Tag Archives: basketball

News, Sports

Seattle to NBA: Do We Get Our Sonics Back or Not?

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Chris Hansen
Future Sonics owner (knock on wood) Chris Hansen, speaking to the media yesterday in NYC

The city officials and NBA-owner-wannabes of Seattle and Sacramento presented the merits of their respective fan bases and arena deals to league owners Wednesday in New York City, and what have we learned? Nothing. In fact, we actually know less.

Here were the facts heading into Wednesday:

  1. Chris Hansen and his group of Seattle investors have purchased the Sacramento Kings, pending NBA approval.
  2. Leading Sacramentonianites will be permitted to lobby NBA owners to cancel Hansen’s purchase agreement, and are touting an alternate bid for a new arena in Sacramento.
  3. NBA owners will vote on whether to approve Hansen as an owner—and his plan to relocate the Kings to Seattle—at their April 18-19 Board of Governors meeting.

The cities made their pitches in two two-hour blocks at the St. Regis Hotel. The principals, including NBA commissioner David Stern, then met with the media. And the only new information conveyed was that we can scratch #3 off our facts list. Stern now says that the question “Seattle or Sacramento?”—an easy decision for tourists—may be too complex for NBA owners to answer by April 19.

Stern indicated that the owners are specifically interested in the construction timelines for the new arenas that have been proposed in each city, and any potential political and regulatory obstacles. The league presumably also wants to assay the economic strength of the two markets, potential fan and corporate support, and the personalities of the future owners. Which of these factors is most important? Which presentation was best? No one who matters is saying.

Sure, you can find plenty of speculation and opinion. The Sacto group “offered the most intriguing sales pitch of the day,” writes Art Thiel of SportspressNW. “If I was confident going in, I am even more confident now,” King County Executive Dow Constantine told Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times.

Hansen and Steve Ballmer made Seattle’s presentation, with support from Mayor Mike McGinn, Constantine, and current Kings owner George Maloof, who told owners he wants the Hansen deal approved. From Hansen’s four-minute press conference, you can sketch how the Seattle group tried to differentiate their bid from the Sacramento one. “We’ve been working on this for 883 days,” Hansen told the media. (Sacramento lead bidder Vivek Ranadive got involved just 2 weeks ago.) Hansen: “Seattle is doing very well economically, we’ve got the right kind of industries growing.” (Sacramento’s major industry is the state government of California.)

But it’s all conjecture. As former St. Regis resident Ernest Hemingway once said: “Never confuse movement with action.”

The biggest question remains unanswered: If the NBA cancels Hansen’s purchase agreement, by what mechanism would the league force the current owners to sell to the Sacramento group? As I have written here before, this fact—that a purchase agreement has been signed, that the Kings are not a beef cattle up for auction—is the single strongest factor in the Seattle group’s favor. KCPQ’s Aaron Levine tried to get clarity on the issue by asking Stern if the fact that a purchase agreement has been signed pushes the needle Seattle’s way. Stern refused to answer.

So, after a hotly-anticipated day yielded nothing, we count down until…well, who knows? The Sonics’ move to Oklahoma City for the 2008-09 season was not official until July 2, 2008, when Clay Bennett’s ownership group reached agreement to buy out the final two years of the KeyArena lease. If you’re wondering how long the NBA could let this drag on, the answer would seem to be at least another three months.

My recommendation is this: Ignore all of it—yes, wipe this meandering article from your mind MIB-style—until the NBA owners announce their decision. Nothing you learn between now and then will be authoritative, and nothing you can do between now and then will be influential. Meantime, enjoy this exclusive video I obtained from highly-placed league sources showing Steve Ballmer’s part of the presentation.

News, Sports

Husky Hoopsters Discover Team Chemistry Doesn’t Win Games — Talent Does

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BreakingBadWith last night’s loss in the first round of the second-rate National Invitational Tournament, the University of Washington men’s basketball season is over.

