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Could
The State of NBA Nation in Pacific Northwest actually
be shifting?
By Keith Chambers
Flash
back to the 2007 NBA
Draft Lottery with me for one second, pretending
that 1) The place I went to watch said event is still
open, 2) I have a good paying job, and 3) The weather
outside is favorable. The Boston Celtics fell apart
in the draft lottery, freefalling to the 5th overall
selection, shocking the NBA draftniks and leaving plenty
of room at the top. Four teams, unexpectedly, had a
date with lady luck, and were in a position to rise
to the peak of the NBA Draft: The Portland TrailBlazers,
the Seattle Supersonics, the Atlanta Hawks and the Memphis
Grizzlies.
The
Sonics were in the midst of ongoing controversy being
formed by current owner Clayton Bennett and his attempts
and wishes to move the team from Seattle to Oklahoma
City (or wherever the moving trucks stop). The city
needed enough excitement generated to keep the fans'
interested, in hopes of keeping alive the scant possibility
of the Sonics staying in Seattle. As luck would have
it, the lottery came away with the Sonics being awarded
the #2 pick in the 2007 NBA Draft, ahead of Memphis
at #4 and Atlanta at #3, but trailing the Blazers in
the #1 spot. Everybody knew the Sonics would end up
with either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. This moved the
future of the Sonics in Seattle from an unapproachable
dream to a believable accomplishment.
Lightning
hit Seattle in the form of new blood that would transform
the Sonics into a competitive franchise yet again. I
thought, "Finally, a great prospect who can learn
under the tutelage of both Ray
Allen and Rashard Lewis, the two veterans the Sonics
assumed their new identity under." If Seattle got
Oden, their woes at center would finally be over. They'd
have a youngster who could crash boards and soar to
new heights alongside the intensity of Chris Wilcox.
If Durant was left, then the Sonics had the opportunity
to have a special scorer that could play multiple positions,
an eventual three-headed shooting machine in Allen,
Lewis, and KD - an impossible match-up for any opponent.
Season ticket sales jumped. People were once again ready
for basketball in the middle of baseball season. Everything
was falling into place for the Sonics' stay in Seattle.
Then
came the 2007 NBA Draft. For whatever reason the Sonics
decided to entertain an offer from the Boston Celtics
which centered around the #5 pick in the NBA Draft.
Boston put together a considerable offer - the rights
to said #5 pick (who would later turn out to be Jeff
Green), and players Delonte West and Wally
Szczerbiak, as well as a future 2nd round pick,
in exchange for Allen. In the video game NBA Live, this
trade would seem inherently unfair because Seattle's
getting quite a lot for a superstar with only two (possibly
three) good years left. In the NBA this makes a team
a lot younger.
Enter
free agency. The first big mistake the Sonics made was
allowing Rashard Lewis' contract situation to get to
the point that he considered leaving this town. Now,
Rashard
Lewis might be a terrible, overpaid shooter who
takes more ill-advised shots than a 21 run for triplets,
but he was the only player on the Sonics who had an
All-Star appearance, could teach youngsters about growing
up good in the NBA, and also was a relevant threat.
The people who analyzed the Free Agent Market called
him one of the NBA's top free agents, and Orlando, in
the midst of their three-year plan to rebuild and re-conquer,
signed Lewis to a ludicrous "new money" contract
which assured that Seattle, and owner Bennett, would
have no chance whatsoever of keeping one of their franchise
faces. With the free agent deal going down, the Sonics
basically let Durant and Green know they are going to
have to become the future of the franchise on their
own without immediate help from any players with a shred
of consistency in their game. For two guys who couldn't
legally drink in the Lower 48, to control the future
of an NBA franchise, while slogging through a couple
terrible years for a team that's ready to pull a reverse
Oregon Trail, there was more to worry about than Seattle's
infamous rainy weather in their horizons. After the
Sonics lost 15 of their first 18, people knew Kevin
Durant was good, but with regards to keeping the team
in Seattle, he couldn't do it on his own, and the money
behind the franchise wasn't about to help.
Now
let's take a look at the other teams involved in that
top three: Portland and Atlanta. Portland made the Oden
pick, then watched Oden struggle through Summer League
before he had season ending microfracture surgery on
his knee. As people around the NBA community started
ranting, "Bowie over Jordan!" at Portland's
misfortunes, fans in and around the 503 were getting
ready to take out GM Kevin Pritchard's house with torches
over what looked to be another draft-day blunder. Suddenly,
the youngest team in the league was forced to grow up
fast and smart or awkwardly wheeze through another losing
season. As was expected they fell flat on their faces
out of the gates, suffering the effects of a 5-12 start
to the regular season. But then something fairly incredible
happened; they rattled off 17 wins in 18 games, suddenly
pushing themselves from perennial bottom feeders to
the talk of the NBA. Sure enough, it was the youth invasion
of Brandon Roy, Jarrett Jack, Martell Webster and LaMarcus
Aldridge leading the team to results not seen since
the 1999-2000 season. Their story remains to be finished,
as the season is still young, but for now Blazer-Mania
is strong in Portland. With the re-arrival of Oden next
year, we could have a strong representative in the playoffs
for years to come.
