Not that it's the biggest deal; the Sonics are not exactly chasing down any playoff aspirations. If anything, it helps the team's goal of losing as many games as possible down the stretch.
In any event, Chris Wilcox' right pinkie is hurt enough that both he and the team decided to shut operations down for the remaining ten games.
In other news, Gary Washburn details how Earl Watson is not into "moral victories" and misses the playoffs, David Stern also kept talking, but, well, I think you know where we stand on that sort of thing, and Art Thiel says that the city is - again - talking to the state legislature about funding the missing $75 million from the KeyArena deal, having realized that all other options are not going to play out.
Thiel quotes Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis as saying, ""The city can't do this on its own. We need a partnership with the state if we're going to [get a stadium deal done]."
Oh, and the Sonics play the Bobcats tonight at the Key.
You know, if you like watching basketball or something.
Friday, March 28
Thursday, March 27
Naievete
Well, there's things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin' everywhere you go,
But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You'll never see me wear a suit of white.
Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's OK,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black
-Johnny Cash
Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth didn’t have to care. Nobody asked Whizzer White or Sammy Baugh if they had an opinion.
In 1936, in Berlin, the Olympics were Nazi Germany’s crowning achievement, a chance to show the world how wonderful Deutschland could be. Even more, it was an opportunity for Adolf Hitler to demonstrate to his populace the magnificence of the Third Reich, how he had thrown off the shackles of the ignominy of World War I and restored the Fatherland to its rightful place among the elite of the world’s nations.
Nobody asked Gehrig, Ruth, Baugh or White because they had nothing to do with the Olympics, because no one had yet figured out that bastardizing every principle the Olympics stood for could be financially rewarding. So amateurs toddled off to Berlin – despite evidence showing that almost 50% of the populace wanted a boycott – and Hitler had another moment in the sun before the devil summoned him back home.
2008 is not 1936, though, not by a long shot. It is plainly evident that China – a nation that kills monks for speaking out, that detains dissenters for decades in work gangs when it’s not killing them, that executes thousands of people every year in stadiums, that backs the hideous government of Sudan in the brutal murders of hundreds of thousands of Africans in Darfur – is well aware that the Olympics is a stage from which the host country can advertise its magnificence to the rest of the world.
Even Steven Spielberg, never shy about making a buck, pulled out of orchestrating the opening ceremonies. “At this point, my time and energy must be spent not on Olympic ceremonies,” Spielberg said, “but on doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur."
Not everyone gets it, though.
"We believe, however, naively, ... that sports has something enormous to offer the world," David Stern said recently to the Associated Press. "And we also believe that the Olympics is a sporting event, and indeed, has a history in ancient times of being a time when war stopped so that people could play together."
The “naive” Stern is not alone. Dwyane Wade has spent the better part of this season resting up from injury in order to be better prepared for the Olympics. He echoed his commissioner right down the line.
“My job is to play basketball, to worry about the game. We'll let the Olympic Committee worry about everything else,” Wade told the AP.
I wonder, would Stern, a Jew, feel comfortable about sending his athletes to compete in Nazi Germany, knowing that the profits from the Olympics were being used to build gas chambers? Would he continue to spout inanities about the Olympics being a “sporting event”?
Or, rather, in this hypothetical world of 1936, would he grow a conscience and take a stance on the side of humanity rather than money? Decide that the large amounts of money to be made by the NBA in expanding to the lucrative German market were not worth the bloodshed?
Part of me hopes that people are capable of seeing depravity and evil in their own time, rather than only with the hindsight gained from history books. Part of me hopes that Dwyane Wade and LeBron James would say, no, we don’t want any part of a two-week festival honoring a country that forces women to abort their children and sells the organs of executed political prisoners.
But most of me knows that a blindfold sewn from a billion Chinese Yuan covers David Stern’s eyes.
Naive? Not me.
And things need changin' everywhere you go,
But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You'll never see me wear a suit of white.
Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's OK,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black
-Johnny Cash
Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth didn’t have to care. Nobody asked Whizzer White or Sammy Baugh if they had an opinion.
In 1936, in Berlin, the Olympics were Nazi Germany’s crowning achievement, a chance to show the world how wonderful Deutschland could be. Even more, it was an opportunity for Adolf Hitler to demonstrate to his populace the magnificence of the Third Reich, how he had thrown off the shackles of the ignominy of World War I and restored the Fatherland to its rightful place among the elite of the world’s nations.
