Sonics fight: It's gonna get ugly

I thought I might be able to go a week without having to read about the Sonics Situation. I was wrong.

The Seattle P.I. asked Seattle lawyer Randy Aliment what he predicted for the upcoming Sonics trial. His answer? There Will Be Blood:

"Here you've got breach of lease, you've got breach of contract, you've got fraud. But bottom line, what you really have is a fight. Somebody is trying to steal the team, somebody wants to keep the team, and that's all the city knows and all Clay Bennett knows.

"That's why the NBA has to be looking at this thing saying, 'We've got to put a stop to this' or who knows where the fallout will end? Because once that fistfight erupts in court, it's like a bar where eventually it spills out into the street. You'd think somebody would want to stop this before it goes that far."

Read the rest in today's Seattle P.I.

Anatomy of a Feud

The Kobe Bryant-Ray Allen subplot to the Finals is beginning to get a bit of attention from the national media, but still not as much as I might have expected, given the lengthy delay between the conference finals and the championship series. For those who are unaware of the conflict, here’s a brief synopsis.

OCTOBER 2004
During an exhibition game between the Sonics and Lakers, Ray Allen receives an elbow from Kobe Bryant and the two exchange words.

OCTOBER 2004
After an exhibition game against the Blazers, Allen questions Kobe Bryant’s leadership skills to reporters, especially in light of the recently departed Shaquille O’Neal. “He feels like he needs to show this league and the people in this country that he is better without Shaq,” Allen says. “He can win championships without Shaq. So offensively, he's going to jump out and say, 'I can average 30 points. I can still carry the load on this team.' If Kobe doesn't see he needs two and a half good players to be a legitimate playoff contender or win a championship, in about a year or two he'll be calling out to Jerry Buss that 'We need some help in here,' or 'Trade me.’ And we'll all be saying, 'I told you so,' when he says that."

Allen concludes by stating, “He has the talent [to lead a team], he can do it. But is his attitude going to allow him to take a back seat and let Lamar Odom shine and let Caron Butler have his nights and bring those big guys along with him?”

Obviously, Allen was proven right, as this past summer Bryant demanded a trade or some immediate help.

OCTOBER 20, 2004
Bryant allegedly phones Allen and tells him “I’m gonna bust your ass.” Bryant is referring to an upcoming exhibition game between the Sonics and Lakers. Allen denies the phone call ever took place. Bryant does as well, and also adds, “Don’t even put me and dude [Allen] in the same place.”


The two would continue to battle on-court while Allen was with the Sonics (including this memorable block by Bryant on an Allen dunk and this other brilliant Bryant game), but obviously the “feud” moved to the back burner when Allen was dealt to the Celtics this past summer.

In total, the two have tangled ten times since their tete a tete in October 2004. In those ten games, Allen’s team is 6-4, but Kobe clearly wins the individual game with 29.4 ppg to Allen’s 22. Ray does get bonus points for playing fewer minutes and for tallying more rebounds, but no matter how you look at it, Bryant has bested Allen in the individual matchup.

It’s tough to say, though, how much of the greatness attributed to Bryant lately is due to his play and how much is due to his surroundings. Bryant has been tremendous this season, but this is still the same man who received catcalls from the balcony of NBA fandom for much of the past few seasons. It makes you wonder, is it Bryant who has changed, or our perception of him?

Likewise, the perception of Allen has changed, and in one season he has gone from a feared offensive weapon to an aging gunslinger. When Allen first came to Seattle, I expected a one-dimensional shooter, basically a younger and slightly more athletic version of Dale Ellis. I was surprised to see, however, a uniquely skilled offensive player who was capable of getting 25-5-5 on just about any night. In addition, he showed us his cold-blooded nature in the 2005 playoffs by putting up lights-out numbers for three rounds.

With double ankle surgery this past spring and the presence of two strong offensive players alongside him, Allen saw his numbers drop dramatically this year, and his playoff woes are well documented. As does Bryant – as does any athlete – Ray Allen has pride, but unlike Kobe, Allen’s pride is muted. In all the time I’ve watched him play, I’ve never seen Allen thump his chest or stare down an opponent in a menacing fashion. Ray Allen would never petulantly refuse to take a shot for an entire half because it simply would never occur to him. Perhaps it’s just not his nature.

Whether or not Allen can find enough magic elixir in his bag of tricks to put up some 25-point games this Finals remains to be seen, but I have a feeling that the now-simmering feud will add some fuel to his engine. The question remains: Are the wounds to his pride deep enough to stimulate the great offensive player still inhabiting that body?

For those of us counting on a Laker loss, it’s the best we can hope for.

(Information was gathered from The Seattle Times, Tacoma News Tribune, and Seattle PI).

Long Time Gone

Game 7.

June 2, 1996.

It may have been twelve years ago today, but it seems like one hundred. Can it really have only been a little more than a decade since a Utah-Seattle matchup meant so much?

Is it really possible that Greg Gumble mused that Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp were about to take the mantle from John Stockton and Karl Malone as the pre-eminent inside-outside tandem of the next decade?

If you haven’t already, go ahead and click that youtube link above. Okay, have you watched the entire thing? Now, roll up your sleeve and check: Are the goosebumps there?

No, how about now?

Of course they are.

That series had everything a Sonic fan could want, everything a basketball fan could want. The key to any classic series – to any classic event – is a hero and a villain. For a Sonic fan of the mid-90s, there was no greater hero than Shawn Kemp and no greater villain than Karl Malone.

While Stockton and Hornacek were certainly despised in Seattle, they weren’t on the same level as Malone, a 250-pound behemoth of a power forward who flopped on defense like a corn stalk in a gentle breeze. Lord, we hated that man. We hated his 18-foot jump shot, which he took while standing in a perfectly straight line, angled slightly backwards, as if his feet were tied to the floor and he was wavering around that axis.

We hated the way he whined the referees for (pick one) not getting calls or getting too many.

But, more than anything else, we hated the way he seemed to take 17 minutes to take a foul shot. The deliberate way he bounced the ball while adjusting his feet, the excruciating muttering while he spun the ball in his hands. While I always wondered what the heck Malone was saying to himself while he readied his shot, I can say with certainty what thousands of Sonic fans across the northwest were saying:

“I hope you miss this shot and tear your achilles while backpedaling down the court, you no-good SOB.”

It was the time he took, though, that came to be his undoing in that 1996 series. That season, Malone shot 72% from the line, but that success vanished in the playoffs. While Malone struggled even before reaching KeyArena (he shot just shy of 60% in the first two rounds), he bottomed out in Seattle, managing only 1 of 6 in Game 1.

That failure was exacerbated by the taunts of 17,072 fans, who began counting down an imaginary 10-second clock every time Malone approached the foul line. Did that countdown impact Malone’s success at the line? It’s difficult to say, but while he rebounded to hit 12 of 16 in Game 2, the big man sputtered in Game 7, hitting only 6 of 12, and, considering the Sonics won by only four (90-86), it’s not out of the realm of possibility to say that the fans had a direct impact on who would play the Bulls for the title that season.

It was one of the biggest moments in Sonic history – not only did the Sonics qualify for the NBA finals for the first time since the 1970s, but they did so by knocking off their arch nemesis, with that nemesis’ greatest weapon being forced into embarrassment.

Quantifying the value of a sports franchise on a city is exceedingly difficult. Financially, the numbers are never really there, and the justification for outlays of millions of dollars for stadia falls apart.

Sometimes, though, you can throw the logical arguments out the window and embrace the emotional ones. Sometimes, you ignore the rational reasoning.

Sometimes, you get the Sonics beating the Jazz in 1996.