Atlanta,
meanwhile, picked up Florida forward Al Horford with
the 3rd pick in the draft (followed by Acie Law IV at
#11), have also created energy, and are now sitting
at the #7 spot in the Eastern Conference, a dramatic
shift from their 12th place finish last year. As for
Boston? Let me put it this way: Since the Red Sox snuck
past the Indians during the ALCS in October, up until
the Patriots fought their Bunker Hill against the New
York Giants, the entire city only had to deal with eight
sporting event losses from the big three leagues. (NBA,
NFL, MLB) That three headed scoring machine the Sonics
could have had ended up in Boston (albeit with different
players) and looks like a legitimate threat to wrest
power away from the West in the NBA Finals.
As
for the Supersonics they are mired between losing streaks
at the time of this article and seem to have nowhere
to go this NBA season but down, all the way to "team
with the highest probability of getting the #1 Pick
in the NBA Draft" status. Delonte West makes as
many terrible mistakes as things he does well and Wally
Szczerbiak rarely gets more points than letters in his
last name. Every night something different seems to
happen to the Sonics, whether it's blowing a lead or
coming out sluggish and facing an insurmountable deficit.
A wise man once told me, during the worst part of a
basketball season where we worked together, "We
won't win unless we want to." The Sonics don't
look at all like a team possessed to even have a bit
of success from top to bottom. They're a well-oiled
machine running on apathy, lubricated by failure.
It
isn't as if the Super Sonics had struggled mightily
during the past five years. The Sonics were one shot
away from forcing a seventh game against the eventual
world champion San Antonio Spurs in the 2005 Playoffs,
defying more so-called expert predictions. During that
2004-2005 season. Emeka Okafor, of the Charlotte Bobcats
compared playing against the Seattle
Super Sonics to playing against someone in a video
game with "cheat codes". Prior to that, the
Sonics made the playoffs in 2002, also, before pawing
with mediocrity and injuries in 2003 and 2004 as well
as the trading of two superstars: Gary Payton (2003,
to Milwaukee, for Ray Allen and Kevin Ollie (which wasn't
a bad move) and the later dealing of fan favorite, Desmond
Mason (2003 off-season, for table scraps).
But
even more importantly, after the 2005 season the Sonics
let Nate McMillan get lured away by the Portland Trail
Blazers, which was utterly inexcusable considering the
coach did an amazing job of getting the team in the
playoffs to begin with, not to mention getting something
out of Jerome James, which, if McMillan were to be inducted
into the Hall of Fame, should be the only thing on his
plaque. With Nate's departure, so began a series of
Seattle coaches who proved coaches can actually kill
teams if they don't make them better: Bob Weiss, Bob
Hill, and now P.J. Carleismo (who's only real contribution
to our sports landscape as a head coach has been getting
choked by Latrell Sprewell) have managed a three-headed
coaching carousel that have rarely been able to instill
defensive values or the will to be competitive on a
nightly basis.
Since
McMillan left, the Sonics have been in contention to
be the next laughing stock of the NBA, giving the New
York Knicks a large fight in that regard. There might
not be another season where the Seattle (emphasis on
the city) Sonics have a winning, or competitive, record
when 82 games have passed. It's getting more and more
tempting to shift the whole basketball focus to Portland,
where you can drink at strip clubs and not pay sales
tax while the Blazers make a game out of it. But to
do that now? Come on. There's still a chance Kurt Thomas
will be able to help mold both Kevin Durant and Jeff
Green into All-Stars, right? Almost as likely as the
Sonics' '07-'08 playoff dreams. The question is simple:
would a season in which the Sonics could even be considered
competitive even make a difference in the cynical landscape
of Seattle's basketball community? Or have fans given
up and are ready to turn their attention further down
I-5, where the Blazers bandwagon recently got fitted
with 22's?
When
a statement in reality is so whacked it wouldn't make
sense if it happened in a dream, there's trouble. That's
where the basketball mad portion of Seattle's NBA Nation
is at right now - both hoping against any hope of a
far-fetched dream coming true while at the same time
counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report.
It's a dreary landscape, which is a far cry from anything
resembling success, a concept Seattle's known for. Of
course, they're also known for building a huge enterprise
then shipping it off to some other state or country
while keeping a small semblance of the original idea
here. If that is the fate of the Seattle Supersonics,
who's WNBA representative, the Storm, is now independently
owned and operated, then what a fitting end for the
only major sports franchise who's ever given Seattle
a championship banner.
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