He wasn't a badass. He wasn’t a fighter. But he was a flopper and he worked it. That cheapens the game in my mind. I don’t know why it took the NBA so long to put in a flopping rule, but they should have done it 15 years ago.

Walker: We started the series acting like we weren’t sure we belonged there. So we’re down 2-0 coming home and we’re not quite ready to play. Obviously, the team won 64 games. I think we only lost three, maybe four games in our building during the regular season. But Luc Longley had his playoff career high against us. We probably didn’t see that one coming. So we lose Game 3 at home to go down 3-0, and now what do we have? Do we have any fight left? Who are we?

Payton: I think we went into the series thinking not to lose, rather than to win, when we could have beat this team, and we just thought we needed to just hang on. We figured that out after the third game and we won two in a row by big margins and then by that time, it was too late.

Calabro: They finally switched Payton onto Jordan. They didn’t want that matchup early in the series because they felt like Payton, physically, was not at 100 percent. But Gary insisted that they switch him off onto Jordan and it was effective.

McMillan: Going into Game 6, I couldn’t play again. I’m sitting there asking, "Why? Why is this happening?”

Calabro: They only scored 75 points in Game 6, so it was Chicago’s game. They controlled the tempo and just shut people down in Game 6.

Karl: Most playoffs get this way, it becomes a defensive game and they were better defensively. You saw two great defensive teams going nose-to-nose. Ronnie Harper, people don’t remember Pippen and Jordan weren’t the A-defender a lot of the game, until the fourth quarter. Harper was the A-defender and then Jordan and Pippen would take over and Rodman would take care of the big man. Phil [Jackson] is pretty simple defensively, but man they were good. You just tried and stay away from the turnover, try to get a good shot. In Game 6, it was like, "Man, they know every play."

Karl: The best player on the court was Shawn Kemp.

Brickowski: Shawn Kemp carried that team. You can talk about Gary Payton, you can talk about whoever, but Shawn was whose back everybody jumped on.

Moquin: If you’d been from another planet and I brought you to that series and you watched those six games and were asked, “Who is the best player in this game?”, you would have said Shawn Kemp over Michael Jordan.