Supersonicsoul - The Sonics Blog!

Two Halves

2010-02-03T10:10:00.000-08:00

By my count, every team in the league has played at least 22 home games, giving us 22 games' worth of attendance data to study. Interestingly, if you split those 22 games into two halves, you get some surprising numbers when comparing the results from this year to last year.

For example:

- The NBA averaged 8,642 fewer fans per night in the first 11 games of the season, when compared to last season.

- In the second 11 games, the league averaged 11,512 fewer fans per night, a 33 per cent drop off. Is that a trend, or just minor fluctuation in numbers?

- Attendance per night of the week:
Sunday: 1,420,325, 80 nights, 17,754 per night
Monday: 1,415,468, 84 nights, 16,850 per night
Tuesday: 1,635,538, 97 nights, 16,861 per night
Wednesday: 2,500,580, 154 nights, 16,237 per night
Thursday: 614,378, 32 nights, 19,199 per night
Friday: 2,538,808, 146 nights, 17,389 per night
Saturday: 2,069,891, 117 nights, 17,691 per night

- Largest crowd: 22,076, Detroit, five times this season

- Smallest crowd: 9,220, Clippers at New Jersey, Jan. 27, 2010

- Lowest median attendance: New Jersey, 12,131

- Largest standard deviation in attendance: Philadelphia, 3,237

Tender Juicy Fans Rejoice!

2010-02-02T15:58:00.000-08:00

Supersonicsoul's new favorite basketball team, the Tender Juicy Giants, now have their own official Facebook page. Sign up to become a fan of the squad that Alton Lister calls "the deepest team in the league". Plus, they're named after processed meat!

A Cut Above

2010-01-28T16:32:00.000-08:00

From the "What The ?" Files (courtesy of Hoopsvibe's 50 Fun NBA Facts):

12. Spencer Haywood, whose Supreme Court battled paved the way for early-entry NBA players, circumcised himself as a teenager.

In that context, I suppose, challenging a professional sports league all the way to the Supreme Court doesn't seem all that incredible of a feat, now does it?

Kind of reminds me of the scene in JAWS where Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw exchange stories about their scars (this isn't the whole scene, but it's the best part). I'm guessing if Spencer Haywood had been on that boat, Quint and Hooper would have just shut up and drank some more whiskey.

Bottom line: Xavier McDaniel has now been surpassed as the toughest man in Sonic history.

But what about the Luis Scola fans?

2010-01-28T09:09:00.000-08:00

Was watching the Serena Williams-Li Na match last night (a great match, by the way, with some incredible toughness by Williams in the second set), and at one point Dick Enberg threw it down to Pam Shriver where she interviewed some random Chinese journalist.

Setting aside Shriver's nonsensical final question: "Hey, Mr. Reporter-man, can you say something in Chinese to Dick Enberg?" Chinese Man: "Unintelligible to all the listeners who don't speak my language." Dick Enberg: "Where's my son when I need him! He's fluent in Chinese! Oh, my!" Rest of world: "Dick knows Chinese is not a language, right?"

Wait, where was I? Right, back to Shriver. Anyhow, because of the presence of two Chinese women in the semifinals at the Australian Open, she thought it was a good time to ask the state of tennis' popularity in China.

And that's where it got interesting, at least from an NBA perspective. Now, granted, this is just one random Chinese man's opinion, but he told Shriver that the three most popular sports in China at the moment are table tennis, badminton, and diving, but that the fact Li Na and her compatriot have done so well at the open could mean that tennis will certainly come close, while also mentioning soccer as a rising popular sport.

But, interestingly, he didn't say a word about basketball. No Yao Ming, no Houston Rockets, no Tracy McGrady all-star votes, nothing. Hey, it doesn't mean that the NBA is floundering in China, but for all the chest-thumping we hear from the league about how popular it is in China, isn't that just a little bit surprising?

Nothing To Do With Anything ...

2010-01-27T16:45:00.001-08:00

It's a stretch to tie this to a basketball blog, but, well, it's not as if we've got any Sonics news to report ...

