The Terrible, Inevitable What If Machine

With San Francisco coming oh so close to winning the Super Bowl on Sunday, 49ers fans are going through the same emotional torment that Seattle Supersonics fans suffer through on a daily basis: the dreaded What If Syndrome.

What if they avoided that costly illegal formation penalty on the first play of the game?
What if the offense had shown up in the first half?
What if the power never came back on?

As a lifelong Sonics fan, I have spent most of my life going through this sort of masochistic mental torture.

What if Nate McMillan had stayed in 2004?
What if Steve Ballmer had bought the team in 2001 instead of Howard Schultz?
What if Jim McIlvaine had never been born?

Dwelling on these dark thoughts is, of course, pointless. Time is linear. It moves on, with or without you. And yet, for many sports fans, there is a tiny room in the back of the mind that stores a terrible, horrible device that keeps track of this sort of thing: The What If Machine. Its sole purpose is to examine crucial points in time and pinpoint the exact crossroad that led to the team bus driving off the cliff.

My own personal Seattle Supersonics What If Machine recently spat out a date: June 28, 2007. The day the Portland Trailblazers drafted Greg Oden. (I'm sure many Blazers fans would like to have a replay on that day as well.)

It's hard to imagine, but back in '07, most of us in Seattle were praying that we'd somehow get Oden. At the time, he was seen as the second coming of Bill Russell. Despite the long history of number one picks tanking and the fact that Oden's bones were apparently made out of paper mache, the mystique that comes with a top draft pick is undeniable. It might have, at least momentarily, galvanized the community to fight harder to keep the Sonics in town. At the very least, Ballard would have been ecstatic about having a guy (almost) named after Thor's dad.

More importantly, He Who Must Not Be Named would still be playing in the Northwest, wiping Sam Bowie from Portland's own What If Machine, while Mr. Eggshells For Bones would be on the Permanently Too Fragile To Play List for a very mediocre midwest team that no one cared about.

But, like the Mirror of Erised, spending too much time with the What If Machine will lead to madness. Dwelling in the past is the ultimate act of futility.

Kind of like cheering for a professional sports team.

Seattle Supersonics: Getting The Band Back Together

Jerome James and his garbage bag cape are still available, guys!

Sacramento Kings blog Sactown Royalty recently took a look at what a Seattle Sonics expansion team might look like.

Like many Sonics fans, I haven't paid attention to the NBA since 2008. I have always been, and will always be, a Seattle-centric basketball fan. So if I was in charge of putting together an expansion roster for Supersonics 2.0, I would, of course, go to what I know, which are former Sonics.

After doing a quick bit of research on the interwebs, here are all the former Seattle Supersonics that are still active in the NBA. (Note: I left off those guys from That Team I Will Never Mention because I will never, ever, ever, never mention them on this blog, even if we get another team. They're like one of those rogue countries that aren't recognized by the United Nations.)

So, without further ado, here are your 2013 (or '14, or '15) SEATTLE SUPERSONICS!

Chris Wilcox (Boston)
Jeff Green (Boston)
Reggie Evans (Brooklyn)
Kurt Thomas (NY)
Damien Wilkins (Philly)
Vladimir Radmanovic (Chicago)
Mickael Gelabale (Minnesota)
Luke Ridnour (Minnesota)
Earl Watson (Utah)
Johan Petro (Atlanta)
Ray Allen (Miami)
Rashard Lewis (Miami)
Jerome James (Caciques de Humacao)

Watch out, world! The New Old Sonics are going to be rocking the Over-50 Community Center Rec Leagues across the nation! BRING IT! (And by "it", I mean ibuprofen.)

For Sacramento Fans

Face it, if you're from Seattle and you have a friend from Sacramento, conversation is a little difficult these days. What better way to to bridge that awkward conversational gap than with a sentimental gift?

Ah, but what kind of gift? What could you possibly give to a Sacramentan that wouldn't set them frothing at the mouth?

I'm guessing Sonic-emblazoned toilet paper should do the trick.

When another city takes your team, sometimes wiping your posterior with that city's logo helps ease the pain.

(Etsy.com, via uni-watch.com).

Top 10 Terrible Basketball Movies That Are Still Better Than Thunderstruck

Let's take a moment to stop drooling over the Sacramento Kings and focus on more important things: like making fun of Thunderstruck.

Supposedly, a movie starring That Guy We Can't Talk About Anymore who's on That Team We Shall Not Name, briefly appeared in the theater(s?) last summer.  During its entire run, it didn't appear anywhere in the top 100 at the box office, redefining the term "limited release".

Never fear, Supersonicsouliacs: we've put together a list of 10 basketball movies that are, while almost entirely unwatchable, still better than that poor man's Like Mike rip-off:

Your Seattle Expansion Sonics?

One of these guys could be ours. Hint: not the good one. 

I think most of us here at Supersonicsoul would rather have an expansion team than the Sacramento Kings. Our friends at Sactown Royalty recently posted about what a Seattle Supersonics expansion team might look like. Hakim Warrick here we come!

Supersonicsoul on HuffPost Live TODAY!

MEDIA FREAKOUT ALERT: I'll be appearing on HuffPost Live today at 2pm PST to talk about the possible return of the Seattle Supersonics, the Sacramento deal and, of course, Supersonicsoul. Pray for me.

UPDATE: Now Kevin Johnson announced he is doing another press conference at 2pm also--that guy is obsessed with me!

UPDATE UPDATE: The whole show is now posted (see above). Sorry for lousy video feed. Note to self: Never bring an iPad to a knife fight.