The year featured an 8th-place conference finish, sub-par home record, and a one-and-done in a consolation tournament. The Huskies did not accomplish much. But they did do one important thing — they put a stake in one of sports’ most maddeningly persistent myths.

If there was one thing every insider agreed on before college basketball season, it was that though this year’s Huskies had less talent than last year’s team, they had one ineffable, elusive, and — to some, necessary — component of a winning squad.

“We have great team chemistry this year,” said team captain Abdul Gaddy before the season. “It’s one of our strengths, and I think that’s going to really help us offensively and defensively.” Head coach Lorenzo Romar said the 2012-13 Huskies had “best chemistry of any team that we’ve had.”

If that’s true, we’ve all found out what team chemistry is good for: absolutely nothing.

The preseason storyline: Departed stars Terrence Ross and Tony Wroten, both first-round NBA draft picks, had cared more about showing off for pro scouts than sharing the ball and communicating on defense. With Ross and Wroten gone, surely the Huskies would be better on both ends of the floor.

Instead, the Huskies were worse. And not only by wins and losses, but by practically every basketball metric you can come up with, even the ones where you’d think good team chemistry would help.

Take assists, that epitome of team-oriented hoops. Last year, 49.2 percent of the Huskies’ made baskets were the result of an assist. That was a dismal number, 277th in D1 basketball. This year, with ballhogs Wroten and Ross gone…only 47.6 percent of made baskets came from an assist, 304th in the country. Despite the improved team chemistry, the Huskies got worse at sharing the ball.

Same story on defense. Last year, the Huskies allowed 96.3 points per 100 possessions, for a very mediocre 101st in college. This year, with the presumed better communication and trust needed for good defense, the Huskies allowed 97.7 points per 100 possessions, 153rd in D1. Again — chemistry better, performance worse.

Where else might chemistry help a basketball team? Maybe turnover avoidance? Players on a united team should have a better sense of where open teammates are and be able to find them under duress. But while last year’s Huskies were actually pretty good at avoiding turnovers, committing them on 18.6 percent of possessions, 77th in D1, this year’s squad was considerably worse, committing turnovers on 20 percent of possessions, 175th in D1.

By now, those of you who cling to the importance of team chemistry the way the Catholic Church clung to the Ptolemaic system will be saying: “Be fair, the Huskies lost two NBA first-round picks. Without the wonderful team chemistry, they would’ve been even worse!”

But that’s really the point, isn’t it? Good talent is always, always, always, always, always, always, always going to win more games over the course of a season. Romar said that, of any Husky team he’s coached, this one had the best chemistry. If you heard a team was the best ever at X, and they were a bad team, what would you conclude about how important X is?

Coaches prefer teams that like each other to teams that don’t. Why wouldn’t they? Who wants to deal with personality clashes, or players who care more about their advancement than your message? There’s a reason so many business executives have embraced the “No Assholes” hiring philosophy. Problem is, assholes have an annoying way of being really good at their jobs. Some of the most successful people of the last 25 years exhibited strong asshole-ish tendencies: Steve Jobs. Michael Jordan. Bill Clinton.

I’m not saying that only jerks have talent, but that, especially in incredibly competitive fields like high-stakes college basketball (or business, or the NBA, or leading the free world), talent is too precious to sacrifice at the altar of everyone getting along.

Longtime sportswriters also frequently hype team chemistry. They’re wrong, but I don’t blame them. For one thing, coaches are constantly telling them how important it is. And whether consciously or subconsciously, reporters, who interact with players daily, know that an asshole-free team will make their jobs much easier. But fans, who rarely encounter players, clearly prefer talent to team chemistry. Case in point? Those Washington Huskies. This season, with a more chemically-appealing team on display, attendance dropped nearly 1,000 per game.

Team chemistry: It doesn’t help you win, and it doesn’t win you fans. Other than that, it’s pretty important.

