Remarkably, we got this far into the season without any notable intrasquad drama. But a jumper-happy teenager with about as much conscience as Lee Atwater was bound to chafe on his teammates at some point. The P-I’s Gary Washburn reports that team “veterans” are complaining about Durant’s recent shot selection. Only one veteran went on record. Guess who:

“Yeah, I think so,” was Wally Szczerbiak’s response when asked if the shots could be better distributed. “I was just observing the stat sheet (Sunday) and no one got double-digit shots other than Kevin. And the coaching staff is asking a 19-year-old to do a lot. Let’s put it that way.

Sunday night was “Kids at the Key” to celebrate Squatch’s 15th birthday, for which the hirsuite mascot was joined by swarms of little ones and nine of his closest mascot friends. (He’s now old enough to take driver’s ed–to think he’s been riding that Harley all these years without a license!) So many enthusiastic and uncritical attendees made for a Key that rocked like few in recent memory. After a first half Nick Collison tip jam, I saw a young girl in a pink and purple velour warm-up jacket celebrate so vigorously in the aisle that she tripped on a stair and crashed into an adjacent seat.

As for the game, the Sonics provided plenty to cheer about, taking the Kings down to the wire in a heartbreaking 103-101 defeat (that’s 14 straight, if you’re counting). Johan Petro continued his solid play, Wally Z displayed amazing intensity for a 30-year-old with bad ankles and a great contract on a losing team, and Kevin Durant compensated for his poor night shooting by willing himself to the free throw line, repeatedly flinging his 19-year-old bones into the veteran muscle defending the basket.

(Another Durant anecdote: as he walked by the scorer’s table after a late fourth quarter timeout, he high-fived a couple of kids sitting in the front row. From twenty rows back, they looked to be in their early adolescence. It struck me that Durant is much closer to their age than to that of some of his teammates.)

Nevertheless, despite the energy of the night and some great play by the young Supes (the highlight being a steal by Durant who then passed to Green for the tomahawk dunk, thus endangering the girl in the velour jacket), it wasn’t enough to beat Kevin Martin. The Kings’ super-skinny shooting guard scored five points in the last 17 seconds on one free throw and two improbable shots, the last being a coast-to-coast drive for a buzzer-beating baseline jumper after an even more improbable game-tying-three by Damien Wilkins, who’d just come in after a long stretch on the bench. Thanks to lots of offseason work, Martin has gone from late-first-round afterthought to outright star. Should the young Sonics follow his lead, the team could be good before tonight’s kids are old enough to know that it’s not.

13 straight L’s. A Baker’s dozen. A Vin Baker’s apathy.

L, L, L, L, L, L, L, L, L, L, L, L, L.

Read the above line about thirty times over and you’ll have a sense of the tedium of tonight’s Sonics game against the Atlanta Hawks. The Supes lost 99-90, though it wasn’t as close as the score.

The inert and/or distracted fans (like players, like fans) who deemed it worthwhile to stick around for the fourth quarter were rewarded with a small burst of good basketball by the Supes. The unquestioned highlight was an awkward but rousing coast-to-coast, and-one drive and dunk by Buzzer Beater and North Beach Elementary favorite Johan Petro. The lithe Frenchman acquitted himself well–9 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 blocks in 22 minutes–making a compelling case for a more regular spot in the rotation. Perhaps he was energized by the granola bar he ate on the bench.

Playing in front of a semi-home crowd of Seattleites, Bremertonians, and Bremelos, Marvin Williams had a career-high 33 points.

PJ Carlesimo complemented his beige blazer with a burnt orange mock turtleneck.

Despite a strong performance by Jeff Green, who highlighted his 15 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 assists with a dunk on 7′6″ Yao Ming, the Sonics lost their 11th straight today, putting them 23 games under .500. Couple that with the upcoming trade deadline, and the course of action is clear, at least to those of us who have hung on the words of Kenny Rogers’ nowhere-bound train riding gambler: time to give up on winning this season and look to better our chance on the next hand. (Wally’s already talking like he’s got one foot out the door.) Now, there’s no need to make a panic trade–an expiring contract lets you play the market when it expires. But short of showcasing him for a trade, there’s no longer reason to give Kurt Thomas heavy minutes at the expense of Johan Petro and even Mo Sene. And Wally could certainly cede a few minutes to Mickael Gelabale. The season’s going nowhere. Let’s develop that young talent, tout de suite.

