1978-79 NBA Finals

Result

Games

Finals MVP

Dennis Johnson. Johnson was named Finals MVP for the champion SuperSonics, a season after struggling badly in the 1978 Finals loss to Washington.

Series context

The 1978-79 Finals was a rematch of the previous year's championship series, and this time Seattle, again led by coach Lenny Wilkens and the backcourt of Dennis Johnson and Gus Williams, turned the tables on Washington. The Bullets, still anchored by Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld, stole Game 1 in dramatic fashion, winning 99-97 after Larry Wright scored 26 points off the bench and drew a foul on Dennis Johnson while driving to the basket as time expired, sinking two free throws with one second left. Seattle responded by winning four straight games to close out the series. In Game 2, the SuperSonics' defense held Washington to a low second-half point total in a 92-82 win. Game 3 was a rout, 105-95, with Gus Williams scoring 31 points, Jack Sikma adding 21 points and 17 rebounds, and Dennis Johnson contributing across the board. Seattle survived a Bullets rally in Game 4, winning 114-112 in overtime as Williams scored 36 and Johnson added 32, with Johnson blocking a potential game-tying shot in the final seconds. Seattle then clinched the championship in Game 5, winning 97-93 despite a strong first half from Hayes, as Washington's shooting and depth faded down the stretch. Dennis Johnson's redemption arc was central to the storyline: he had struggled through the 1978 Finals, including an infamously poor shooting performance in the deciding Game 7 loss to Washington, but returned a year later to be named Finals MVP, validating Wilkens' faith in his young core. This championship remains Seattle's only NBA title as a franchise (the SuperSonics would relocate to Oklahoma City in 2008 and become the Thunder). The back-to-back Bullets-Sonics Finals meetings, split one apiece, stand as one of the notable rivalries of the late-1970s NBA, an era defined by physical, defense-oriented basketball in the years just before Magic Johnson and Larry Bird's arrival reshaped the league's style and popularity. Washington entered the Finals as the league's winningest team, having gone 54-28 to Seattle's 52-30, and both clubs earned first-round byes before Washington needed seven games to escape a surprisingly tough Atlanta Hawks team and then rallied from a 3-1 deficit to eliminate San Antonio, while Seattle beat the Lakers and then survived a seven-game series with Phoenix. Attendance for the series reflected Seattle's enthusiastic fan base: Game 3 in the Kingdome drew 35,928 fans, among the largest crowds in NBA history to that point, dwarfing the roughly 19,000 who attended games at Washington's Capital Centre. As in the previous two Finals, tape delay was part of the broadcast reality of the era; Game 2 aired outside the Seattle, Washington, and Portland markets on a delayed basis starting around 11:35 p.m. Eastern, part of a stretch of six Finals games CBS tape-delayed across the 1979 and 1980 postseasons. For Washington, the loss came a year after the franchise's only championship and left the Bullets without another Finals appearance for more than four decades, while Seattle's title remains the only championship in SuperSonics history, the franchise having relocated to Oklahoma City and become the Thunder in 2008.

Sources

• Wikipedia - 1979 NBA Finals
• Basketball-Reference - Finals MVP Award