News, Sports

Women’s Basketball Teams Stake Claims to March Madness in Seattle

Jazmine Davis attempts a floater
Jazmine Davis, attempting a floater against UCLA, leads UW in scoring.

With the University of Washington and Seattle University men playing substandard and at times unwatchable basketball, the women’s teams provide our only hope for local March Madness.

The Husky women have enjoyed a resurgence under second-year coach Kevin McGuff. Star point guard Jazmine Davis (favorite hobby: writing poetry) is second in the Pac-12 in scoring and passed 1,000 points for her career in just her 58th game, playing a slashing, aggressive, get-to-the-basket style. Senior Kristi Kingma (road-trip must-haves: “my blankey and my Bible”) is the outside threat, she hit 11 three-pointers in a game earlier this season, setting a new Pac-12 record and finishing just one shy of the all-time NCAA mark. Both, it was announced Tuesday, were selected to the All Pac-12 team.

Kacie Sowell
Kacie Sowell

The Huskies likely played themselves out of an NCAA tournament at-large bid with four consecutive losses to end the regular season, but they can play themselves back in at the Pac-12 Tournament, which for the first time will be held here in Seattle. The tournament begins Thursday with a quadruple-header of games, of which the Huskies will be last, playing Oregon at 8:30 p.m. Tickets for a single session of two games each are as low as $10.

The Seattle U women play their final home game Saturday at 4 p.m. at Connolly Center on the SU campus, and could wrap up the WAC regular season championship with a win — a tremendous achievement for a team playing their first season in the conference.

Redhawks coach Joan Bonvicini is rightfully one of 30 finalists for the Naismith Coach of the Year award (and was the subject of a terrific Jerry Brewer profile in the Times this weekend). Granted, the WAC is a very weak conference for women’s hoops, and so the Redhawks will need to win the WAC conference tournament to make the NCAA field. As they’re guaranteed to finish no worse than second in the conference, the Redhawks will have a first-round bye in the tournament. Their first game will be Wednesday, March 12, with the fateful final Saturday, March 16, at noon.

Junior Kacie Sowell (“enjoys surfing”) is the Redhawks top player; she leads the team in points and rebounds.

News, Sports

Lakeside Plays Rainier Beach for City Hoops Championship Tonight

showing directions from lakeside to rainier beach
Lakeside and Rainier Beach are far apart, and not just in miles.

Geographically, athletically, and dad’s-yacht-havingly, it would be tough to find two Seattle schools further apart than Lakeside and Rainier Beach, but the two will contest the same prize tonight: The Metro League Boys Basketball Championship.

At private Lakeside, with its collegiate-style campus on the northern edge of the city, tuition is $27,250 per year, 100 percent of students go to college, and they accept only one-quarter of their applicants.

At public Rainier Beach in the extreme southeast corner of Seattle, the median household income is $26,291 per year, the school was cited in 2011 as one of the 50 lowest-achieving in the state, and while the school can hold 1,200 students, fewer than 500 are enrolled.

This polarity is reversed when you talk basketball: Lakeside hasn’t won a city hoops title since 1991, while Rainier Beach has won eight just since since 2000.

If there’s anything the two schools have in common, it’s that their names are lies: Lakeside is not beside a lake. Rainier Beach is, but behold the “beach” that’s a few hundred yards from the school…. Let’s just say that Kauai is not formulating an action plan to handle this competition.

Lakeside and Beach played for the Metro League basketball championship 22 years ago and Lakeside came away with an upset win, the school’s first and only basketball crown. Since, basketball has not been one of the school’s “core competencies,” to put it in terms your average Lakeside grad — that is, current corporate executive — would understand. (I kid, Lakeside grads! But, seriously, hire me.)

I attended a Lakeside/Rainier Beach game three years ago, and Lakeside — despite the loud and spittle-expressing rooting of billionaire superfan Steve Ballmer — lost by 47 points. I did note at the time, however, that Lakeside played hard and stuck to the game plan of young coach Tavio Hobson.

