After resurrecting the moribund Sonics and taking them to the NBA Finals in 1978, Lenny Wilkens was named the News Tribune's male sports figure of the year. Better things yet were ahead in 1979.

They never got a victory for Christmas.

When it came time to tip off on Dec. 25, the Seattle SuperSonics seemed to play under the curse of Ebenezeer Scrooge.

In their 41 seasons, the Sonics played 11 times on Christmas Day. They lost every time.

That blue trend held even during the most glorious season in franchise history, as the San Diego Clippers dropped the Sonics to 0-7 on Christmas games with a 123-118 victory at the Kingdome on Dec. 25, 1978.

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Despite the Christmas defeat to the Clippers, who just had relocated to San Diego after eight seasons as the Buffalo Braves, the SuperSonics were a team on the rise.

Gracing the cover of the News Tribune's Christmas sports section was Lenny Wilkens, who had guided the Sonics to the NBA Finals the previous spring. Wilkens and figure skater Jill Sawyer were selected as the "dominant figures in The News Tribune's 1978 sports coverage areas."

The top news story on the front page concerned Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, who was falling faster than the Sonics were rising. After 37 years of dictatorial rule, the Shah was teetering on his throne and would flee the country amid Islamic revolution less than a month later.

Elsewhere, a story noted that Tacoma was out of step in its refusal to latch onto the disco movement. On the editorial page, a Christmas essay by syndicated Chicago columnist Sydney J. Harris speculated on the fate of Christ should he return to challenge a greed-driven, militaristic world with his "strange and frightening and 'impractical' doctrines of human behavior and social relationships."

There were no such worldly concerns bogging down the sports section. In addition to Wilkens easily outdistancing Earl Anthony to claim man of the year honors, the Sonics' run to the finals was voted the year's top story.

Other top stories of the sports year included the Washington Huskies' upset of Michigan in the Rose Bowl, Sawyer's victories in the U.S. junior nationals and the worlds, and Peninsula High's Class AA state football championship, which the Seahawks claimed with a 35-34 win over Pullman in Kingbowl II.

Also noted was "the continuing tragi-comedy of the Seattle Mariners," who lost 102 games in 1978, one more than they would lose 30 years later.

As for Wilkens, he was sitting on top of the Puget Sound sports world after replacing Bob Hopkins 22 games into the 1977-78 season with the Sonics staggering under the weight of a 5-17 start.

"It was into the valley of the shadow of death that Lenny Wilkens walked, and what he did to transform the Sonics into an NBA power was nothing short of righteous," wrote John Lawrence in his man-of-the-year piece.

All the 40-year-old Wilkens did was guide Seattle to a 42-18 record the rest of the way and an appearance in the finals, where they fell to the Washington Bullets in seven games.

The following Christmas, the Sonics lost their sixth consecutive game before 11,910 at the Kingdome against Randy Smith (29 points), Lloyd Free (23) and the Clippers.

The Sonics' stumbled out of the gate and fell behind by 20 points early, prompting News Tribune writer Bill Schey to observe that they "played the first half as though THEY were the Christmas turkeys."

They eventually made a game of it behind Dennis Johnson, who scored 18 of his 28 points after halftime, and Jack Sikma, who scored 11 of his 23 in the fourth quarter.

The Sonics, at 20-12, had hit their low-water mark of the season. They would snap their six-game skid two days later against Spencer Haywood, Pete Maravich and the New Orleans Jazz and be on their way to perhaps the most memorable spring in Seattle sports history.