Sikma battled the strong front line of the Washington Bullets during the 1978 and 1979 NBA Finals. Walter Iooss Jr./NBAE/Getty

What are your memories of Gus Williams?
Sikma: Oh, Gus, there's a lot of laughter around Gus. He was always the guy on the bus that kept everybody going, giving everybody a hard time. He brought a lot of energy to our team, both on the court and off. I played with Gus for six or seven years, and when he was gone, I missed him, because we did a lot of things together such as getting the ball off the boards and throwing the long outlet.

Gus always stretched the court, sorta like the Oakland Raiders' wide receivers stretching the field. He was great at cutting to the basket, back-door stuff, so I just read him on all that kind of thing. Probably, I think, the most significant thing is that if you poll the guys tomorrow on who they enjoyed as a teammate the most, the majority of people would say Gus Williams. He was just a blast. Again, that's him as a person. On the court, he made us go. He was our engine, our catalyst.

Was he the fastest player you've ever seen?
Sikma: Fastest player - with the ball. He'd be low to the ground, you're talking about, if you watch films of him, when he's scooting, he's low to the ground, the ball's out in front. If he got his head by you, you had no chance. Like I said, Lenny (Wilkens) gave him the green light and said, 'Your responsibility is to get us in the transition game.' That's where we were at our best.

How do you think that team would do in today's NBA?
Sikma: We would resemble a Sacramento, with their halfcourt offense, backdoor cuts, interchangeable parts, a lot of flexibility in what the team could do, depth. I would think that is a good comparison. We won because defensively, we closed down the paint and controlled the boards. We had some stoppers, DJ (Dennis Johnson) and JJ (John Johnson) were stoppers. They could play those twos and threes straight up and stop penetration, so teams had to beat us over the top.

Offensively, we could execute in the halfcourt. We wanted transition, but with low-post scoring from Lonnie (Shelton) and I, or sticking DJ down in the post, to stretching the defense with Fred Brown and that type of thing. We were a good playoff basketball team, because we were a good halfcourt executing team.

Are you happy to see Gus back around the Sonics?
Sikma: Yeah. It's good for the team, it's great for the community. We're talking about a generational deal now. The young Sonics fans in my time are now the parents of the young Sonics fans now, it's 25 years. Many times, I've been introduced to a young fan and the description was, 'Jack played when I was your age.' That's a common theme that you get nowadays.

There was also some bitterness about how Gus left the franchise, right?
Sikma: I don't know how much bitterness there was. Gus is not a bitter guy. Gus liked Seattle and I'm sure he wishes that it didn't happen, but Gus has been back on a consistent basis and he's just really a pleasant, happy person, has always been that way. If he was frustrated, he would get a little quiet, but that was very rarely seen.

Sikma and Gus Williams, together again to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the championship. Sonics Photos

Do you think this was a Nate McMillan-style team?
Sikma: Yeah, it was a good way to play basketball. The '96 team that went to the Finals for the Sonics, they were a defensive team, they could stop people. They felt they could take anybody that they played out of what they wanted to do, make them go to Plan B. That turns into wins, that turns into fun, that turns into success. It's a common element. Look who wins it nowadays. Can they shut down other people?

Both teams also had a good handful of players who could score, right?
Sikma: You've got to have some people there, yeah, some depth. You've got to go eight, nine, ten deep that they know their role, and they can make a good decision, and they can play.

You were pretty young during the championship run. Do you have a sense now, in hindsight, how extraordinary it was - the crowds, the support, the parade? Do you have a sense of how extraordinary that relationship with the community was?
Sikma: Before I got here, Seattle had made the playoffs a few times under Bill Russell, and actually there was a lot of support for the Sonics. You think about it, they'd been around 10, 12 years, the Seahawks were new, the Mariners were new. They had a solid base of support. There was a real connection between the players and the fans. I knew most of the people in the front row, we were a smaller town, the media exposure in the NBA was different. We've talked about it a couple of times over the last few days, there just seemed to me to be a real connection between the team and the fans.

You add in to that how fast it happened. It was like a whirlwind. (In 1977-78), we're 5-17, before the season's out we're playing the seventh game for the championship, the next year we come back and get it. That's a relatively short span of time for a team that people were saying, 'Oh, they're retooling. It's going to be a while before they make the playoffs', and we get to that point. Momentum built, it built fast. I remember the Coliseum just being a madhouse. We were young, we played with a lot of emotion, we just got carried away.

In the run from the first year to the playoffs, after Lenny took over, we played great, we really did. We were beating teams by 20, the place was still going nuts. The next year, after we had tasted some success, was really a different type of challenge. It was keeping your focus, not worrying about the little stuff, try to find a way to maintain and stay at that high level. But the first year … we caught a wave, and it was a big one.