Anyway, as you may or may not be aware, your narrator lives in the wilds of Vancouver, BC, which is home to a rather large sporting event in a month or so. As you also may or may not be aware, I am a cranky old man trapped in 30-something-year-old body, and, like all cranky old men, I like to whine about the people on the tv.

Living in Vancouver, I was able to take in this recent ad from the folks at Tourism BC. I'll let you take it in, then jump back here ...

Finished? Okay, granted the "celebrities" they trotted out aren't exactly A-listers, and the ad so blantantly copies from the recent California ads with the Governator and Rob Lowe it's a bit embarassing, but, hey, that's Canada for you. But here's what kills me: At one point in the ad, Eric McCormack (remember him? yeah, me neither) tells us:

"Some people call it Vancouver, British Columbia. But we call it ..."

----cut to a cuddly Michael J Fox-----

"home."

Cue violins.

Why is this hilarious? Because here's the list of celebrities:

Eric McCormack
Michael J Fox
Kim Cattrell
Ryan Reynolds
Sarah McLaughlin
Steve Nash (see, the basketball angle?)

And here's how many of them live in Vancouver:

1 (McLaughlin)

Nash, who could spend the summers anywhere in the world, opts to live in New York rather than Van City. Fox could spend his years anywhere, but he chooses NY/LA. Ditto Cattrell. Reynolds might be shacking up with Scarlett Johannson, but that shack ain't in Vancouver, or even Canada for that matter. McCormack sure as heck hasn't spent his sweet Will & Grace money on plunking down roots anywhere in the 604 (or, 778, if you've got a cell).

It's a joke, honestly. You know why the celebrities are posing in front of blue screens for the majority of the film? It's probably because the damn thing was filmed in Studio City.

Hey, I'm not saying they have to live here. Lord knows I want out of this rain-infested moss-fest more than anyone, but then I'm not up on TV telling everyone how wonderful it is, either.

Yeah, Vancouver's your home allright, you lying bastards.

1979: Good year for Sonics, bad year for robot-related deaths

2010-01-25T15:34:00.000-08:00

For most of us here at Supersonicsoul, 1979 will always be remembered for one thing: the year the greatest basketball team of all-time won Seattle's first championship.

For those with robot-phobia, however, this date back in 1979 marks a far different kind of anniversary:

January 25, 1979: A 25-year-old Ford Motor assembly line worker is killed on the job in a Flint, Michigan, casting plant. It’s the first recorded human death by robot.
Robert Williams’ death came on the 58th anniversary of the premiere of Karel Capek’s play about Rossum’s Universal Robots. R.U.R gave the world the first use of the word robot to describe an artificial person. Capek invented the term, basing it on the Czech word for “forced labor.” (Robot entered the English language in 1923.)

Williams died instantly in 1979 when the robot’s arm slammed him as he was gathering parts in a storage facility, where the robot also retrieved parts. Williams’ family was later awarded $10 million in damages. The jury agreed the robot struck him in the head because of a lack of safety measures, including one that would sound an alarm if the robot was near.
Read More http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/01/0125robot-kills-worker#ixzz0dfe3y6P3

So the next time you're watching those '79 highlight reels, be sure to raise a glass to the first victim of the Robot Apocalypse.

The Voice of the Sonics

2010-01-25T15:00:00.000-08:00

R.I.P Bob.

Memorials for Former Sonics' Broadcaster This Weekend

2010-01-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

Per the Seattle PI, you'll have two opportunities to pay your respects to the late (and great) former Sonic broadcaster Bob Blackburn, who passed away earlier this month.

Up first is a wake, to be held tonight (Friday) at 7 o'clock in Issaquah at the Gaslamp Bar & Grill. You'll have the opportunity to hear the replay of Blackburn's call of the 1979 Championship Game, as well as other highlights from his career.

Then, on Sunday, comes a formal public memorial service at First United Methodist Church in Bellevue. The service is slated to begin at 3 p.m.

Alton Lister's Analysis of the Philippine Cup

2010-01-21T12:33:00.001-08:00

Seriously, with that headline, how do you possibly avoid reading the story? Three stoned sophomores at the University of Oregon playing mad-libs couldn't imagine stringing together seven more bizarre words than that.