Hornets 123, Sonics 93

I know, I know. Another squeeker. The score doesn’t indicate much in the way of progress, but last night’s game was actually pretty encouraging. Sure, that sounds a little ridiculous, and it’s as much a reflection of how bad things have been as anything else, but last night, we saw the team’s feted franchise player, Kevin Durant, play perhaps his best game. He played hard on defense, attacked the basket, rebounded, and passed. He finished with a stat line–20 points on 9-15 shooting, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists–that would’ve been a standard night’s work for Scottie Pippen in his prime. (For a while, he appeared to be threatening his first triple double.) This is Durant’s third 6-assist game in the last five. Keep up the good work, Durantula! And Earl Watson, whatever you had for breakfast, have it again on Friday before the Memphis game.

Go Sonics!

I spent the third quarter of last night’s Mavericks/Sonics game with my dad and his friend Irv in Irv’s seats (or rather, they sat in Irv’s seats, about 7 rows back from the court, while I sat in one of the dozen or so empty seats adjacent to it). It was like sitting with Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets: “You don’t need to know much about basketball to know that the name of the game is moving around, not standing around…it’s great: each game is better than the next…this team stinks.”

Unlike their balcony-dwelling progenitors, my father and his friend had good reason to be grumpy old men. These Sonics are just bad. Last night, they failed to hit 50 points until the fourth quarter. That’s right, folks: they had 46 points at the end of the third quarter. They brought in offensive “genius” Paul Westhead so they could develop the league’s least efficient and most offensive offense, the Still Life on Basketball Court.

Of course, as an old basketball coach of mine used to say, “you can’t make chicken soup out of chicken shit.” As of now, the Sonics don’t have the talent–or that talent is not yet sufficiently developed–for them to be a good team. But that doesn’t mean they should cry “uncle” on the season. Remember in November, when they’d take teams like the Spurs and Suns down to the wire at the Key, simply because they’d play harder? Dallas is by far the better team and was likely looking forward to a virtual off night. The Sonics should have made last night suck for the Mavericks. After the game, Dallas coach Avery Johnson should have been lamenting his team’s poor play, complaining that, although they got the win, such an effort won’t cut it against Boston or San Antonio.

So how can the Sonics turn it around? Who can lead them? It’s a tall task for anyone, let alone a slender-shouldered teenager. But I think Kevin Durant is the answer. For the first half of last night, he was wearing what Lorenzo Romar likes to call “the cool jacket…you know, [the] one you don’t want to get dirty, don’t want to get any wrinkles or smudges on.” This was most apparent as he jogged back on defense on a two-on-one, swiveling his head left and right to keep casual tabs on the hard-charging Mavs.

Please, Kevin, lose the cool jacket. When Josh Howard gets up in your grill, rip the ball through–his nose will take it worse than your elbow–and go directly to the basket. Shoot ten free throws a game. Be a nuisance on defense. You did it for a while in the second half; there’s no reason not to do it all game long. Sure, you’ll come out with a few bumps and bruises. But just like the quarterback who takes the big hit immediately after releasing the touchdown pass, you’ll get the last laugh. You don’t have a deep playoff run to preserve yourself for. Make these games fun again.

Well, the Sonics sucked again, losing to New Jersey, 99-88. There was a silver lining, though, in the play of Johan Petro (22 pts, 9 rebs) and Nick Collison (18 and 13). Fantasy owners of the latter must be delighting in his recent string of dominant performances–he’s averaged 14 rebounds a game over the last five games. Oddly, he had a similarly prolific stretch in mid-January last year, as you can see here.

That’s not the Link o’ the Day, though. This time capsule of a page, by disgruntled Knick fan JaKe Beast and not updated since April of 1999, provides a comically childish array of letters, songs, and cartoons deriding the late 90’s Bulls and the NBA’s brass. Without further ado: Remove David Stern and Rod Thorn.

