Donald “Slick” Watts, Unheralded, undersized, irregular points guard, who changed his obstacles to spring bridges, approached the fans of Seattle Supersonics long around the existence of the team and helped to devise a headband as a signature of basketball fashion, died. He was 73 years old.
His son Donald announced death on social media on Saturday in a statement that did not provide further details. In 2021, Watts had a main stroke and spent recent years dealing with lung sarcoidosis, an inflammatory condition.
Watts played for supersonics for only four and a half season, in 1973-78. Although the team helped lead to the first Play -off berth, it was not in 1979 for the first and only team victory.
Yet fans and classmates held him in a unique way.
In 2012, decade after retirement – and four years after the team moved and became Oklahoma City Thunder – Seattle Rap’s duo called Blue Scholars song o Sonice. James Donaldson, Sonics Center at the age of 80, said Seattle Times after Watts’ death: “He embodied Seattle Supersonics.”
This reputation came from a combination of twitching and generosity.
Watts’s basketball origin was modest. He was an impressive college shooter, average 22.8 points per game and shot 49 percent of the field. However, he was only 6-Naha-1 and played at Xavier University of Louisiana, a little-known historically black Catholic University in New Orleans (not Xavier University of Cincinnati). In 1973 he was undefined.
That could be the end of his basketball career, except that Watts’s college coach, Bob Hopkins, was cousin Bill Russell, Celtics great and trained Sonics. He provided Watts a professional exam. The team was already charged with a shooting talent, so Watts devoted himself to passing. Russell offered him a contract for $ 19,000 a year, poor according to NBA standards.
Watts ended the team leadership in its first season with 5.7 assists to play, although on average there were only 22.9 minutes of the competition.
Next year, the eighth season of franchise, helped lead the team to the first appearance of play -off. He was rewarded with a three -year contract by more than $ 100,000 a year. In the 1975-76 season, on 8.1 assists and 3.2 steals on the game and became the first player to lead the league in both categories. He was also appointed to the NBA All-Defensive First Team.
He physically embodied his moxia as he stylized his head.
Childhood injuries only had hair growth in patch. He shaved his head and gave her a bright baby oil. Now many black players accept baldness; At that time, it was enough for Watts to ubiquity known as Slick.
“In this day of long hair, Watts is a very unusual man,” The News Tribune of Tacoma, Wash., commented in 1974.
And he went on and wore a band around his head stretched to the side at an angle. Watts experimented in high school with the use of tape; In the end, he found a head of a head of a head of a head of head in a female part of a shop with a sports goods.
“Most basketball players wear sweat belts on their wrists – they wear one on their heads,” wrote the news tribune in surprise. New York Times reporter George vecsey said The combination of bald pate and headband caused Watts to look like “planet Saturn in sneakers”.
He inspired his fans’ affection from fans. Watts showed an insatiable appetite to sign autographs and in 1976 said the Republic of Arizona: “No paper scrap is not too small for autograph because there is a human being at the other end.”
Then the honeymoon ended. Watts requested more money in his contract and a clause of any business. The dispute spilled into the media and damaged its image. After Seattle lost the beginning of the 1977-78 season, the new coach Lenny Wilkens took over and found success to give the other guards more time of playing time. Watts was transpired from his reduced role.
“I put too much of myself in the city to sit on the bench,” said Associated Press in 1979.
In January 1978, Watts was traded to New Orleans Jazz for a selection of the first round of 1981. Later he compared a divorce shop or a family member’s death.
“Thanks for the good times, thanks for the sweat, thanks for optimism,” wrote after the shop Bill Schey, sports journalist for the news tribune.
Watts did not find a consistent role with jazz or later with Houston missiles. He still waited for him to be called for another team at the age of 20. No calls came.
Sonics unexpectedly reached the finals in 1978. They were lost on Washington bullets, but the next season, in the championship match, won Sonics.
Watts said he didn’t look these games. At the age of 80, he took a job to work $ 16,000 a year as a physical education teacher at Seattle elementary school. He stayed almost 20 years old.
He often spoke of his mistrust that his career hadn’t last longer, but never doubted seattle seating.
“They can replace me, but they can’t get me to move,” said The Bellingham Herald, State Paper in Washington in 1975.
Donald Earl Watts was born on July 22, 1951 in Rolling Fork, Miss. His father was a mechanic and his mother was a teacher. In his neighborhood there was only one television, and his oldest basketball training was shot by shooting Spitballs in the trash.
His sons, Donald and Tony were successful university basketball players. The grandson of Isaiah Watts and the granddaughter of Jadyn Watts are currently playing in Washington College Basketball. Complete information about the survivors was not immediately available.
In 2007 The New York Times he asked Watts, what he thought about how common it happened to players to wear headbands for style.
“Don’t make a statement,” advised, “unless you bring your game.”