Well, unless they included one of the clubs Lister expects to contend for the title: the Purefoods Tender Juicy Giants.

Yes, the Purefoods Tender Juicy Giants.

It says something when the Talk 'n Text Tropang Texters aren't the most ridiculous-sounding team in your league, or that I haven't even mentioned that there's another team called Alaska (does this count towards Sarah Palin's international experience?), but, c'mon, that's one fantastic team name there, no? Let's have a look-see at their logo ...

Yep, that's just about the perfect Philippine Basketball Association logo you've got there, my friend. Crazy, nonsensical name? Check. Excessive adjectification? check. Appropriation of popular American team name? Check. Blatant rip-off of said team's logo and/or colors and/or both? Check, double-check, and triple-check.

Kind of makes one wonder, though, what would happen if NBA owners decided to use the same mentality with their clubs. You know, if we weren't so hung up on looking and sounding tough in our pro sports world, maybe the Lakers would become, oh, I don't know, the Los Angeles Tender Juicy Teenage Girl Lovers? Would the Knicks become the Mighty Strong Cable Layers? Would the Sonix become ...

Well, I'll let you finish that last one.

Bennett Settles With Sonic Fans

2010-01-21T08:58:00.000-08:00

It's not the case Sonic fans wanted to win against Clay Bennett (that one fell by the wayside almost two years ago), but it's a win nonetheless.

According to Chris Daniels of KING-5 in Seattle, the owner of the Sonix has agreed to pay $1.6 million to settle a class-action suit brought against the team by a group of season-ticket holders. The suit, which alleged that Bennett & Co. failed to allow them to renew their tickets, means Bennett won't have to testify in Seattle, which is, I'm sure, a relief to him.

Funny, though, how the team was able to come up with $1.6 million when it needed to, even though it was completely incapable of contributing even one cent towards the $500 million cost of the new arena they half-assedly proposed to build in Renton three years ago.

Great White Dopes?

2010-01-20T15:24:00.000-08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2010 Seattle Super Honkies!

Please let this be a joke.

According to the Augusta Chronicle, someone is starting an all-white basketball league:

Don "Moose" Lewis, the commissioner of the AABA, said the reasoning behind the league's roster restrictions is not racism.
"There's nothing hatred about what we're doing," he said. "I don't hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here's a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like."
Lewis said he wants to emphasize fundamental basketball instead of "street-ball" played by "people of color." He pointed out recent incidents in the NBA, including Gilbert Arenas' indefinite suspension after bringing guns into the Washington Wizards locker room, as examples of fans' dissatisfaction with the way current professional sports are run.
"Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch?" he said. "That's the culture today, and in a free country we should have the right to move ourselves in a better direction."
(found via Huff Post).

White, American-born citizens are in the minority now? Really? I had no idea 75 percent was a minority. Then again, math was never my best subject.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to strap on my Chuck's and get down to the gym for my tryout with the Albuquerque All-Whites.

MLK Holiday Games, A Comparison

2010-01-19T10:39:00.000-08:00

One nice aspect of the MLK Holiday is that it provides a pretty good isolated case of how attendance has changed on a year-over-year basis. Very quickly, then, here are the numbers from the past three seasons:

2010: 197,709
2009: 211,432
2008: 223,508

The last two seasons, the NBA has opted for 12 games, while in 2008 they played 13, so it’s better to look at those numbers on a per-game basis, obviously:

2010: 16,475
2009: 17,619
2008: 17,192

As we all know, not all teams are created equal, so it’s lucky for us that the league usually includes the same group of host teams for these games. There are a total of eight clubs who have played host to a MLK Day game in each of the past three seasons. Here is how their cumulative attendance looks, on a per team basis:

2010: 19,029
2009: 19,715
2008: 19,224

And, if you’re interested, here’s how those eight teams did the past three years:

Team	2008	2009	2010
Atlanta	17400	17199	14666
Charlotte	17124	16160	13678
Golden State	19144	19244	19208
Houston	15264	18199	17187
Clippers	16318	14399	14533
Lakers	18997	18997	18997
Memphis	18119	17483	18119
New Orleans	11663	17237	16459
New York	19763	18807	19302

OP on PR

2010-01-18T17:26:00.000-08:00

Via The Nation:

Dave Zirin: I have to ask you your thoughts about Pat Robertson saying the earthquake happened because Haiti made a pact with the devil for independence.

