I found this fun, reminded me of watching tape delayed NBA Finals games and so much more - - from Mark Stein's NYT newsletter: Q: Remind me why the Sonics hosted Games 1, 4, 5 and 7 in the 1978 N.B.A. finals? (Gotta love the 1970s N.B.A.) — Tim Cowlishaw (Dallas) STEIN: This is the second time in Corner Three history that my old Dallas Morning News colleague Tim Cowlishaw posed a question so good that I felt it had to be addressed here. I don't plan to make a habit of fielding inquiries from fellow journalists in this space, but I was as curious about what happened 40 years ago as Tim once he pointed out the bizarre scheduling. I was 9 years old and just a few years into my growing N.B.A. fandom in 1978, but I certainly didn't remember any of the details. We only got on the subject thanks to the Seattle/Washington showdown in this season's W.N.B.A. finals, since it's a rematch (at least city-wise) of the back-to-back Seattle/Washington N.B.A. finals duels in 1978 and 1979. Struggling to comprehend what could have possibly enabled the then-Bullets to host Games 2 and 3 of the championship series when Seattle boasted the better regular-season record, I turned to one of my trusty Twitter pals — @ProHoopsHistory — to help me with some research. He recovered a handy Washington Post article, co-bylined by the Cal State Fullerton legend Paul Attner and Mark Asher (who I would later work with as a Post intern), which explained that the Sonics and Bullets essentially had to negotiate the scheduling between the clubs because of a mobile home show that had been booked for the Seattle Coliseum months earlier. The Sonics were still forced to play Game 4 of that series at the Kingdome, which led to a league record playoff crowd of 39,457. But even the Seattle Mariners' baseball home was unavailable at the start of the series, preventing the Sonics from staging both Game 1 and 2 in their home city. Four decades later, of course, it's difficult to imagine any sort of arena conflict getting in the way of one second of the N.B.A. finals. But the league's pull then obviously wasn't close to what it is now. Enclosed, for your further edification, is a link to Leonard Koppett's series previewwhich appeared in The Times on May 21, 1978.
