"They fired ME?! But, I'm BOB HILL, damnit!"The Sonics fired coach Bob Hill and reassigned general manager Rick Sund on Tuesday afternoon.No big shocker here. The only surprise is they didn't do it four months ago. (Of course, that would have meant the owners were interested in winning in Seattle which, obviously, they weren't.)
Team chairman Clay Bennett made the announcement in a statement sent to media outlets. Bennett and Sonics vice-chairman Lenny Wilkens will lead the search for a new coach and GM, the statement said.
Sund, who has a year remaining on his contract, will serve as a consultant next season.
"Bob Hill and Rick Sund are fine individuals of excellent personal character and are basketball men through and through," Bennett said in the statement. "They were both extremely helpful to us during the challenging year of transition."
The Sonics completed their season Wednesday with a 31-51 record. Only four NBA teams had fewer victories.
In 1969, Swiss-born psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross outlined the five stages of grief. In the midst of the longest death-watch in NBA history, it appears Seattle Supersonics coach Bob Hill has arrived at the final stage, Acceptance:About an hour before the start of the Sonics' 107-101 loss to the Chicago Bulls on Friday night, Hill gave a soliloquy about the realities of being an NBA coach."I look at my position very realistically,'' said Hill, in his ninth season as an NBA coach. "You know, when you get fired, you don't die. You don't die.''
I love Bob Hill. He's a great, old-school coach who says what he thinks, which is a rarity in today's NBA. He gave Sonics fans a glimmer of hope last season when he did the impossible: he made Robert Swift look like an NBA player. Hill has been pummeled this year with adversities of biblical proportions. That's why I want the Sonics to fire him.
Hill deserves better than this. The ax was raised the day the Sonics were sold down the river to Big Boy Bennett. Let it fall already.
Bob Hill. R.I.P.
