Attendance Report

I've tried all sorts of ways to show how massive an impact the Sonics' move has had on NBA attendance, and how by removing that particular aspect from the equation totally alters the picture of the league's health.

Unfortunately, the graphs I've thrown up there haven't adequately captured just how much of an outlier the Sonix are this season. The graph below, though, goes a long way to showing that uniqueness. Listed below are all the teams, with their corresponding attendance from last year to this year.

Coach Lister

Word out of Manila is that former Sonic center Alton Lister is a "skills coach" for San Miguel Beer.

There are so many jokes to make with that sentence that it's almost not even fair to try.

It's a positive article, though, and Lister comes off as a modest man who appreciated his career in the league, without the standard ego-jock stuff you normally read.

Of course, the comments are filled with "remember when Kemp dunked on Lister in the playoffs"-type stuff. At what point does Alton Lister just come out and say, "Yes, I remember that. Yes, it sucks. But let me ask you - how many points did you score in the NBA?"

Payton, A Near-Fight, and Toothpaste

Humorous story from the Seattle PI's Jim Moore about his near-fistfight with Gary Payton prior to a Seattle-Sacramento playoff game in the mid-1990s.