Nobody asked Gehrig, Ruth, Baugh or White because they had nothing to do with the Olympics, because no one had yet figured out that bastardizing every principle the Olympics stood for could be financially rewarding. So amateurs toddled off to Berlin – despite evidence showing that almost 50% of the populace wanted a boycott – and Hitler had another moment in the sun before the devil summoned him back home.
2008 is not 1936, though, not by a long shot. It is plainly evident that China – a nation that kills monks for speaking out, that detains dissenters for decades in work gangs when it’s not killing them, that executes thousands of people every year in stadiums, that backs the hideous government of Sudan in the brutal murders of hundreds of thousands of Africans in Darfur – is well aware that the Olympics is a stage from which the host country can advertise its magnificence to the rest of the world.
Even Steven Spielberg, never shy about making a buck, pulled out of orchestrating the opening ceremonies. “At this point, my time and energy must be spent not on Olympic ceremonies,” Spielberg said, “but on doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur."
Not everyone gets it, though.
"We believe, however, naively, ... that sports has something enormous to offer the world," David Stern said recently to the Associated Press. "And we also believe that the Olympics is a sporting event, and indeed, has a history in ancient times of being a time when war stopped so that people could play together."
The “naive” Stern is not alone. Dwyane Wade has spent the better part of this season resting up from injury in order to be better prepared for the Olympics. He echoed his commissioner right down the line.
“My job is to play basketball, to worry about the game. We'll let the Olympic Committee worry about everything else,” Wade told the AP.
I wonder, would Stern, a Jew, feel comfortable about sending his athletes to compete in Nazi Germany, knowing that the profits from the Olympics were being used to build gas chambers? Would he continue to spout inanities about the Olympics being a “sporting event”?
Or, rather, in this hypothetical world of 1936, would he grow a conscience and take a stance on the side of humanity rather than money? Decide that the large amounts of money to be made by the NBA in expanding to the lucrative German market were not worth the bloodshed?
Part of me hopes that people are capable of seeing depravity and evil in their own time, rather than only with the hindsight gained from history books. Part of me hopes that Dwyane Wade and LeBron James would say, no, we don’t want any part of a two-week festival honoring a country that forces women to abort their children and sells the organs of executed political prisoners.
But most of me knows that a blindfold sewn from a billion Chinese Yuan covers David Stern’s eyes.
Naive? Not me.
Wednesday, March 26
Do Over
As you've probably heard, Clay Bennett has generously offered to leave our history, team name, and old jock straps behind when he steals our basketball team. David Stern (busy getting "wowed" in Oklahomie) seemed to back down yesterday from his previous hard-line stance against the NBA "ever returning to Seattle", hinting that we might someday get a new team if we play nice with Clayface.It's an interesting scenario. If we "own" our history, does that mean we could erase the Bennett Tragedy, granting Sonics fans a "do-over" for the past three horrible years? Hey, it worked for Spider-Man (sorta).
As tempting as it might be to forget that Mo Sene or Wally Szczerbiak ever wore a Sonics uniform, we would also be forfeiting the future legacy of Kevin Durant, and the struggles it took to get him would have all been in vain. Imagine the '85 Bulls moving to Butte, Montana (The Butte Bulls!) with Chicago receiving the Clippers as a consolation prize. Do you think Chicagoans would enjoy watching Jordan and Pippen hoist those six banners in another city, while they got stuck with Michael Cage and Benoit Benjamin?
Maybe, a long time from now, these three years of hell will only be a blip on the radar (or a "just a comma" in history as GW likes to say). Perhaps someday, after a brief hiatus from basketball in Seattle, we'll raise a new championship banner into the rafters of Microsoft Arena next to the hallowed '79 version, while the Bennett Boys are relegated to the dustbin of history, along with fellow carpetbaggers Ken Behring, Jeff Smulyan other long-forgotten villains of Seattle sports past.
This isn't a horrible fate. Brooklyn never got a second chance at the Dodgers. After all the bad blood between the uppity city council and the ego maniacal commissioner of the NBA, it's somewhat of a miracle that the possibility still exists.
And yet, I'm still not eager to embrace this offer. We're still being robbed. If someone steals your beloved family dog, but gives you a new puppy two years later, does that excuse the crime?
I want Bennett and Stern to come out and admit collusion. I want Stern to tell the world that there was never any real opportunity to keep the Sonics in Seattle--that this was a back room deal of the sleaziest variety to get his pal Bennett a team by any means necessary and to scare other cities into giving owners whatever they want in the future. I want Stern to step down from the office which he has disgraced.
I want justice.
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