The Seattle Supersonics in the 1990s played a frenetic brand of basketball. While most teams were grinding it out with post-ups and isolation plays, the Sonics came in like a tornado, playing a different style than the rest.
You Sonics played with high-energy defense, trapping and switching everything defensively, forcing turnovers, and then throwing down monster dunks and alley-oops—all thanks to the heart and soul of that team and the dynamic duo of Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton, who were unstoppable when things clicked.
From dominance to decline
From the 1992-93 season, when the duo first clicked, to the 1997-98 season, Seattle won an impressive 357 games, with over 50 wins each campaign. They finished with the best record in the Western Conference four times. They made two trips to the conference finals and a run to the NBA Finals in 1996.
But, like many perennial title contenders, money and egos eventually got in the way. The mid-90s brought in a new era of fat contracts, and Kemp felt he deserved one but couldn’t, as the league’s contract agreement rules meant he couldn’t renegotiate a deal until 1997. The Sonics handed new players way more than what their star forward was pulling in.
It all crashed down after the Sonics' second-round exit in 1997. That summer, Seattle traded Shawn to Cleveland, and their magic duo was officially over.
Payton stuck around until 2003 before being shipped off to Milwaukee for Ray Allen, closing the book on the most successful era of the franchise’s short existence. Kemp and Payton’s careers were never quite the same after they split. That chemistry they had was gone.
“The one thing, if I go back, we don’t break that relationship,” Kemp lamented of his split with Gary. “Matter of fact, when I tell him now, say we go back, man, we are supposed to go up there in the office and tell them to make that [expletive] work. Instead of getting mad and upset about this and that.”
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End of an era
After leaving Seattle, No. 40’s playoff success hit a wall. He only made it to the postseason three more times, and each time, his team was bounced in the first round. Meanwhile, Payton eventually won a championship in 2006 with the Miami Heat , but by then, he wasn’t the star anymore and was playing more of a role-player position—far from his prime Sonics days.
Seattle’s internal drama and problems didn’t help, and they held them back from reaching their full potential—the kind of potential that came during the 1995-96 season when No. 20 and No. 40 led the team to a franchise-record 64 wins.
They made their first NBA Finals appearance since 1979, facing none other than Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, who had just set an NBA record with 72 wins. Despite being heavy underdogs, the Sonics pushed the Bulls to six games.
Kemp came in second in Finals MVP voting, nearly becoming only the second player in history to win the award despite being on the losing team. That series was a major “what if” moment for Seattle, and fans still wonder how far the team could’ve gone if the superstar tandem had stayed together.
Related: Gary Payton says Seattle was the original Lob City: "I was doing that in the early 90s before even that boy was even in diapers"
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