No Iavaroni

The oft-mentioned possibility of Phoenix assistant Marc Iavaroni taking over the reigns in Seattle has been shot down by the news that Memphis has snapped him up to be their head coach.

This further cements the possibility of the Sam Presti/PJ Carlesimo combination becoming the duo Lenny Wilkens selects.

Unless, of course, he decides the Lenny Wilkens/Lenny Wilkens duo is even better.

[Side note: Jack McCallum at si.com reports that the Grizzlies had considered the Suns' Dave Griffin for their GM job, but Phoenix wants Griffin to remain until after the draft. If that's true, then there's little or no chance of him working in Seattle, either, since Wilkens has made it clear publicly that he wants to have the GM (not necessarily the coach) in place pre-draft.]

It's All Gaard's Fault

Apparently, if the Sonics leave town, you can place the blame squarely on the shoulders of KIRO-TV's Gaard Swanson.

Yes, the man with too many vowels offended Clay Bennett by stating to an Oklahoma City station "nobody cares about whether the Sonics stay in Seattle." (The quote is courtesy of the The Oklahoman, a paper owned by Mr. Bennett's wife, with a tip from a commenter). Mr. Swanson's quote was held up by Mr. Bennett as an illustration of how the Seattle area is apathetic about retaining the Sonics.

You know how when you pull up to a four-way stop and there's no one else around, and you just kind of slow down but never come to a complete stop? In the Northwest it's called a "California" stop, but I've also heard it called an "Oklahoma" stop.

I guess when Mr. Bennett said he intended to use 12 months to explore the situation here and look for alternatives, he meant an "Oklahoma" 12 months, which is really 7 or 8 months.

I suppose I should reserve judgement and toss aside this rhetoric as just, well, rhetoric. And that Mr. Bennett is just saying all of this to ratchet up negotiations with the state so that an arena deal gets done in time for October. And, if all of that comes to pass, most of this talk will be water under the bridge when we're sitting in our $125 seats in the third level with binoculars watching Kevin Durant dunk on Greg Oden as the Sonics cruise past the Blazers for their sixth straight NW Division Title.

And I suppose that continuing to berate Clay Bennett serves no purpose than to irritate his seemingly thin skin. After all, it is difficult at this point to determine where the truth lies - is he truly this frustrated, or is it just posturing?

But I can't help but being a little bothered by Mr. Bennett's continual complaining about the situation here. Yes, the city and state are obstinate in getting a deal done, but he had to have known how difficult the situation was when he entered into it, did he not? Did he really think that Howard Schultz was an oveslick city incompetent and that all this situation needed was a shrewd cowboy from Oklahoma to git 'er done? That the region would just rubber-stamp whatever proposal he threw at them in slobbering love-fest to honor a team that had just held them up for a similar ransom 10 short years ago?

Sorry, but I just do not buy it. I'll wait to reserve judgement until the situation is resolved one way or another, but at the moment, it sure appears that Mr. Bennett's trip to Seattle was truly an "Oklahoma" stop.

Sonic News Aplenty

With the draft camp close at hand, all sorts of rumors are floating about the Sonics' future. To wit:

-A league insider tells the Times' Percy Allen that the reason Lenny Wilkens is taking so long to hire a coach is because he wants to hire Lenny Wilkens to be the coach. I can't imagine this is true - Lenny wouldn't be that deceitful, would he - but it still makes me shudder.

- Kerry Eggers in the Portland Tribune says the Blazers' Kevin Pritchard intimates he likes high-risk, high-reward players more than low-risk, low-reward players. If that means he's taking Durant, I've got no problem with that. Pritchard also indicated that Durant is the more NBA-ready, at least offensively. "Kevin is going to come in and score points right away, probably 20 a game."

-Frank Hughes is optimistic that the Sonics will re-sign Rashard, simply because they can offer him a six-year deal and other teams cannot.

-Trenton Hassell tells Mark Madsen the same thing I've been thinking: He'd rather have the 2nd pick than the first. “Because you can’t go wrong with the 2nd pick….I’d hate to be the GM that had to choose between Greg Oden and Kevin Durant.”