Olden Polynice: Pat Robertson can suck a big one--you can quote me on that. He is not a man of God and shouldn't claim to be. And you can quote me on that. Please.

An Uncomfortable Position

2010-01-15T14:49:00.000-08:00

Experienced a strange phenomenon last night, and I'm not exactly comfortable talking about it.

I found myself rooting for the Utah Jazz.

I know, I hear you, it's blasphemy. The club that gave us the Mailman, the organization that spawned the offspring of a former GM who screamed at then-Sonic Olden Polynice as he ran down the court, the whole shebang.

There I sat, halfway through the Cavs-Jazz game last night, and without even realizing it, pulling for Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams. It was a shocking revelation, let me tell you.

Now, some of it was because of the roster. I love Williams' game, his relative anonymity, and his ginormous tattoo. I love the way Boozer stuck it to the Cavs' owners (and, please, don't expect me to shed any tears for the owners of a pro sports franchise). I lo--- well, I respect Jerry Sloan, the same as anyone else.

But more than anything last night, I had a different, entirely reasonable reason for rooting for the Jazz.

The uniforms.

Can you blame me? I mean, look at those things - they're flippin' beautiful. In the third quarter, I half-expected Sloan to turn to the bench and summon Fred Brown to come in to spell Kyle Korver. And, while I can't be 100% sure of it, I'm pretty certain I saw Dennis Awtrey at the end of the Jazz' bench in the fourth quarter.

Strange, though, how the colors got me revved up, and made me wonder, would I root for anything or anybody if they were wearing yellow and green? (And, to be precise, these green/yellow unis the Jazz sported last night were almost a dead match for the Pantone colors the Sonics used until Barry Ackerley decided to bastardize the team's look).

Would I root for the Lakers in green and gold? Probably not.

The cast of Jersey Shore? Definitely not.

The inner circle of Hitler Third Reich? Probably not.

The Utah Jazz? Most definitely.

The Numbers Don't Lie

2010-01-14T15:14:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'll throw this one out there.

In the Future Card I drew up for Gilbert Arenas in March of last year, I had the Hibachi down for 38 games played this year, which is only six away from the total he's sitting on at the moment, and likely all he'll play this year, barring a late-season return from David Stern's purgatory.

Call it intuition, call it a evil sense of what the future holds, I'll leave that to you. But you know, smart guys can use their SCHOENE's and their PECOTA's to predict the future, and that logical application of formulas and proven methodologies is wonderful and all, but I've always held to the firm belief that if you throw enough garbage against the wall, some of it is bound to eventually stick.

Maybe It's Me

2010-01-13T12:17:00.000-08:00

But does anyone else find it amusing that a 67-year-old Jew from Teaneck, New Jersey sees fit to explain the immorality of gun violence to a 27-year-old African American who was abandoned by a drug-addicted mother and raised in Los Angeles by a single father?

I'm sure Gilbert Arenas is thrilled for the moral advice, but I'm guessing he saw more gun violence by the time he was 15 than David Stern has seen in his entire life.

Nenad Now!

2010-01-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

The folks behind the Sonicsgate documentary have come up with a great prank to play on The Team That Must Not Be Named.

EA is bringing back NBA Jam and letting the fans pick the rosters. Now, suppose instead of Durant, Green and Westbrook, the Sonix were represented by Thabo, Nenad and Harden?

If you'd like to help make this Dream Team a reality, just head over to the NBA Jam website. Voting ends January 18th, so make every click count!

Thanks, Bob

2010-01-12T11:39:00.000-08:00

Drawing by Rafael Calonzo, Jr.

What is it about a radio play-by-play man that inspires such love from his listeners?

