If there’s an NBA team that most resembles the Sonics, it is unfortunately not our immediately Southern neighbors, the similarly youthful Portland Trailblazers, whose front office has spent the last several years running circles around ours. Nor is it the fellow bottom-dwelling Miami Heat, who at least have a championship to show for their current train wreck. Nor is it the tragic Memphis Grizzlies, who would have been booted from a fantasy league for collusion after their last trade. No, the team that most resembles ours is the Minnesota Timberwolves, that sad bunch in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Like us, Wolves fans have been beaten senseless by a senseless front office. While Wally Walker (with some help from Rick Sund) signed Jim McIlvaine, traded Shawn Kemp for Vin Baker, and drafted Robert Swift over Al Jefferson, Kevin McHale signed Joe Smith to an illegal contract that cost his team $3.5 million and five 1st-round draft picks. For this and other mishaps, McHale’s been pilloried across the land, most memorably by “The Sports Guy” Bill Simmons in his hilarious Atrocious GM Summit.

Since True Hoop published an e-mail from a fan who got booted from Key Arena for voicing his displeasure to a luxury-boxed Clay Bennett the other day, I figured it was time to share some similar stories I received from a deep Minnesota source who was not eager to go on the record. So consider these accounts unsubstantiated:

1) There’s an unwritten directive within the Wolves organization to crack down on fans carrying anti-McHale signs. If a fan is found with such a sign, not only is it confiscated, but the fan is kicked out. By contrast, a fan who brought a sign mocking Ruben Patterson (a convicted sex offender) with the following text “Ruben the rapist Patterson” was allowed to stay, because, as Celebrity Jeopardy’s Sean Connery has taught us, the terms “the rapist” and “therapist” are easily confused, so the fan may have intended the latter. “The space between them was small enough,” according to the Wolves.

2) Just to give a sense of McHale’s skills as a talent scout, there’s this tale of one of his former first-round picks: Ndudi Ebi was selected by the Timberwolves in the first round of the 2003 draft. While Ebi didn’t stick around the league, he did manage to lose badly in a game of one-on-one to a 6′2″ Target Center security guard.

Somebody sign that security guard!

There you have it, Sonics fans. Misery loves company, so I hope it helps to know that you’re not alone.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Dumb Ideas, Supersonics, Roundball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.