I have always subscribed to this theory about sports fandom: If you have a favorite athlete or team when you are around 9 or 10 years old, they’re probably with you for the long run.
Sure, teams will rise and fall, and new rookies will emerge every year — but your sports idols in third or fourth grade likely will still be your sports idols when you reach your 30s and 40s.
When I was 9, the Seattle SuperSonics won their first NBA championship. We thought it was the first of many, but the impending arrival of Magic Johnson to the rival Lakers in the NBA Draft a month later would make those dreams vanish quickly.
Still, for anyone in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1970s, the 1978-79 Sonics will always be a beloved group that is under-appreciated by a league that believes its modern history began when Magic and Larry Bird entered the league in the 1980s.
Those Sonics stood alone as Seattle's only pro sports champion for the next quarter-century.
Most of us can still recall the names in the Sonics’ starting lineup — in fact, we don’t even need full names: Gus, DJ, JJ, Lonnie and Jack, with Downtown coming off the bench.
For me and most of my friends, Gus Williams was our guy on a team of our guys.
A slick, speedy point guard from USC, Gus turned around the Sonics when he was traded to Seattle from the Warriors in 1977. Seattle reached the NBA Finals in both of his first two seasons in the Northwest and nearly won back-to-back championships, except for a painful loss at home to the Washington Bullets in Game 7 of the 1978 Finals.
Gus wasn’t just the leading scorer on the ’79 team, he was one of the coolest guys in the league. With the shoelaces to his white Nike high tops tied in the back and wearing the No. 1 jersey, Gus was a greyhound who seemed to always be off to the races on the fast break.
He would come up with a steal at the right time or be the guy who hit the key jumper to help the Sonics pull out wins in the clutch.
Of course, it was Gus, who ended up with the ball in the waning moments of Game 5 of the '79 Finals and flung it toward the ceiling as the clock expired, sealing Seattle's title-clinching victory and setting off the celebration in the PNW.
Gus Williams died Wednesday at age 71, and it’s still difficult for me to process that my first favorite athlete is gone. Known for his speed and athleticism, Gus was robbed of many of those physical gifts by a stroke five years ago.
He is the fourth member of the Sonics’ starting five to leave us, with Hall of Fame center Jack Sikma, 69, being the lone surviving starter.
They say it’s a bad idea to meet your heroes in real life, but I met Gus Williams once and found him to be the same cool, easy-going personality off the court that he was on it for 11 NBA seasons, including six in Seattle.
It was at an autograph signing at Mill Creek Sports in suburban Seattle in July 2016. I still recall being a bit nervous to meet the point guard I tried (and brutally failed) to emulate as a kid.
I stood in a line that wrapped around the building, balancing a game-used Williams jersey that I stalked on eBay for years with the classic Gus-DJ Nike poster and an authentic basketball.
Gus hailed from upstate New York and didn’t do a ton of events back in Seattle, so I was fully stocked with memorabilia that I had held for years to be autographed.
I had Gus personalize the poster with an inscription and couldn’t care less if that hurts its resale value because I never plan to sell it.
He added the inscription “The Wizard” to the jersey, elongating the “z” for a little extra flair in the signature.
When I walk into my TV room and see that jersey, or walk down the hallway past the poster, it takes me back to being 9 years old and believing my team was going to reach the NBA Finals every year (again, damn that Magic Johnson).
That’s the connection of being a collector.
When I was growing up, my family couldn’t afford to attend many Sonics fans and buying memorabilia for the team was a real long shot (even in the days before the 3-pointer).
As I grew into an adult, like many collectors, I’ve tried to buy items that connect me to my childhood heroes. My eBay history is filled with “Gus Williams Sonics” and “1979 Sonics” to this day, and a new item seems to arrive in my mailbox on a monthly basis.
Those collectibles can’t bring back the Wizard, but they can bring me back to 1979 and how it felt to dream the dreams of a 9-year-old.
Kevin Jackson is the Chief Content Officer for cllct.