Falling, Falling

If you’re looking for a silver lining in a Sonic season covered in mud, here it is.

Last night, my alma mater, the University of Oregon, the #2 ranked team in the nation, a team on the verge of combining a national championship game with a Heisman Trophy in a single, glorious season, lost all of it in the span of 10 seconds.

It’s one thing for Ohio State, USC, LSU, or any of the other perennial powerhouses to blow their shot at a national title. After all, those schools are borderline professional football teams, and their chance at a championship comes annually. Likewise, Heisman Trophies grow like weeds in an untended garden for those lucky universities.

For Oregon, these opportunities come once a century, and Dennis Dixon’s injured knee in the first quarter of a game the Ducks were dominating ended it all. We – as fans – fell from the heights of the Rose or Sugar Bowls to the depths of the Holiday Bowl in moments. It was a dizzying plunge.

So, here’s your silver lining, Sonic fans. As fans of a team with no shot at anything this year, we have nowhere to fall. With an ownership and a league hell-bent on taking our team and with a roster riddled with questions, rehabs, and inadequacies, we have nowhere to go but up.

Remember the pain in your stomach we all felt when the Sonics would annually lose in the first round, the tension you’d get as the Sonics fell behind 1-0, 2-0, 2-1, then the urge to vomit after they lost a series they should have won?

Well, that pain is gone now, and there’s no chance of it this year. As bad as rooting for a 1-8 team is, and it is bad, perhaps it’s not as painful as rooting for a team which disappoints you.

At least, that’s what I’m telling myself this morning.

Ah, Bud

This has nothing to do with the Sonics or the NBA, but, well, it's our blog, so you'll just have to indulge me.

At the precise moment I looked at Sports Illustrated's home page with a massive photo of Barry Bonds and the associated story on his indictment, there was a story with this headline located immediately to the right of the photo:

"Selig: Baseball's revenue tops $6 billion mark"

Folks, if you can't see the arrow joining those two stories together, well, you're just not trying. Say what you want about Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa, but those three gentlemen have one hell of a lot more to do with the present fiscal health of major league baseball than Bud Selig, and everyone in baseball knows it.

Either baseball and the press were derelict in their duties and knew nothing about the steroid situation many years ago, or their hands are now covered with so much blood they're having trouble endorsing their (sizable) checks.

Seen & Heard

I haven't been keeping up with rumors about Sonic players and trades lately, simply because it's hard enough to keep up with all the losses.

But I found a couple of rumors out there that were of passing interest.

1. Mike McGraw of the Daily Herald in Chicago writes: "So this is all a pipe dream, but a player such as Seattle's Wally Szczerbiak would look good atop the Bulls' wish list. Last week, he scored 32 points and hit 12 of 16 shots in a game at Sacramento. But Szczerbiak has little future with the rebuilding Sonics. He played nine minutes in a loss to Utah three days later.
The bad news is Szczerbiak makes $12 million this season and $13 million next season. He'll be an attractive mid-level exception candidate, but not until 2009."

2. John Denton of the Florida Today writes: "Some power forwards or centers who the Magic might have interest in trading for include: Michael Doleac, Mark Madsen, Wayne Simien, Robert Swift, Saer Sene, Calvin Booth, Lorenzen Wright, Earl Barron, Melvin Ely, Johan Petro, Jarron Collins, Aaron Williams and Brian Skinner."

Yikes, that's one scary list, and further reinforces the notion that if you have a young son, you should be strapping his legs to a stretching apparturs every night. Because, quite clearly, no matter how bad you are, if you are 7' tall, there will always be a job for you.