Way to win one for Spencer (and DJ). Nice night last night on the court.
Details of the Portland blowout. Rashard was flat out unstoppable last night.
Forehead Ted takes a piece out of Dave Boling's book and writes another glossy Nate McMillan story.
Here's the arena drawings from the Times. Brian may write up a live from the scene update at some point. On paper looks good. Not crazy about the not paying for cost overruns statement, and that's all I'll say at this point.
I have a real problem with stories like this ... where were the stories on Howard Schultz's political views? How about Paul Allen's? Would conservatives have a problem with Schultz's company offering benefits to same sex partners? This smells like a carefully leaked hack job, seriously. Seattle, you should be f*cking ashamed of yourself and in case anyone wonders I'm fairly left leaning politically speaking. If we checked political donations of every millionaire in this town I guarantee you we could all find something controversial there to either the right or left. Rich people are by nature conservative, to pretend otherwise is naivete. I didn't realize that to operate a business in Seattle you had to espouse liberal views and I propose that the Seattle media have the guts to do the same digging on Hawks and Mariners ownership. Does Hiroshi Yamauchi support whaling? Even if Bennett's group caved on this they'd be taken to task for not being vegetarians or something else.
GWs review and Clippers up next
Who was this mysterious tipster? I wonder ...
After introductions of Wilkens, Gus Williams, Fred Brown, McMillan and Jack Sikma, Haywood gave a somewhat rambling speech that concluded with him saying, “This was my original home. This will always be my first home. Don’t let the Sonics leave town. Whatever you do, it is very important to not let them leave town. We didn’t have anything here when we all came. We were the only thing in town. A lot of you all came to live here because you saw the Sonics on TV.â€
“The difference in my year (that Allen was a free agent) is that there weren’t really any teams with money,†Allen said. “Cleveland, but Cleveland was never really in it. Orlando is a viable option (for Lewis) because there are some good young players and their season is not over yet. I think if they are close (to competing), they are going to make a push for Rashard.
“The onus is … on this organization, really – what we do as a team to really put on a good face and prove to Rashard that this is going to be a formidable team in the future.â€
And my favorite local hoops blogger Mike Seely:
And yet, Haywood only played five seasons in green and gold, which forces us to consider a couple other Sonic 24's: DJ and Tom Chambers. Johnson was MVP of the Supes' lone championship team. Chambers, like Haywood, spent five years with the Sonics, finishing with just 103 career points less than his jersey-mate, and was MVP of the 1987 All-Star Game at the Kingdome, widely considered to be the greatest of all-time. Look, I'm thrilled that the Sonics honored Haywood, but I wonder now how low the bar is for future rafter-raisings.
I get his point. However there is no doubt which number needs to go up there next and that's #20. The problem with the Sonics isn't so much which numbers they retire but it's the timing. I still don't get why DJ's number was never retired, or Spencer's for that matter ... but Nate's went up virtually the day after he retired and while he was still an employee??? With regards to DJ, does this town and/or organization hold onto past beefs that long? If so that's a more telling commentary on the sports fans of this city than those athletes. If they retired Chamber's number, then why not the X-Man, who IMO is more well remembered and regarded around town? or Dale Ellis, who played more games as a Sonic than either X or TC?