Inaugural team feels pain of this year's Sonics

They were lovable losers to a city that knew nothing about professional basketball.

Expectations were low. Twenty wins? Maybe 25 or 30, if they were lucky.

But in those days, winning didn't matter nearly as much as the games themselves for the Seattle SuperSonics and their fans.

Using borrowed money, Sam Schulman and Eugene Klein paid a $1.75 million expansion fee for the NBA team in 1967.

"This is a highlight of my life," Schulman told reporters at a news conference at the Olympic Hotel. "I think Seattle deserves major-league sports."

There were no promises of a championship, although Schulman would deliver an NBA title 12 years later. Most everyone believed Seattle, which had a $250,000 budget for its 12-man roster and one-man coaching staff, would finish last among the league's 12 teams.

"I don't remember us ever talking about winning X amount of games, or getting down, or anything like that," said Bob Weiss, an original Sonics player who coached the team for 30 games in 2005 and is now a television basketball analyst. "If there was any competition, we wanted to be better than San Diego and finish with more wins than them."

The Sonics finished eight games better than the expansion San Diego Rockets, but their 23-59 record has stood for four decades as the worst in franchise history.

Not even the Bucky Buckwalter-coached team in 1972-73, Lenny Wilkens' final season as coach in 1984-85 nor Bob Hill's mismanaging last season matched the futility of the expansion team.

Nothing short of a miraculous turnaround by this season's team, featuring rookie star Kevin Durant and handful of capable veterans, will prevent the Sonics from losing more games than the 1967-68 team.

"It's completely different this season," Weiss said. "You've got a lot of veterans in the middle of their careers [who] have had playing time and had been productive. So now they go out there and lose this much, it can really become a downer. When you have an expansion team, you've got guys that were not in the top of the rotation.

"You may get guys that were in the seventh or eighth spot and they put him up for expansion, but everybody we got [in the expansion draft for the 1967-68 team], with the exception of Tom Meschery, is either trying to make the league or trying to get more minutes. So everybody that's on an expansion team is thrilled to death to be there. They're excited about being able to play and get minutes and trying to develop their skills, so the losing doesn't get to you nearly as much as it does as a veteran team that brings on a couple of young guys."

At this point 40 years ago, the original Sonics had an 11-32 record. This season's team is 9-34 and on pace to finish 17-65.

"I'm not popping any champagne or anything like that," said Henry Akin, a reserve on the '67-68 team who lives in Lake Forest Park. "I never thought that I played on the team that had the worst record. I thought, 'I played on the first Sonics team.' We were an expansion team. How many expansion teams have winning records?

"We didn't go into training camp saying we were going to win 40 games. It was a unique situation. We had the perfect coach in Al Bianchi. He'd been in the league a long time. He understood the league. Our main goal was to try to put something together that would be representative of the city."

Looking back, the expansion team wasn't as bad as its record suggests. Schulman, Bianchi and general manager Don Richman built a respectable squad in the expansion and college drafts with castoffs and projects.

The Sonics took Meschery from the San Francisco Warriors with their first expansion pick before plucking Walt Hazzard away from the Los Angeles Lakers and Rod Thorn from the St. Louis Hawks. In the college draft, Seattle chose Al Tucker with its top pick and Bob Rule in the second round.

"Those five were the nucleus of the team," said Bud Olsen, a reserve who played in 73 games. "No one likes to lose, and we lost a lot of games, but a lot of guys played their best basketball that year. I was looking to get my career going, but I caught mononucleosis and never told anybody."

Hazzard averaged a career-best 24 points, which was 15 points higher than his previous season in Los Angeles. Thorn also had a career-best scoring average of 15.2 with the Sonics, while Meschery revitalized a career that had been declining.

Rule averaged 18.1 points, and Tucker 13.1.

The losses came in bunches. The Sonics suffered an eight-game losing streak and twice lost six in a row.

They also managed a three-game winning streak and stunning upsets, including a 133-106 blowout of eventual champion Boston. Seattle took five games from San Diego and five more from Chicago, but failed to beat defending champion Philadelphia and St. Louis.

"The main person that would get frustrated with it was Tom Meschery because he was the ultimate pro," Akin said. "He didn't like to lose. When you would go out there to Philadelphia or Boston, you knew that if you didn't have your night, it could be a 30-point loss. It was tough to get a win.

"Tom would tell you when he was upset. He was one of these guys that he talked on the floor. If you weren't giving an effort, he would let you know it."

The Sonics played their best at home, where they averaged 6,186 fans at the Seattle Center Coliseum and posted a 9-19 record.

The Sonics played 12 of their home games away from the Coliseum — four in Portland (1-3), three in Tacoma (1-2), two at Edmundson Pavilion (0-2) and one each in Vancouver, Olympia and Spokane (all losses).

Only seven of the 12 players returned the following season. Hazzard was traded to Atlanta. Weiss and Olsen were selected by Milwaukee and George Wilson by Phoenix in the 1968 expansion draft. Akin signed with the Kentucky Colonels of the ABA.

Tucker was traded during the 1968-69 season.

"I still feel a strong connection to the city even though I haven't been back there since 1968," Olsen said. "When I think about that team, I don't think about the games we lost. I think about the games we won. That we were the first NBA team in that city.

"Even when we lost, the fans cheered for us. I think they were just happy to have pro basketball there. Things are different today, I'm sure."

These days the cheers are drowned out by the groans of discontent after each defeat.

Percy Allen: 206-464-2278 or pallen@seattletimes.com