There are many reasons, of course, some more crucial than others, and suffice it to say that not all broadcasters engender the adulation men such as the recently deceased Bob Blackburn do. As a youngster in Seattle, I immediately fell in love with Dave Niehaus’ dulcet tones describing some horrible Mariner teams, but even then, with all the inherent naivete of a 10-year-old, I didn’t need anyone to tell me that Rick Rizzs was, well, not Dave Niehaus.

What is it, then, about these men that causes such devotion? I remember moving to Southern California in the mid-90s, and having everyone down there tell me how wonderful the Dodgers’ Ross Porter was. To me, he was just another broadcaster, but to true blue Dodger fans, he was almost as much of an institution as Vin Scully.

It is that history which forms the first crucial part of the bond between listener and broadcaster. The fact that this man (and let’s not be politically correct for one moment, as these are, indeed, all men of which we are speaking) has been there for everything – the pre-season snoozers, the occasional mid-season “must-wins,” the thundering dunks, the crazy, 41-point games from some unexpected small forward, the last-minute steals, the playoff drives – all of it.

Bob Blackburn was that conduit for many of us, and no franchise shifts, no surprising firings could change that. There will only be one man who introduced me to pro basketball, and that man is Blackburn, a fact as irreversible as the outcomes of the games he described to me all those years on my pathetic clock radio.

All those nights when the Sonics played on the west coast, games that ended long past my bedtime, I lay there listening to him tell me what happened, how the Sonics were making a charge, how Gus Williams was draining another jumper, or Jack Sikma was snaring another rebound – those were his adjectives, his insights, his snippets of humor, and no one else’s.

As the team changed from a championship squad to an also-ran in the mid-80s, it was Blackburn who still told us the stories, about Williams’ holdout, Sikma’s replacement, and the new guy from Wichita State who the Sonics took instead of Detlef Schrempf. He introduced us to Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton, was there when Seattle found a coach from Spain, and all those other crazy moments of the late 80s and early 90s.

More than anything, though, it is the personal connection in a radio broadcast which inevitably elevates the relationship. Think about it – with radio you almost always experience the broadcast alone. Television is a shared medium, at least some of the time, while radio is almost always solitary. There is you, there is the radio, and there is the voice drifting out from within it. It commands your attention much more than television does, simply because you cannot follow the action without devoting your entire mind to listening.

Over time, that solitary experience grows into a partnership between you and the man on the other end. It is a well worn cliché that broadcasters are talking directly to their listeners, but there is truth to that cliché.

I remember a meaningless game between the Sonics and Warriors in the early 80s that went down to the final seconds. Seattle was at the line, needing to make one of the free throws, then hope to rebound a miss and convert a field goal for the victory, or make the second free throw (or third, this was in the 2-out-of-3 era) to send it to overtime.

I can’t remember who was at the line for the Sonics, but I can remember the amazement in Blackburn’s voice as he went from disappointment to joy as the Sonic player missed the second and third shot, allowing Sikma to grab the rebound and the quick follow.

After thousands of games, Blackburn still had the joy the rest of us did at the outcome. “Can you believe it?” Blackburn told us, in words I’ll never forget.

One year ago, I wrote a letter to Bob and his family after learning of his poor health due to a fall at his home in Issaquah. I was pleasantly surprised when I received a note back from his wife, Pat, expressing her thanks for the card. I hope she doesn’t mind if I relay the now-poignant quote from Bob she included at the end of her note:

“It’s nice to be remembered.”

After all he’s given us, how could we forget?

R.I.P. Bob Blackburn

2010-01-09T09:15:00.000-08:00

Bob Blackburn, the original voice of the Seattle Supersonics, passed away Friday at the age of 85.

For many of us, Blackburn's friendly voice welcomed us into the world of Sonics fandom. He was the voice of the '79 champs and along with Wayne Cody, Ivar Haglund and J.P. Patches, represented the best of Old Seattle, a town that was on the rise, but never took itself too seriously.

He will be missed, but never forgotten.

On The Road

2010-01-06T11:05:00.000-08:00

If you’ve ever looked at the attendance figures at espn.com, you’ve noticed that there is a separate column for road attendance, where you can see that the Lakers, Cleveland, and San Antonio currently rank 1-2-3.

