Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnist
Fair-weather fans: Glad you joined us Storm plays for title tonight

JIM BATES / THE SEATTLE TIMES A young fan wears a face mask like that worn by Sue Bird of the Storm during Game 2 of the WNBA Finals on Sunday. The teams play the final game of the championship series tonight at KeyArena.

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If they win it — check that — when they win it, the WNBA championship will officially belong to the Seattle Storm players, Coach Anne Donovan and her staff, general manager Karen "KB" Bryant, owner Howard Schultz and his partners.

But it will belong just as surely to the disabled young man who can't stay in his seat behind the Storm bench and pumps the air with all he's got.

It will belong to the guy in the tie who never fails to wave something when the opposing team readies for a free throw.

It will belong to the gangly girls in the frizzy green-and-yellow wigs who squeal in witness of the possibilities playing out before them.

The trophy will belong to them, and to all of us who have warmed the lower-bowl seats of KeyArena the past four years, while the rest of the city sat this Storm out.

Now, with a single game to go, Seattle has finally come around, and has been lining up at the ticket counter like it was Target the day after Christmas.

Took you long enough. But darn glad to see you.

Today's game: 6 p.m. TV: ESPN2 Radio: KJR-AM (950)

"Never been to a game before!" bellowed Raymond Rivera yesterday, when he signed for two tickets to tonight's final game against the Connecticut Sun.

Rivera was coming out for the first time because he loves basketball. "And because it could be the second championship Seattle had since, what, 1979?"

Fair-weather fans are a sad reality in this town. You saw it in 1995, the first time the Mariners caught fire after a small group of stalwarts had been rubbing sticks for years.

And now it's the Storm's turn to run out on the court and see that their fan fire has reached the rafters. No more curtain hiding the empty seats.

"One game's better than none," Storm guard Tully Bevilaqua said of the new faces.

Indeed, after years of hard work, of waiting for the Big Opportunities that men know will be there, of wondering if there was even going to be a league, let alone a team — these women will take it.

	JAMES BRANAMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Fans purchase the few remaining tickets available for tonight's WNBA championship game between the Storm and Sun at KeyArena.

Because win or lose, grace is something they've learned to carry with them off the court.

"We welcome anybody at any time," said WNBA President Valerie Ackerman. "If it took a finals run to engage more casual observers, then so be it."

Still, you can understand longtime Storm fan Marcia Hamlin when she admits to "residual anger" over the Storm landing lower in the TV lineup than it was in the standings.

"It really started to aggravate me," said Hamlin, 40, who runs a moving business in Seattle and has owned season tickets for three years. "I've been there when there's nobody."

And you can understand Joel Bergstrom's disgust when he went to Ozzie's Sports Bar — across from KeyArena — and saw the TV was tuned to baseball instead of the crucial Storm game Sunday night.

"It was a little hard to watch it on the ticker," muttered Bergstrom, 32, who works at the arena ticket office and plays in a band.

So while there is much joy in certain circles, there is also the feeling that the Storm in the championships is like a winter coat that Seattle is reluctantly shrugging into.

The fit isn't perfect — it's a woman's coat, after all — and not what they would have chosen. But it sure will ward off the chill of a 63-99 season at Safeco, won't it?

"This is what sports does," said Rivera, 44, who once played college basketball. "It brings people together who don't usually hang out together."

The hope for the loyalists is that those who show up for the last game of this season will be there for the first of next. And that this is the beginning of a beautiful fanship.

It happened last year in Detroit, when the Shock won the championship. The team's numbers were way up this year.

"This is what it takes to get it started and build what is already in place," said Ackerman of the WNBA.

Storm assistant coach Jenny Boucek saw how easy it is for things to tip the other way when her Cleveland Rockers disbanded a year ago. So anybody who wants a seat at Key is OK by her.

"To me, the people who want to jump on the bandwagon: Come on! Get on!" Boucek said.

"I say if you can get them to a game, they'll want to come back," she said. "Unless their ego can't take it."

It was just four years ago when then-Coach Lin Dunn dribbled a basketball along downtown Seattle sidewalks, trying to drum up interest in the Storm. Now there's talk of a victory parade. Isn't life funny? Because if the Storm wins, folks will be lining those same sidewalks to cheer.

Check that — when the Storm wins.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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