There's not a lot to smile about in America's rainiest city.
The Seattle SuperSonics have started the year with a 2-9 record and those two wins were hardly remarkable. The first came last week over a Miami Heat team that has one of the worst records in the Eastern Conference and the other came over the Atlanta Hawks in double overtime on Friday.
To add to Seattle's woes, it is looking more and more likely that the Sonics will leave the Pacific Northwest and move to Oklahoma City, where the New Orleans Hornets played their home games in front of raucous crowds after Hurricane Katrina.
The Sonics headed into this season with a new look and a new franchise player in Kevin Durant. After finishing with the worst record in the Northwest Division last season, Seattle revamped the roster under new general manager Sam Presti and coach P.J. Carlesimo, both coming over from the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs.
Seattle was fortunate enough to get the second pick in the draft lottery and selected Durant, the NCAA Player of the Year in 2006-2007. With a player of Durant's caliber to serve as the centerpiece of the team's rebuilding efforts, the Sonics sent off shooting guard Ray Allen in a trade with the Boston Celtics and got the fifth pick in the draft, which they used to snatch Jeff Green from Georgetown.
Despite that nice young nucleus and a coach, Seattle has underperformed, even by the modest standards that most fans and analysts set going into the season. Though his team was not realistically going to contend for a championship, no one was expecting this. The Sonics lost their first eight games, the worst start in franchise history.
Their problem has not been scoring, as the team has averaged just under 100 points a game so far. Durant has lived up to his expectations, averaging over 20 points a game, and Seattle has also gotten some nice contributions from forward Chris Wilcox. Even small forward Damien Wilkins has emerged as an offensive threat, pouring in a career-high 41 points against the Hawks.
Where the Sonics have lost games is with mistakes and poor defensive play. Seattle is averaging 18 turnovers a game and is 28th in the league in points-against average, letting the opposition pass the century mark in 10 out of 11 games so far.
Part of this can be attributed to the lineups that Carlesimo has played. The turnovers are part of a young team adjusting to both the league and a new system. Durant, a natural forward, has played out of position at shooting guard because of concerns about his ability to guard bigger, more physical players. Wilkins is undersized at the small forward spot, and Seattle's big men can't provide much in terms of interior defense.
That brings up another issue that has contributed to the demise of a team that was on the brink of making the Western Conference Finals three years ago. The Sonics have wasted three first-round draft picks, including two in the lottery, on raw centers that most other teams felt were long-term projects.
Muhamed Sene, Johan Petro and Robert Swift have combined to average just eight points and 10.6 rebounds this season, and none of the three has emerged as the talent the Seattle brass had envisioned. Swift has been injured for most of his brief career and he missed Saturday's loss to the Charlotte Bobcats, his fourth straight DNP. Sene, a seven-footer from Senegal who was the 10th pick in the 2006 draft, has only appeared in one game this season.
The play of this year's team has given little hope to fans of their Sonics remaining in Washington State. New owner Clay Bennett, who is from Oklahoma, has recently issued statements claiming that he intends to transfer his team to his home state. While the Sonics have a lease with Key Arena until 2010, Bennett hopes that he will be able to find a way to move the team sooner.
Surprisingly, commissioner David Stern has not intervened in the controversial move. Bennett has informed the city that he will move from the 14th-biggest television market in the country to a state that does not boast a single professional sports franchise. With all the turmoil surrounding the Sonics' departure, it's no surprise that they've gone winless at home.
If Seattle loses its team, it will be a sad moment for one of the league's most historically underrated franchises. The Sonics were one of the greatest teams in the NBA in the late 1970s, winning one championship and routinely making the playoffs. They had one of the most exciting teams of the 1990s, featuring superstars Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp.
This Sonics team desperately needed to generate some excitement in Seattle, but even with the dynamic Durant, things aren't working out. It's beginning to seem likely that another lottery pick will be ushering in a new era in a new city for the Sonics.