That column has always bothered me, for the simple reason that it is not really measuring anything of value. (This is not intended as a slag against the site; just an observation).

Take, for example, the New Orleans Hornets. The Hornets rank near the top of the listings so far this season (8th, to be specific), indicating they are a popular road team.

But are they really? Look more closely at the numbers and you can see that the Hornets are actually a negative influence upon attendance.

You see, the raw numbers fail to take into account the opposition. The Hornets have, thus far, played at

the Lakers (twice)
New York
Chicago
Boston
Utah
Toronto
San Antonio
Dallas

among other teams. If you know anything about NBA attendance, you’ll note that those clubs are all in the “sellout nearly every night club.” So, the fact the Hornets are drawing well on the road isn’t due so much to Chris Paul’s brilliance as it is to the fanatical support enjoyed by New Orleans’ opponents.

What we need, then, to determine which teams are the most popular, is to look at how the Hornets (or any team) draw relative to their opponents’ median attendance. In other words, if New Orleans plays at Phoenix and the Suns draw 17,000 when they normally draw 18,000, that means the Hornets are a drain on attendance.

Got all that?

Here, then is how each team in the NBA has drawn thus far when compared to their opponents’ median home attendance. The numbers listed next to each team are a per-game average,

Cleveland, 2566
LA Lakers, 1732
Boston, 1343
Miami, 897
New York, 806
Denver, 698
Orlando, 487
Detroit, 460
San Antonio, 313
Utah, 268
Dallas, 241
Chicago, 81
Atlanta, -43
Phoenix, -58
Washington, -108
New Orleans, -124
Charlotte, -245
Houston, -280
Memphis, -301
LA Clippers, -332
Philadelphia, -399
Portland, -412
Indiana, -464
Sacramento, -494
Milwaukee, -522
Sonix, -645
Toronto, -656
New Jersey, -745
Golden State, -780
Minnesota, -1239

There are, unfortunately, some bugs in even this system. Namely, it considers all dates as equal, when everyone knows that Friday and Saturday nights are waaaaay more popular than any other night. So, if Team 1 plays at Memphis on a Saturday, and Team 2 plays at Memphis on a Tuesday, then Team 1 will get an artificial boost. Obviously, over the course of a season, the majority of these incidents will even out.

Still, it’s an interesting list, showing that Boston, Cleveland, and Los Angeles are the clear fan favorites around the league (Denver’s showing is due in large part to the fact that they played at Philly the night Iverson returned, a night the Sixers drew 20,000, 7,000 more than they draw on a typical night).

You’ll also note the less-popular squads are Minny, Golden State, Toronto, and the Sonix. Personally, I was surprised to see the Blazers fall into this category as well, as Portland induces teams to pull in 412 fewer fans than normal on a given night.

I’d blame it on Greg Oden.

Unit

2010-01-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

May 1989

Moronic High School English Teacher: Hey, Nussbaum, you're the baseball expert, what's the deal with these guys the Mariners got for Langston? They should have made that deal with the Mets, right? What a load of crap!

Nussbaum: I don't know, this 6'10" guy is supposed to be something else ...

MHSET: ... Hah! What's he done, anyways? Terrible trade.

Nussbaum: You know, back in the 60s, the Cardinals Ernie Broglio for Lou Brock, and everybody in St. Louis thought it was stupid. You never know with these deals ...

MHSET: Meh. Hey, who wants to watch some highlights of me coaching the football team?

Thanks for proving me right, Randy.

Swift

2009-12-23T11:03:00.000-08:00

Finally, sadly, and perhaps inevitably, Robert Swift's professional basketball career finally fulfilled the potential promised by his surname:

Swift.

Who knows where the 7' enigma goes from here. As Jeff Evans from the Californian in Bakersfield reports, Swift's career with the Bakersfield Jam appears over, if you can call two games a career, that is. (via the PI)

A former number one selection of the Sonics (as if I had to remind anyone of that sad fact), Swift had left the team weeks ago to attend to personal matters in the Seattle area, but never contacted the team after his departure. Will Voigt, the Jam's head coach, commented, "the barn door's closed" in regard to Swift's status with the team, but he may as well have been commenting on Swift's professional basketball career as well.

