Mariners salute 1979 NBA champion Seattle Supersonics

On June 1, 2019, 40-years to the day when the Seattle SuperSonics won the NBA Championship, the Seattle Mariners will pay tribute to the team during a pregame ceremony.

Game time on Saturday, when the Mariners meet the Los Angeles Angels, is 4:15 p.m. The pregame ceremony will start at approximately 3:50 p.m.

Scheduled to participate in the pregame ceremony are Dennis Awtrey, Fred Brown, Tom LaGarde, Jack Sikma, Wally Walker, Gus Williams and coach Lenny Wilkens.

The ceremony will include interviews with the players, ceremonial first pitches by all seven Sonics and video highlights from the Sonics 52-30 regular season as well as the march to the Finals and a rematch with the Washington Bullets, who had defeated the Sonics in seven games in the 1978 NBA Finals.

At the beginning of the 1978-1979 season, the Sonics picked up where they left off the previous season, opening with a 7-0 streak. By the halfway point, the Sonics were 26-15, and finished the season 22 games over .500.

In the playoffs, the Sonics easily defeated the Los Angeles Lakers four-games-to-one in the Conference Semi-Finals, and defeated the Phoenix Suns in seven games in the Conference Finals, setting up a rematch with the Bullets. The Sonics defeated the Bullets in five games to win Seattle's first professional sports championship since the Metropolitans won hockey’s Stanley Cup in 1917.

Saturday is also Fight Hunger Day. In conjunction with 97.3 KIRO FM, the Mariners encourage fans to bring nonperishable food items to be collected at the gates of T-Mobile Park for donation to Northwest Harvest, the largest independent hunger relief agency in the state of Washington.

Tickets for Saturday’s game are available at Mariners.com/Tickets, at Mariners Team Stores, the T-Mobile Park ticket office and by phone at 1-888-SEA-HITS.