Uh-oh . . .

HE'S WATCHING US!!

(You can follow us on Twitter too at @sonicsblog.)

Don't Hate Me Bros, But The Kings Should Stay in Sacramento

I hated the Sacramento Kings.

From the Human Flop Vlad Divac to that rat-faced punk Mike Bibby, I have always loathed that team. And the cowbells? Ugh. They were almost as annoying as soccer fans.

In 2005, there was more than a little schadenfreude being dished out around here when Danny Fortson sat on Brad Miller in the playoffs, literally crushing this pesky little team of overrated divas and allowing us (at least before getting stomped in the next round by eventual champs San Antonio) to bask in the glory of our Cinderella team, the last good team we would see in this town for quite a while.

So you'd think with this sort of deep, borderline psychotic hatred of the Kings, I would be happy to eliminate them from the history books while getting back my beloved Seattle Supersonics. But I'm not.

Because if we gleefully swipe a team from a city that has faithfully supported them (ENOUGH WITH THE COWBELLS! I GET IT ALREADY!), we become (gulp) Oklahoma.

We will have to let go of the glorious torch of righteousness we've been able to wave in the faces of Clay Bennett, David Stern and the rest of the slimy dirtbags who lied, cheated and swindled to get their damn dirty paws on our team. We become part of the same problem that cost us a team in the same place. We become enablers of the NBA's cycle of abuse and extortion.

It's tempting to say our case is different. That at least we're being upfront about wanting to take another city's team, unlike Bubba Bennett, who claimed to be giving us a chance to show we "deserved" a team (!), while purposely tanking the organization, alienating the fanbase and demanding the city pay for the most expensive arena in NBA history. In fact, I'll probably be consoling myself with that exact straw man fallacy if this deal goes through. We're not like OKC! We're not like . . . THEM!

But in the end, the only way we can truly have a clean install of Sonics 2.0 is to start from scratch with an expansion team.

And believe me, I know how unlikely that is. The NBA already has too many teams. The only way we'd ever get an expansion team is if another team folded, and isn't that in essence what would be happening in Sacramento (and in Seattle in 2008, for that matter)? And besides, this is just business, son.

Except it isn't.

We don't watch basketball for the cold numbers of enterprise. We watch it because we fall in love with teams. We follow them like lovestruck teeny-boppers. We are crushed with every loss and walk on clouds when (or "if" in Seattle's case) they win. Sports are about irrational love, not backroom deals and corporate naming rights. When we buy another city's team, we're not just acquiring a franchise, we're taking someone's dream (See: NBA Finals, 2012).

As someone who has felt this pain, I hope the Kings stay in Sacramento. I hope they get the chance we never had. And I hope we get a new, guilt-free Seattle Supersonics someday so we can kick their miserable asses all over again.

Kind of a Big Deal

Via sonicsarena.com:

We are happy to announce that we have entered into a binding agreement with the Maloofs to purchase a controlling interest in the Sacramento Kings NBA franchise. The sale is obviously subject to approval by the NBA Board of Governors, and we look forward to working with the League in the coming months to consummate the transaction.

Let the intercity sniping begin.

Who wants to Space Jam?

Sweet GIF courtesy of io9.com

If we (and by "we" I mean Chris Hansen and friends) are going to spend $500 million on a swanky new basketball stadium for Supersonics 2.0, why not have the COOLEST BASKETBALL COURT OF ALL TIME?! For a measly few extra million you (and by "you" I mean an NBA team and not you ever) could play basketball on something straight out of Tron. Or, at least, Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball.

DO IT NOW!!!

Another day, another unconfirmed source says Sacramento Kings have been sold to Seattle group

Apparently the Maloofs invested all their money in plastic. AM I RIGHT?!

Here we go again.

According to the Sacramento Bee, it's official: the Kings have been sold to the Seattle group led by Chris Hansen.

A tweet from a Comcast Sports Bay Area NBA analyst this morning said the team had been sold for $525 million to a group led by hedge-fund manager Chris Hansen. A representative for Hansen in Seattle could not immediately be reached for comment.

Eric Rose, a Kings spokesman, said, "Nothing has changed with our position that we will not comment on rumors or speculation about the Sacramento Kings franchise."

And, as Sonics fans know, these kind of anonymous sources are never, ever wrong.

UPDATE: And now, of course, CBS Sports is reporting that the Kings might have a local buyer lined up. Gulp!

Not so fast! Maloofs get Maloofish in deal to bring Kings to Seattle.

To the shock of absolutely no one, the Maloof brothers are apparently acting like giant a-holes in negotiations to bail them out of debtors' prison buy the Sacramento Kings and move them to Seattle, according to this story in the Seattle Times:

The family that owns the Sacramento Kings wants to maintain a say in how the team is run if they sell it to Chris Hansen, creating a possible snag in the sale negotiation, an NBA source told The Seattle Times.

The Maloof family has owned the team since 1998, and brothers Joe and Gavin have been particularly involved and visible presences in the franchise since day one.

An initial Yahoo! Sports report on the sale, since confirmed by others, is that the family would retain a small percentage in the team. But the question now, according to the source, is whether that percentage also would allow the Maloofs some say in how the team is run.

So basically, the Maloofs would like to sell us their car for roughly twice the Blue Book value but still want to be able to borrow it to cruise for dates. Yeah, I'm sure Chris Hansen became a bazillionaire by making shrewd business deals like this.

If these are the sort of folks we have to appease to get a (pretty lousy) team, I'd rather invest in a custom team on NBA Live.