Ironically, while Swift's NBA career ended with the Sonix, his final game was in Portland, as close to Seattle as the league comes these days. On April 13th, 2009, Swift played 15 minutes in a blowout loss to the Blazers, garnering 2 points, 2 fouls, 2 blocks, and 3 rebounds, a fitting epitaph to his uneventful (at least on the court) career.

Ask a typical Sonic fan their reaction to Swift's apparent retirement, and undoubtedly the response would be a grimace, followed by indifference. And that's probably all his career merited, given the rather weak numbers he put up as a member of the green and gold.

But you can't help but feel just a twinge of sadness at the way things played out for Robert Swift. Sure, the big redhead has a nice layer of paychecks to cushion his fall from the NBA, and I'm sure season-ticket holders won't be sending him any sympathy cards, but one has to shake one's head at the Sysiphean way his career played out. While his rookie season was a wash, he showed promise in 2005-06, and after demonstrating that promise was not a fluke in pre-season the following fall, he was rewarded with the starting job at center by Bob Hill.

Within days, Swift had destroyed his knee with a fluke injury against the Sacramento Kings during one of the final exhibition games.

Bizarrely, Swift's injury came the day after the Sonics' sale to Clay Bennett had been unanimously approved by NBA owners. In the span of 48 hours, Sonic fans had lost their starting center to injury, and their team to a handful of scumbags.

Three years later, and the view hasn't gotten too much better for either of us.

Where Supersonicsoul Solves the World's Problems

2009-12-21T15:21:00.000-08:00

The past eighteen months I’ve taken to following soccer more closely; for multiple reasons, I suppose.

Obviously, the absence of the Sonics has cleared much-needed space in the attic of my brain so that I might fill it up with more useless information, and the availability of soccer to watch here in Canada only serves to exacerbate the situation. (And when I mean soccer, I mean, of course, the European leagues; if you watch soccer at all, you know that those leagues have it all over the American one in terms of competition, camerawork, analysis, and fields, or “pitches,” if you prefer).

And so it was late last season that I found myself listening on my car radio to a Premier League game between two cellar-dwelling clubs, both teams vying for the right to stay in the league and avoid relegation. In the NBA, it would have been a slumberthon of anonymous players and indifferent fans. In the EPL, it was a ferocious fight.

I’m not a fool, now. I know the NBA will never adopt the relegation strategy. It’s too Euro, too innovative, too implausible, too … too difficult to sell to a guy who just paid $410 million for a franchise. “What, you’re gonna make me play Albuquerque next year? And I don’t get Kobe, LBJ, or the Celtics on my schedule?”

Fair enough. But I got to thinking over the weekend, what can the NBA do to add some life to its end-of-season games that feature teams out of the playoffs?

Obviously, the draft lottery punishes rather than rewards teams for trying at the end of the season. Obviously, as any fan of a 18-54 team can tell you, this leads to a lot of mysterious ailments and puzzling coaching moves down the stretch – all of which may or may not pay off in the year to come. And, of course, all of which lead to mind-numbingly boring contests that have all the excitement of pre-season D-League game (wait, does the D-League have pre-season? is it still called the D-League? Are you bored now? There, now you know how it feels to watch Clippers-Bucks in March).

How, then, do we reward teams that need help, while at the same time put some life back into the last month or two of the season? Well, perhaps a modification of the draft lottery is in order.

Initially, I thought just flipping the order of ping-pong ball recipients might be the tonic. In other words, the team finishing closest to the playoffs would receive the most balls, and the bottom-dwellers would receive the fewest.

However, there is a major fly in that ointment, and it is this. The playoffs are simply not enough of an incentive for a team to resist dogging their late-season games.