Screen Shot 2013-02-08 at 9.21.37 AMThree seasons later, Hobson is the Metro League coach of the year. His Lakeside team still plays tough and disciplined basketball, but now they have talent. Guard Tremaine Isabell is one of the quickest players in the city, a slasher in the Allen Iverson mold. Fellow guards D’Marques Tyson and Matthew Poplawski are decent shooters and reliable ballhandlers, while 6’-8” Anand Rajesh and 7’-0” Peter French provide an inside attack teams must account for. I said this a month ago and I stick by it: Lakeside could win state.

Beach could, too — in fact they are the runaway favorites to do so. Along with the typical Vikings complement of speedy, fierce, skilled guards, Beach has talented 6’-7” wing Shaqquan Aaron, the best junior in the state according to ESPN, and possessor of scholarship offers from collegiate basketball powers from coast to coast. Aaron at times struggles to find his place in the Beach offense, but is unstoppable in the open court. Expect at least two thunderous dunks off of steals with Aaron on the floor.

The question for Lakeside will be: Who do we have who can match Aaron’s height and athleticism? And the answer will be — as it would for every other high school team in the state and most college squads — nobody. Lakeside will need to limit Aaron’s chances in the open floor and keep him away from the basket to have a chance of winning.

If you believe that a victory in this game would mean more to upstart Lakeside than to long-dominant Rainier Beach, then maybe the Lions are worth an upset pick. I’m not so sure, though. Rainier Beach makes winning this title a point of pride — the Vikings are 8-3 in the title game since 2000.

Both teams, I expect, will play their hearts out, and the schools’ small but vocal fan bases will be rooting like crazy. Come on out to Garfield High tonight: the game’s scheduled for 8 p.m.

News, Sports

NBA in Seattle Inches Closer as League Gets Relocation Application

sonicsnodderAt a news conference in Minneapolis yesterday, NBA commissioner David Stern announced that the Sacramento franchise has applied to move to Seattle and play this fall in KeyArena.

This is step two of a process that will end in 70 days — on April 18 (Mark your calendars!) when NBA owners will vote on the proposed sale and move. Stern said that he has combined the vote on the sale and move, even though the sale requires a 3/4-majority, and the move only a 1/2-majority. Which makes sense — with the new owners wanting to move the team to Seattle, purchasing authority without moving authority would make no sense, and vice versa.

Stern clarified the nature of the pitch Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson will make before the Board: He will be able to suggest an “alternate plan,” and the Board will decide the issue on the merits of the two plans. If you were wondering why Chris Hansen wanted city and county backing of his proposed arena before going after a team, this is why — so he can demonstrate the strong probability that he will indeed be able to build a new arena in Seattle, just as Sacramento promises the same.

The drawback to Johnson’s plan is that the Hansen/Ballmer group already has a purchase agreement in hand. As Stern says, Johnson’s as-yet-unnamed investor group would have to “buy the team in Sacramento.” How they’ll do that remains unclear. Stern says the owners face “difficult decisions.” As previously discussed, the sale and move is considered very likely to be approved.

Here is the full transcript of David Stern’s comments on the move — or you can watch them yourself on this video from KING 5. For the latest news on the Sonics move and the proposed new arena, I strongly recommend following KING 5’s Chris Daniels on Twitter @Daniels5.

The latest with the Seattle/Sacramento situation is that have had submitted a signed agreement for the team to be sold to a very strong group from Seattle. We have had an application to have the team moved from Sacramento to Seattle. I have convened the appropriate committees and told them that as we get more information and more data, we will be sending the information to them because they’ll have to make a recommendation to the Board (of Governors), which will likely decide the issue both as to the sale and move in April at our board meeting. And the mayor of Sacramento has advised that he will be back to us soon with a proposal from a group to buy the team in Sacramento and build a building in Sacramento with a substantial subsidy from the City of Sacramento. And so we’re abiding events. The Seattle application is to play in KeyArena, which, we’d be there for two years, possibly three. There is no final approval with respect to a new building in Seattle, but events are well underway, moving in that direction. So they don’t currently have a building, but they propose to improve Key as a temporary facility while one is being built. And my guess is — it’s likely — that the mayor of Sacramento will appear before the Board with an alternate plan. And that’s why we have a Board of Governors: To make difficult decisions like this one.

