Seattle Supersonics (Fake) Vintage Valentines

Happy Valentine's Day, Sonics fans! Here are some authentic fake Seattle Supersonics valentines to print out and give to your sweetheart. Or, you know, your dog or whatever. (Click below to see all of them)

New Seattle Supersonics Arena (circa 1990)

After spending a day rummaging through the Supersonicsoul video archives (my spider-ridden garage), I found this gem from 1990. It's from a Seattle Supersonics infomercial called "Sonics Slam Dunk Saturday" that featured clips from the 1989-90 Sonics and a preview of the upcoming 90-91 season, including pieces on new coach K.C. Jones (who would be fired the following season) and an exciting new rookie named Gary Payton.

The most interesting part of the show, however, was an in-depth look at the new Seattle Arena that was to be built next to the Kingdome. Who wants to call that number and reserve some luxury boxes?

The show, hosted by a mustached Kevin Calabro and sportscaster turned Sonics salesman Gary Spinell, was about two hours and the source material (a well-worn VHS tape that's probably full of spiders or baby rats) is not great, but I'll be posting the best parts to our new YouTube Channel, SupersonicsoulTV, so be sure to subscribe to get updates. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to take about a thousand showers. SPIDERS!

Seattle: The Graveyard of NBA Arenas

This plan not only served as a basketball arena, but also an Imperial Shuttle for Darth Vader.

As Seattle and Sacramento both ramp up plans to build new NBA arenas, it's easy to forget how many times we've been down this road before. After all, Seattle is a town lousy with failed dreams and broken promises. From an extended monorail to a refurbished waterfront, we have rarely seen a good plan that wasn't worth killing with fire.

The Sonics have an especially bleak history of unfulfilled plans. During their 41 year residency, the Supes were often basketball vagabonds, couch surfing around the Puget Sound with stops at the old Coliseum, the Kingdome, the Tacoma Dome and even Hec Edmundson Pavilion, an old gym even too small for the University of Washington Huskies.

Fed up with the leaky roof and meager seating of their Seattle Center digs in the late 80s, former owner Barry Ackerley came close to sealing a deal for a new stadium. SeaFirst Arena of Seattle was to be built near the Kingdome and, like the current stadium plan, got the approval of the City Council before getting derailed by a parking dispute with (you guessed it) the Mariners. Ackerley was so frustrated by the lack of progress that he officially filed for relocation in 1990.

Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and Ackerley finally settled for a refurbished Coliseum, sparing us the indignity of watching the Kemp/Payton era unfold with the San Diego Sonics (shudder).

Another forgotten arena aberration took place more recently. In 2008, we were all going a little crazy about our team getting hijacked. And none went crazier than Seattle Supersonics legend Downtown Freddie Brown, who proposed one of the most ambitious/insane/awesome arena plans in the history of anything. This thing had everything. An interchangeable basketball/hockey court, retractable roof, waterfront view and, of yeah, it only cost ONE BILLION DOLLARS!

Sure, this place was total vaporware and had zero chance of ever being built, but can you imagine how awesome it would have been to see Squatch waterskiing in Puget Sound during halftime or Danny Fortson paragliding off a ferry onto the court before every game?

But alas, this was yet another Seattle sports pipe dream. And like Ackerley's arena before it, it serves as a warning to desperate fans in Seattle and Sacramento: don't count your weird, bundt cake-shaped arena before it's built.