Top 50 Oklahoma City Thunder
This could actually change very quickly.At present, the Oklahoma City Thunder own the history of the Seattle SuperSonics but should Seattle get a franchise back, it would be a shared history and make this all very confusing.
Let’s cross that bridge if we come to it!
The Seattle SuperSonics would enter the National Basketball Association as an expansion team in the 1967-68 season and by the mid-’70s the team became pretty good. The Sonics would go to the NBA Finals in 1978 in a losing effort against the Washington Bullets. They would meet the Bullets again in the Finals in 1979, however, the result was different as this time the boys from the Emerald City took the title, which to date is the only one in franchise history.
Seattle would reemerge as a league power in the 1990s and in 1996, led by eventual Hall of Famer, Gary Payton would go back to the Finals only to lose to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Good seasons would still follow, but like in the cases of so many other teams, the decline would come and blame would also fall on the facility. This would lead to relocation to Oklahoma City.
With Kevin Durant in tow, the now named Oklahoma City Thunder would reach the 2012 NBA Finals and while they lost to the Miami Heat, there was still hope for a championship in the future, though with the loss of Durant to free agency to the Golden State Warriors, the light has certainly dimmed. It would fall even further after Russell Westbrook left.
This list is up to the end of the 2022/23 season.
Note: Basketball lists are based on an amalgamation of tenure, traditional statistics, advanced statistics, playoff statistics and post-season accolades.
Vincent Askew was very much a journeyman in the NBA spending time with Philadelphia, Golden State, Sacramento, New Jersey, Indiana, Denver, Portland, and Italy. Of course, Seattle was one of those stops, and it was there where he had his most productive and stable run in basketball.
Eddie Johnson was the named the Sixth Man of the Year when he was the Phoenix Suns in 1988-89 and while he was with the SuperSonics for two and a half years he was still a contender for that award. Coming off of the bench for Seattle, Johnson averaged 16.2 Points per Game for the team and in his career he had over 19,000 Points, a number that puts him deep into the all-time list.
Born in China to Russian immigrants, Tomislav Mescheryakov would come to the United States as a child, though due to anti-Communist sentiment the family would “Americanize” their names and thus Tom Meschery would emerge as a star At St. Mary’s. Following a very successful run with the Philadelphia/San Francsico Warriors, the brand new Seattle SuperSonics would select him the expansion draft.
Chris Paul only played one season (2019-20) with Oklahoma City, and while it was near the end of his career, make no mistake, he was still a star, and a player who led them to the playoffs. Paul was an All-Star and All-NBA player (Second Team) for the first time in four years, and in his lone OKC season, he was rejuvenated and developed his already strong leadership skills. The Point Guard averaged 17.7 Points per…
Born in Bosnia, though of Serbian descent (which is who he played for Internationally after Yugoslavia), Vladimir Radmanovic was the 12th Overall Draft Pick in 2001. The Power Forward would do his best work in five and half years he was with the SuperSonics, three times averaging over 10 Points per Game for a season. Radmanovic was atypical of the period as he was an excellent three point shooter, not typical of a Power Forward…
From the University of Utah, Danny Vranes was a defensive minded Small Forward who would earn Second Team All Defensive honors in the 1984-85 season. 10.1 of his 13.9 Win Shares as a Sonic would come from the defensive side of the ball. Vranes was not much of a scorer, but was able to often prevent his counterpart from putting up garish offensive stats.
A starting Point Guard in the late run of the Seattle SuperSonics and the first stint of his own career, Luke Ridnour would have three straight seasons where he would exceed ten PPG for a campaign. Ridnour’s best run in the National Basketball Association was with Seattle.
Drafted fifth overall in 1997 by Boston and coming to Seattle as part of the Ray Allen trade, Jeff Green would arrive as part of a rebuilding effort by the Sonics. Green would be part of the move to Oklahoma City and while he was not always the most efficient scorer he did always average 10 Points per Game with the Sonics/Thunder.
Jerami Grant was traded from the Philadelphia 76ers very early in the 2016/17 season, and he would have the same role in Oklahoma City that he would in Philadelphia, as a backup Power Forward. Grant would do that for the first two years in OKC, but would start 77 of his 80 Games in 2018/19 and averaged 13.6 Points per Game.
Easily having the best seasons of his NBA career as a Seattle SuperSonic, Chris Wilcox also enjoyed his longest run as a starter while playing there. Wilcox would put up a 12.6 Points and 7.1 Rebounds as a Sonic/Thunder (he was with the team for 33 Games when they relocated to Oklahoma City), which were good numbers for the former NCAA Champion at Maryland.