SuperSonics fans feel no allegiance to the Thunder in these NBA Finals. Go Pacers, the scornful say

SEATTLE (AP) — It’s logical to think someone like Danny Ball is a fair representation of Seattle these days.

Ball, a hoops fan who runs an Instagram account called “Iconic Sonics,” is pulling for the Indiana Pacers over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals.

There are no deep ties between Seattle and Indianapolis. The Seahawks play the Colts this December, so the cities will be foes that weekend. Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever probably won’t be warmly welcomed when they visit the Emerald City later this month to play the Seattle Storm.

But right now, Seattle may as well be an Indy suburb.

Seattle fans lost their NBA franchise, the SuperSonics, in 2008 when it was stolen from them and rebranded in Oklahoma City.

For the scornful, that means one thing: Go Pacers.

“I’d love to see the Pacers pull it off in six games,” Ball said.

The NBA Finals begin Thursday night. For some in Seattle, it’ll be a heaping helping of fresh salt on the wounds that opened when the Sonics were taken away. And people like Ball, who was born in Seattle and heard stories of Sonics legends Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton from his father, aren’t exactly rooting for Oklahoma City right now.

The Thunder are heavy favorites to beat the Pacers. Should they pull it off, the Thunder would claim their first NBA title in Oklahoma City, but technically their second as a franchise after Seattle won the title in 1979.

It’s no secret the city wants the league to come back. Expansion is on the NBA’s to-do list, and it’s likely that talks — the first of many, many steps in this process — could start in earnest with interested cities in the next few months. Commissioner Adam Silver, however, hasn’t fully committed to adding new teams.

“The issue I would not have anticipated at the time I sort of began talking about the timeline is how much unknown there is about local media right now,” Silver said earlier this year. “Having said that, though, I would just say again to our many fans in Seattle, and I hear from them often, and the legacy of the Sonics is still very strong and it’s a fantastic basketball market, is that we are very focused on it. … We don’t take those fans for granted. We’re thankful that the interest has remained over all these years.”

Any mention of expansion sends fans into a tizzy. Steve Ballmer, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, spoke to the crowd before a preseason game in Seattle — his hometown — in 2023, and made a thinly veiled reference to how fans need to remind the league’s New York office how much the city loves the game.

“All night long, it better be loud enough in this building to hear us all the way back in New York, if you get me,” Ballmer told the crowd. “Let’s make sure we’re loud tonight.”

And then came the Ballmer bellow: “Go Seattle,” he screamed.

It’s something Seattle takes seriously, as Mayor Bruce Harrell learned earlier this year in his address to the city.

“Right now, at this moment, I have an announcement to make,” Harrell said, reaching into the lectern where he was standing and pulling out a basketball, spinning it in his hands as he displayed it to the crowd — which began roaring. “Ah, I’m just kidding.”

The crowd wasn’t amused. Harrell later was interviewed by Seattle’s KOMO News and apologized for the attempt at humor, getting reminded that residents of the city aren’t happy that the NBA hasn’t returned yet.

“Count me among them,” Harrell said.

A very real void has been left in the SuperSonics’ absence. The NHL’s Seattle Kraken entering the fold has helped, as has the success of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, both of whom play at Climate Pledge Arena, which sits on the site of the SuperSonics’ former home.

That same arena received a significant remodel ahead of the Kraken arriving, which could make it suitable for NBA games. That would ultimately be up to the association to decide one day, but Ball hopes it would be the Sonics’ former home in the Queen Anne neighborhood they get to triumphantly return to one day.

“A lot of Sonics fans that I know I’m sure never got over the wounds of what happened here 17 years ago with them leaving (for) Oklahoma City,” SuperSonics fan Eric Phan said. “All of the Sonics fanbase (is) rooting for the Indiana Pacers.”

Seattle seemed to have a chance at getting a team back in 2013 when the Maloof family put the Sacramento Kings up for sale. But investor Chris Hansen’s bid to relocate the team to Seattle was rejected by the NBA’s Board of Governors.

For fans like Ball and Phan, hope lives on. Ball recognizes that’s partially because he is an inherently positive person, and he’s hoping for a Hollywood ending.

“It would be poetic if the year that OKC wins the finals — if that occurs — is in the same summer that the league comes out and says, ‘Hey, we’re forming an expansion committee to start really exploring this process,’” Ball said. “I think that would help damper or therapize the feelings and emotions that would come along with seeing the Thunder hoist the Larry O’Brien.”

