We have now embarked on our 9th NBA season without a basketball team here in Seattle.
I still have flashbacks of watching a rookie out of the University of Texas named Kevin Durant getting his feet wet in the NBA. I remember watching Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis killing teams with deadly accuracy from behind the arc. I remember watching Gary Payton infuriating anyone he faced up against, while Shawn Kemp raced up the court and threw down on anyone willing to get in his way.
It has been eight and half years and counting since we have seen a Seattle Sonics jersey on an NBA court, and it has been a dreadful ride since then.
We have sat through a great deal since April 16, 2008, the Seattle SuperSonics final NBA game. We have had to sit back and watch the prime years of LeBron James, one of the greatest players to ever set foot on an NBA court from afar. We have missed out on the first unanimous MVP, Steph Curry, who has never had the luxury of playing in front of the raucous atmosphere of Seattle sports fans. We also missed our chance to experience three first ballot Hall-of-Fame players, Duncan, Garnett, and Kobe, play one last time.
If you wanted to catch any professional basketball game, you would have to travel down I-5 to watch the former rival of Sonics fans, the Portland Trailblazers. To a lot of fans the money it would cost for transportation to and from Portland, not including the ticket price, just isn't in the budget.
Thankfully we are lucky enough to have home grown talent in the NBA who are willing to bring some form of the NBA back to the Seattle area with Jamal Crawford's Seattle Pro-Am, as well as the Isaiah Thomas' Zeke-End Memorial Tournament, both bringing in multiple professional players for the community to enjoy.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have some encouraging news, we have come one step closer to finally bringing the NBA and SuperSonics back to Seattle!
Hedge-fund manager Chris Hansen, who has put forth the blueprint to bring the Seattle SuperSonics back home, has made another huge push to building a new Seattle Arena. Hansen has sent a letter to the Seattle City Council stating that he will terminate his current contract in which the public would have a $200 million bond on the arena and instead will rework to take full responsibility for funding the new arena.
Included in his letter is a plan to contribute to building an overpass for the Port of Seattle to help with congestion. This plan is a considerable contribution for the Port traffic; however, the Port of Seattle commissioner still states that he is opposed to building a new arena in the Stadium District of Seattle.
Hansen's new plan is to fully fund the Seattle arena with private money, at no cost to the city. Not only is his plan to build an arena for the NBA and return of the Seattle SuperSonics, but he has also put money towards three public transportation hubs around the arena that will facilitate people to and from the surrounding areas of the Puget Sound.
Now NBA fans in Seattle will have to await a decision from the Seattle City Council to vacate Occidental Ave, a glorified alley.
The Port of Seattle still appears to be our biggest hurdle. Opposing the vacation of Occidental Ave as they claim they are frequently using the roadway. However, multiple news stations have spent hours monitoring the street and have stated otherwise.
We have been close before, but local officials have declared this new information a "Game Changer."
We are close Sonic fans! I can almost smell the hardwood now.
A question you may ask yourself this year in preparations for the NCAA tournament is, Who are the 2016 Washington Huskies?
This is a question I have asked myself all season long. The Huskies began the season on the other side of the Great Wall, earning a win against the Texas Longhorns and new coach Shaka Smart. After that victory you felt a sigh of relief that this Huskies class, with four freshman and one senior in their starting line-up, may actually be able to get us back into the tournament after a five year hiatus (The Huskies were robbed of a tournament birth in 2012 when the Huskies were the regular season Pac-12 champions)
The first real test for this team came in their first loss when they renewed their rivalry with cross state rival the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the Battle-4-Atlantis. The Huskies got rolled in the first half of that match-up and were never able to recover after that, a pattern that has continued throughout the season.
The team has had an up-and-down season, which is expected with the lack of experience the Huskies bring to the table. The good news is that the Huskies have the ability to upset any team they face, however they are also susceptible to losing to any other team on a given night, like their loss to UCSB. That is something that we will have to live with this season.
After the Huskies started 5-1 in conference play I started to think about what this team may be capable of this season. I was imagining tournament births and Final Four appearances, of course I knew that would probably be out of the question given that this team didn't have any NCAA tournament experience on the entire team, but that didn't stop me.
That was until the Huskies went .500 over their next four games before falling into a three game slide.
So what can we expect for the end of Pac-12 play?
The Huskies are still leading the Pac-12 in blocks and offensive rebounds this seasons but have also committed the most personal fouls by a wide margin (605 fouls committed, 73 more than the next team).
With Freshman phenoms Marquese Chriss finally learning how to play a full game without fouling out, as well as Dejounte Murray continuing to evolve into his own we will have a shot to shock anybody. These two have really stepped up while the Pac-12's leading scorer and only senior on the team Andrew Andrews has somewhat digressed in recent weeks.
The real question will be how will this team respond to the current losing streak they find themselves in. The answer to that question will determine what this team will be able to accomplish before this season is over.
As of today, Feb. 17th, the Washington Huskies are on ESPN's Joe Lunardi's First Four Out. Not a good sign but not too late to make a case for a bid as long as we can win the games we are supposed to and hopefully pull out the upset against the Oregon Ducks in Eugene.
In order to have a chance at the tournament this team will need get it going quicker than they have been, being outscored in the first half of each of their last five games. The team will also need to keep the pressure on opposing offenses while staying out of foul trouble, something this team has not been able to do simultaneously. Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar will be able to figure it out with this team and once he does, Watch Out!
The Huskies have been one of the more exciting teams in college basketball this year and if this team can get rolling and the freshmen can put it all together we may witness a special ending to this season.
So when its time to start filling out those brackets, if you come across the Purple & Gold, go ahead and mark them into the second weekend because they will be rolling by then.
LETS GO HUSKIES!