An outdated post from yesterday’s Buzzer Beater:

For the three or four of you who still care, last night was a sad display by the Supes, who turned the ball over 23 times, let Lebron James score all his points in the paint, and generally just stunk it up against Cleveland. To add injury to insult, Durant sprained his left ankle in fourth quarter garbage time (not to imply he shouldn’t be on the floor–more minutes for the kids, I say!). It’s not serious, but it’s fitting.

Today is New Jersey, another franchise that will soon be moving, albeit only across the river. As mediocre teams go, they’re pretty entertaining, with good ball movement, Jason Kidd’s nightly quest for the triple double, the somewhat diminished but still impressive aerial acrobatics of Richard Jefferson (4th in the league in scoring and having a career year) and Vince Carter, and the ridiculous athleticism of rookie Sean Williams, who dropped to the late first round because he smoked bud, the gateway drug to a draft day steal. Just don’t do the Meadowlands like the Birdman did N’awlins, Sean.

Another day, another loss. It’s an old story: the Sonics scrapped and kept it close–with Kevin Durant’s 12 4th quarter points providing some hope–before, well, losing. (This time it was to Phoenix, 104-98). Apparently, the Sonics started quite hot (pushing a 1st quarter lead up to 20), but we didn’t get to see it because the Bulls/Trailblazers game went into double overtime—giving this Sonics fan another opportunity to wish the Blazers were our team.

The good news? Jeff Green led the team in minutes, suggesting that Carlesimo is serious about developing the rookie. The bad news (besides the inability to close out games, run a half-court offense, and rotate defensively)? Kevin Durant didn’t lead the team in minutes. Granted, 37 minutes is a good number and he is recovering from an injury, but it gets frustrating watching the team founder offensively and fall behind at the beginning of the fourth quarter while Durant sits on the bench, forcing him to go into hero mode as soon as he gets in. Tonight, Carlesimo had him on the bench for over 5 minutes from the end of the 3rd quarter to the beginning of the 4th.

In other news around the league, if I were a Chicago fan, I’d be starting a fire Jim Boylan campaign ASAP, regardless of the team’s record in their statistically insignificant start with him. The dude’s playing Ben Wallace Emeritus 40+ minutes a game while handing out DNPs to his young guys (Tyrus Thomas, Joakim Noah, etc.) like party favors. It’s like he’s auditioning for some honorary Larry Brown award. Note to John Paxson: If you don’t want your energetic young big guys (I always wanted Tyson Chandler!), we’ll take ‘em. How about we give you Kurt Thomas for Ty Thomas. It’ll look the same to you in the box score, and Boylan’ll get to play another past-his-prime, right-way veteran.

Oklahoma City is now set to vote on a sales tax to improve their Ford Arena in hopes of luring an NBA team. The sales tax would replace an expiring tax, MAPS for Kids, that has been used to fund public school improvements. (Prior to that there was simply MAPS (Metropolitan Area Projects), which funded parks, trolleys, cultural centers, and sports facilities).

With MAPS for Kids set to expire at the end of ‘08, the city spent the first half of ‘07 taking online feedback from the public regarding what they’d like to see in the MAPS 3 proposal. While far from a scientific poll, the results suggest a gap between the desires of the public and the priorities of the city council. Of the 2,747 suggestions, 1,096 were for street, sidewalk, transit, and trail improvements (with another 117 for beautification of streetscapes); 251 were for parks, amusement parks/fairgrounds, community/youth centers, or amphitheaters; and 81 were for an NBA practice facility or improvements to the Ford Arena. (To be fair, there were 65 votes for a soccer or football stadium, bumping the (presumably) pro sports count up to 146.)

Perhaps sympathy to Chris Van Dyk’s anti-subsidy movement isn’t unique to Seattle. Perhaps it’s not the result of effete coastal urban snobbery, as some have argued.

Sure, maybe the tax will pass in Oklahoma–after all, Bennett & co. have certainly treated their hometown with more respect than they have Seattle. And maybe the city’s unscientific survey is grossly distorted. Maybe those who really want a team didn’t know about it, or don’t have computers. But my guess is that, given the choice, most voters would prefer to see their tax dollars used as something other than seed money for a billionaire’s latest project.