Top-5 Hard-Luck Sports Cities: #4 Seattle

This is the second installment of the five-part series.  Here's the ground rules:

• The city has to have at least two franchises in the  big four professional sports leagues: the National Football League,  the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League (bye, bye Jacksonville).
• No expansion teams since 1980.
• No team in that city has not won a championship in the last 20 years. (New Yorkers, we really don't want to hear you complain about the Jets and the Knicks when you have the Giants and the Yankees!  Boston fans--seriously!  Chicago sports fans--you got to witness Michael Jordan at the height of his powers!).
• The closer that city's team(s) was/were to winning championship but could not close the deal the better (or worst).

The Emerald City have not heard Queen echoing "We Are the Champions" through the speakers of their Quest Field or Key Area PA system since the Gus Johnson, Dennis Johnson and "Downtown" Freddy Brown and the Super Sonics beat the Washington Bullets in the 1978-79 NBA Finals. 

Only two Seattle sports franchises can stake the claim of even making it to the final round in a season since the Sonics accomplished the feat.

Regardless their teams' record the Seahawks, Mariners, and (at the time) SuperSonic fans were among the loudest and most passionate in the the NFL, NBA or MLB.

The Super Sonics:

 

 Making three NBA Finals appearances during their history in Seattle (1977-78 and 1996), the best the Super Sonics could do before they made their next NBA Finals appearance was lost to the L.A. Lakers in the 1986-87 Western Conference finals with Tom Chambers, Xavier McDaniels and Dale Ellis.

You knew the Super Sonics were going to make a run to the Finals when their stars start getting nicknames--like when you started hearing about Gary "the Glove" Payton and Shawn 'Rain Man" Kemp in the early 1990's.

The Super Sonics made it to the Finals in the spring of 1996 against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.  This was the first full season Jordan had returned from playing baseball and started his second Bull-run of  "3-peats".  The Glove and Rain Man were added to the list of HOF-caliber players who were denied an NBA championship because they played in the same era as Jordan when they lost to the Bulls 4-2 in the 1996 NBA Finals.  The list includes:

• Patrick Ewing
• Charles Barkley
• John Stockton
• Karl Malone
• Mark Price
• Brad Daugherty
• Clyde Drexler
• Reggie Miller
• Alonzo Mourning
• Larry Johnson

The Sonics moved to moved to Oklahoma City in 2008 and the franchise lost to the Miami Heat last spring to lose their third NBA Championship in its history.

The Seahawks:

 

Entering the NFL with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with the 1976 expansion, the Seahawks were not as bad as the Bucs.  However, they did not make their first playoff appearance until four years later when the offensive combination of QB Dave Kreig, RB Curt Warner and HOF WR Steve Largent lost to the Los Angeles Raiders in the AFC Championship game after upsetting Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins 27-20 in the divisional round and pounding John Elway and the Denver Broncos 31-7 in the AFC Wild Card game (1983). 

The Seahawks would make two more trips to the playoffs with this trio after the '87 and '88 seasons only to exit in the first round.  The Seahawks would not make the playoffs again until 1999.

The golden age of Seahawk football was when they made the playoffs from 2003-07 with the offensive trio of QB Matt Hasselbeck, RB Shawn Alexander, and WR Darrel Jackson under the leadership of HC Mike Holmgren.  The pinnacle may have been 2005 when Hasselbeck and the Seahawks could not stop the Bus' (Jerome Bettis) last ride to Detroit as the Pittsburgh Steelers outlasted them in Super Bowl XL 21-10.

 The Seahawks have made a few playoff runs with RB Marshawn "Beast-mode" Lynch and QB Russell Wilson and a stingy defense under current HC Pete Carroll, it remains to be seen if the Seahawks can push through to the next level and win it all however.

The Mariners:

 

Considered the future of baseball in the mid-90's with OF Ken Griffey, Jr, SS Alex Rodriguez and SP Randy Johnson.  They made it to the ALCS in 1995 but lost to the Cleveland Indians in six-game to end their first post-season run in their existence which started in 1977 when they and the Toronto Blue Jays came in the MLB together as expansion franchises..

By 2001 they all were playing for someone else because they left the Great Northwest in free agency, but they signed Japanese League phenom Ichiro Suzuki, won a MLB-record 116 games and the New York Yankees bounced them from the ALCS in 5-games.  This marked only the fourth and last time the Mariners would make the playoffs.