Say, for example, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant were sitting out there waiting to be drafted, and your options as General Manager were:

1. Play hard and make the playoffs as an #8 seed, lose in the first round
2. Play lousy, don’t make the playoffs, get Oden/Durant

Which do you think the front office would prefer? Sure, the revenues generated by one or two extra home games are sweet, but not nearly as sweet as one of those two plums. Inevitably, you’d see teams tanking games to avoid the post-season, which is an even fouler bag of garbage than the one we’ve already got on our front porch.

So, the reverse-ping-pong-ball trick is a non-starter, but how about if we really made some changes, so that the teams just missing the playoffs still received the most ping-pong balls, but that teams qualifying for the playoffs received some as well? In this scenario, you could make the playoffs and conceivably still get a sweet piece of the draft pie.

Since we can assume that teams in the playoffs won’t try to tank games (in the name of Donaghy, we hope so, anyways), there’s no fear of a #8 seed purposely tanking games versus the #1 seed just so they can get a better shot at the next Jordan or Durant.

The playoff teams (#16 to #1) would receive ping-pong balls in the traditional way, with the lowest seed getting the most balls, but #17 to #31 would receive balls in the reverse order, with #17 getting the most, and #31 the least. How much #20 would get versus #14 would be open to negotiation, but I'm pretty confident some arrangement could be worked out.

I honestly can’t see the negative to the idea. Granted, it might seem unfair to teams that are at the bottom of the heap, but since when does America reward incompetence? (Too Easy). Clay Bennett & The Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds rape this franchise, and their reward is the #2 pick in the draft? David Robinson milks an injury and the Spurs get Tim Duncan? John Lucas manages the Cavaliers like he was still in drug rehab, and Cleveland gets LeBron? How is this system any better?

Admittedly, the end-of-season tanking isn’t the biggest problem facing the NBA at the moment, but it’s a problem nonetheless, and this solution would seem to alleviate it to a degree. Worth a shot, right?

Point Leaders: '00s

2009-12-18T09:53:00.000-08:00

With all of these end of the decade lists popping up, and me being a quasi-dork, I naturally began thinking of different statistical categories from the past 10 years.

For example, which NBA teams had the most and fewest number of players who led them in various categories?

I'll start with points scored for today. Before I started looking at the numbers, I tried to guess who would have largest variety. In my mind I narrowed it down to four contenders: New York, the Clippers, Indiana, and Golden State. All four seemed to have the right combinations of oft-injured stars, front offices in constant flux, bad teams, and unhappy players ... sort of a perfect recipe for high turnover at the top.

Was I right? Take a look after the jump.

Well, somewhat. The Knicks were there, all right, as one of the five clubs who had six different players to lead the team in points scored in a season, but the other three contenders I thought of failed to join them. The other four "leaders" were Atlanta (not that surprising), New Orleans/Charlotte (ditto), Washington (should have thought of that), and Utah.

Utah is the most intriguing of this trivial pursuit, only because in the '90s, they had only one (mail)man lead them in scoring. But with Matt Harpring, Carlos Boozer, Mehmet Okur, Andrei Kirilenko, and Deron Williams joining Karl Malone, the Jazz made it to an easy half-dozen.

The teams with the fewest players were obvious: San Antonio, the Lakers, Minnesota, Dallas, Boston, and Philadelphia were all dominated by superstars, and I don't think the readers of this site need help in determining who those players were.

However, there was one additional fun bit of trivia unearthed; the following gentlemen led a team in scoring in the last ten years:

Shawn Kemp
Juwann Howard
Lee Nailon
Anthony Mason
Clifford Robinson

More Fun With Gary Payton

2009-12-17T08:57:00.000-08:00

Be sure to check yesterday's video, but after you're done with that, go over to BetUS.com to see the latest one, and whatever you do, don't give up halfway through, because then you'll miss when Payton reaches off-camera for a mock O'Brien Trophy, apparently made from either wrapping paper or leftover Ferrero Rocher wrappers, then cradles it in his arms for no apparent reason.

Honestly, if I'm running a network that carries basketball, I'm putting Gary Payton in my studio, hiring Reggie Miller to sit next to him, and just letting it roll. Granted, they'd be off the air in 10 minutes for cursing, but it would still be the best 10 minutes in sports broadcasting history.