Phan pointed out that just because the Sonics don’t play in Seattle, it doesn’t mean the team is truly gone.

“You can see people walking the sidewalks and streets of Seattle, and even the suburbs,” Phan said. “People are wearing Sonics gear like they never really left.”

AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds in Oklahoma City contributed.

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/nba

Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton celebrates after a teammate made a 3-pointer during the second half of Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals of the NBA basketball playoffs against the New York Knicks in Indianapolis, Saturday, May 31, 2025. (AP Photo/AJ Mast)

Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jalen Williams (8) reacts during the second half of Game 5 of the Western Conference finals of the NBA basketball playoffs against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Wednesday, May 28, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Kyle Phillips)

FILE - A skateboarder leaps onto a platform in front of KeyArena, a sports and entertainment venue and former home of the Seattle SuperSonics NBA basketball tean, Dec. 4, 2017, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

FILE - Stacks of Seattle SuperSonics caps are displayed in a shop, Wednesday, May 15, 2013 in Seattle, near where a proposed basketball arena is to be built. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Over two dozen families from one of the few remaining Palestinian Bedouin villages in the central West Bank have packed up and fled their homes in recent days, saying harassment by Jewish settlers living in unauthorized outposts nearby has grown unbearable.

The village, Ras Ein el-Auja, was originally home to some 700 people from more than 100 families that have lived there for decades.

Twenty-six families already left on Thursday, scattering across the territory in search of safer ground, say rights groups. Several other families were packing up and leaving on Sunday.

“We have been suffering greatly from the settlers. Every day, they come on foot, or on tractors, or on horseback with their sheep into our homes. They enter people’s homes daily,” said Nayef Zayed, a resident, as neighbors took down sheep pens and tin structures.

Israel's military and the local settler governing body in the area did not respond to requests for comment.

Other residents pledged to stay put for the time being. That makes them some of the last Palestinians left in the area, said Sarit Michaeli, international director at B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group helping the residents.

She said that mounting settler violence has already emptied neighboring Palestinian hamlets in the dusty corridor of land stretching from Ramallah in the West to Jericho, along the Jordanian border, in the east.

The area is part of the 60% of the West Bank that has remained under full Israeli control under interim peace accords signed in the 1990s. Since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted in October 2023, over 2,000 Palestinians — at least 44 entire communities — have been expelled by settler violence in the area, B'Tselem says.

The turning point for the village came in December, when settlers put up an outpost about 50 meters (yards) from Palestinian homes on the northwestern flank of the village, said Michaeli and Sam Stein, an activist who has been living in the village for a month.

Settlers strolled easily through the village at night. Sheep and laundry went missing. International activists had to begin escorting children to school to keep them safe.

“The settlers attack us day and night, they have displaced us, they harass us in every way” said Eyad Isaac, another resident. “They intimidate the children and women.”

Michaeli said she’s witnessed settlers walk around the village at night, going into homes to film women and children and tampering with the village’s electricity.

The residents said they call the police frequently to ask for help — but it seldom arrives. Settlement expansion has been promoted by successive Israeli governments over nearly six decades. But Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, which has placed settler leaders in senior positions, has made it a top priority.

That growth has been accompanied by a spike in settler violence, much of it carried out by residents of unauthorized outposts. These outposts often begin with small farms or shepherding that are used to seize land, say Palestinians and anti-settlement activists. United Nations officials warn the trend is changing the map of the West Bank, entrenching Israeli presence in the area.

Some 500,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank since Israel captured the territory, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. Their presence is viewed by most of the international community as illegal and a major obstacle to peace. The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future state.

For now, displaced families of the village have dispersed between other villages near the city of Jericho and near Hebron further south, said residents. Some sold their sheep and are trying to move into the cities.

Others are just dismantling their structures without knowing where to go.

"Where will we go? There’s nowhere. We’re scattered,” said Zayed, the resident, “People’s situation is bad. Very bad.”

An Israeli settler herds his flock near his outpost beside the Palestinian village of Ras Ein al-Auja in the West Bank, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

A Palestinian resident of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank burns trash, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinian children play in the West Bank village of Ras Ein al-Auja, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinian residents of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank pack up their belongings and prepare to leave their homes after deciding to flee mounting settler violence, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinian residents of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank pack up their belongings and prepare to leave their homes after deciding to flee mounting settler violence, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)