I remember June 1996 like it was yesterday.

I take that back. I remember most of it like it was yesterday. I’ll admit there are some foggy moments during the early summer 12 years ago.

For me, the month of June 1996 was all about the Seattle Supersonics and nobody, including Clay Bennett, can take those, along with many other of my Sonic memories, away.

Two weeks ago, Bennett, the owner of the former Seattle franchise, agreed to pay the city of Seattle $45 million in exchange for letting the Sonics move to Oklahoma City this year as part of last-minute settlement. Bennett may have to pay an additional $30 million in five years if the city is unable to secure another NBA team.

The deal means the end of the Sonics’ 41-year stay in Seattle, starting as the city’s first professional sports team. The Sonics were the oldest and most decorated franchise in the Pacific Northwest and now they are playing out of Oklahoma.

That sucks.

But Bennett and all his oil baron buddies, who bought the team with no intentions of keeping it in Seattle, won’t be able to load up my memories of the Sonics, especially the 1996 edition of the team.

My recollections of guys like The Glove, The Reign Man, Big Smooth, Det, Hersey Hawkins, Nate McMillan, Vincent Askew, Frank Brickowski, Steve Scheffler and George Karl are still alive and well inside my head.

Those guys occupy a special time in my life.

Me and all my high school buddies had all just graduated from various colleges during the Sonics’ run in ‘96. Some of us had just acquired our first “real” jobs, while others still hadn’t matriculated into the rat race that adults call a “career.”

None of us were married yet and none of us had any kids. Two things that seriously cut into our fun time.

My buddy Dave and his older brother, JW, were living in a double-wide, mobile home in between Auburn and Lake Tapps. The out-in-the-sticks location was perfect for a group of a dozen or so 22 year olds with basically no responsibilities besides showing up to work Monday through Friday, pooling enough money together to get an ample supply of beer and watching the Seattle SuperSonics’ run to the NBA championship series.

It was a great summer, to say the least.

Things didn’t end well for the Sonics. They lost to the 72-win, Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls in six games in the NBA Championship Series. But that really didn’t matter. It was the ride to the title series that made the summer so special, especially the 1996 Western Conference Finals against the Utah Jazz.

The seven-game series was classic. I remember Seattle fans counting to 10 every time Utah’s Karl Malone stepped to the free throw line. I remember hating John Stockton at the time, despite graduating from Gonzaga University. I remember being in awe every time Shawn Kemp would dunk on The Mailman.

But there was one night during the Jazz series that stands out from the rest. Now, 12 years later, that night is just known as the “Cup of Tuff Love” incident.

It came following Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals. The Sonics owned a 2-0 advantage after beating the Jazz twice at KeyArena. But things didn’t work out too well for Seattle that night and Utah got back into the series with a blowout win.

For some odd reason, we had run out of beer that Friday night — mostly because we drank all of them.

But my other buddy, Mark, was taking the loss a little harder than the rest of us and he wasn’t ready to stop drowning his sorrows following the Sonics’ loss.

So Mark and his own personal pity party was forced to invent a new drink, which he affectionately called a “Cup of Tuff Love.” The thought of the amount of hard liquor in that drink makes me dry heave just thinking about it.

The “Cup of Tuff Love” resembled something we used to call a “graveyard” when we were little kids at the roller skating rink. A “graveyard” was a combination of every pop at the soda counter — Coke, root beer, orange, Sprite, etc. But, instead of pop, the “Cup of Tough Love” was a combination of all the cheap booze in the cabinet of a 22-year-old.

Needless to say, Mark’s “Cup of Tough Love” night ended a little sooner than he would have liked, when he fell asleep in the middle of the living room in his Hersey Hawkins replica T-shirt. His final words that night were, “You’ve got to feed the Hawk.”

That is a memory I will never forget.

Clay Bennett can move the Seattle SuperSonics franchise to Oklahoma City. But he cannot take away my memories and the emotions that I felt over the years. Those cannot be bought for $45 million.

The memories of my hometown NBA basketball team will never die.

Sports editor Casey Olson: 925-5565, sports@fedwaymirror.com