Final Four Fact February: The Last Dance In Seattle

The Final Four returns to Arizona for the second time to conclude the 2023-24 season. When the culmination of the college basketball season last emanated from the Grand Canyon State in 2017, it was the first Final Four played West of the Alamo in 22 years.

Final Fours from 1949 through 1995 were consistently staged out West, including five in Seattle — three of which were in the Kingdome over an 11-year span from 1984 to 1995.

Of significance about that stretch from 1984 to 1995 is that seven Final Fours were played in domes. Domes staged just two Final Fours prior to 1984, and did so 11 years part.

The transition to the national semifinals and Championship Game being played in football stadiums was well underway, with just one more Final Four held in a traditional basketball arena in the nearly 30 years since.

The Kingdome’s death was also well underway by 1995. The stadium opened only 19 years before the 1995 Final Four, but both the Seattle Mariners and Seattle Seahawks were fed up with the venue.

Few things in modern-day sports bother me more than when ownership groups demand publicly funded stadiums, particularly franchises trying to move from still relatively new and still nice venues.

This year’s Final Four host metropolitan area is a prime example, with disgraced Phoenix Suns ex-owner Robert Sarver having in 2018 reportedly threatened a move to Seattle (coincidentally) or the Island of Misfit Franchises, Las Vegas.

More recently — as recently as a day before publish of this newsletter entry — Arizona Diamondbacks ownership has bellyached about wanting a new stadium. Chase Field turns 26 this year, two years older than the Kingdome when it was leveled, but the Dbacks home looks and feels much newer.

Look, I don’t mean to hijack my own newsletter with a diatribe on a beaten-to-death subject. Lamenting corporate welfare for franchise owners is so trite, Bill Simmons’ original promo for the ill-fated HBO vehicle¹ “Any Given Wednesday” ending with the erstwhile Sports Guy smugly declaring into the camera that “billionaires should pay for their own fuckin’ stadiums” is the lone enduring memory of the series just for how obvious and corny it was.

This preamble on stadium extortion is necessary to explain the situation with Seattle and the Kingdome was more complex. The Kingdome was a disaster.

When Safeco Field opened in 1999, former Mariner Alvin Davis told the Associated Press of playing in the Kingdome, “you start dealing with chronic tendinitis…injuries that players [who] don’t play on AstroTurf don’t suffer from.”

Then-Mariner third baseman Russ Davis said in the same article the dome’s turf sent ground balls “by you in a heartbeat.”

What’s more, when the stadium was imploded in March 2000, the national wire reports describing its demolition called the Kingdome “an eyesore” that became a boondoggle for the Emerald City almost from Day 1.

But with the demise of the Kingdome came the end of Western Final Fours for a generation. Fittingly, the 1995 Final Four also marked the Last Dance for basketball’s greatest dynasty.

UCLA claimed the last of 11 national championships in 1995 with a team that ranks among the very best in the pantheon of Bruins basketball.

Yes, other UCLA teams were more dominant — the 1995 Bruins came 4.8 seconds from a Round of 32 exit, warded off only by Tyus Edney delivering one of the most memorable finishes of the last 30 years.

However, UCLA closed a 31-2 season on a 19-game winning streak and claimed the program’s sole national championship of modern March Madness. This is the Bruins’ lone title won in a postseason with:

• a 64-team bracket

• the 3-point line

• shot clocks

Beginning with the 2nd Round buzzer-beating win over Missouri, each of the last five opponents UCLA faced were ranked in the last AP Poll released before the Tournament. Not only was this the toughest road to the title in any of UCLA’s championship journeys, the Bruins faced one of the most difficult roads of any title-winner ever.

Further, the 1994-95 Bruins built around an all-time program record approaching the significance of legends like Kareem and Walton.