(Here Stern responds to a questioner who is inaudible.)

I don’t think it’s a bidding war. There’s a series of issues that are defined by our constitution that have to be considered. And one of the things that our board is mandated to consider is the support for the team in the prior city. So there are real issues for the board to consider — about the buildings, about the likelihood that they’ll be built, about the support in both cities…I think I might have composed the standards, but sitting here today I can’t remember what they are. But there are a lot of them. And actually, to confuse it just a little bit, the application to transfer ownership requires a 3/4-vote, the application to move requires a majority vote. And so I did the sensible thing, I combined the committees and I said “You guys figure it out.” We’ll see how that works.

You can buy that Sonics bobblehead for $75 from Gasoline Alley Antiques.

News, Sports

Seattle’s “New” Sonics Team Not Likely to be Super Soon

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DeMarcus Cousins (photo by Scott Mecum via Wikipedia)
DeMarcus Cousins (photo by Scott Mecum via Wikipedia)

Give a starving man a burger, and he’s not going to ask whether it’s made from organic beef. So it is with we local basketball fans, who miss the NBA too much to quibble about the composition of the team we’re likely to get. Which, not to be harsh, but when we talk about the Sacramento Kings, we’re talking more “what-Burger-King-doesn’t-want-you-to-know” than grass-fed.

The Sacramento Kings have one good player. This is not hyperbole, it is documented statistical fact. According to John Hollinger’s widely-loved Player Efficiency Rating, only one Kings player rates among the NBA’s top 50.

That player, DeMarcus Cousins, is an immature hothead. This too is documented statistical fact: Cousins is the NBA leader in technical fouls with 12, and yesterday managed to get ejected from a game during halftime.

Cousins’ problems do not end there — he is out of shape, an inconsistent defender, and gambles too much on both ends of the floor.

On the other hand, Cousins is a rare talent. His combination of a 6’-11″, 270-pound body and world-class athleticism is once-in-a-generation. And he is a multi-faceted player — Cousins leads the Kings in points, rebounds, and steals, and is second in assists. He is unstoppable at the basket, and is a decent outside shooter. Eventually, he’ll be a threat from three-point range à la Sam Perkins or Rasheed Wallace.

The rest of the Kings one cannot say as many nice things about. Starting point guard Isaiah Thomas is a local hero — a Tacoma kid who starred at the University of Washington — but he is simply too short to be an effective defender against starting NBA point guards. Starting shooting guard Tyreke Evans struggles with an important part of his job description — shooting. I could go on, but I don’t want to depress myself.

If you read Sactown Royalty, the best of the Sacramento Kings fan blogs, you’ll see that alongside the justifiable anger about the prospect of losing their team is some gallows humor. To paraphrase, it’s basically: “Can you believe we’re fighting to keep this team?”

Sonics fans will remember the sentiment. While we were all hectoring our legislators and damning David Stern, the basketball team we were trying to save was perpetrating embarrassments like a 168-112 loss. There may even be a relocation blues phenomenon–one Kings blogger has charted a decline in the team’s play since the sale was announced.

If there’s a bright side to look on, its that the Kings are helping secure a better draft pick with little or no emotional damage to their future fans. If the season ended today, the Kings would have the league’s 7th worst record and a 1 in 8 chance of landing one of the top three picks in June’s draft. Continued awfulness would push them down the standings and potentially up the draft order.

The downside, of course, is that if the team loses a lot, they are even worse than we thought. You may not care right now, Seattle. Just want you to know that come November you could be leaving KeyArena with a bad taste in your mouth.

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