Will The Seattle SuperSonics Return?

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.

Who are the 2016 Washington Huskies?

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! 

All-Star Weekend Rekindles Seattle's Forbidden Love Affair With The NBA

As a fan of the NBA it has been a rough eight years since the Seattle Supersonics left town and were moved to Oklahoma City. It has caused a bit of a forbidden love affair for some NBA fans in Washington after the way the NBA treated Seattle sports fans first love, the Seattle Supersonics.

Thankfully we have had our fare share of athletes compete in the NBA out of the great Evergreen State. So when this All-Star weekend came around I had lined up my rooting interests in each contest. Now if it wasn't for last year's #1 overall pick Karl Anthony-Towns, we would have swept All-Star Saturday Night!

Anthony-Towns, who was part of the first group of big men to ever compete in the skills challenge, edged out the Tacoma native and former Washington Husky Isaiah Thomas.

Following that we had the Three-Point contest. Former Washington State Cougar Klay Thompson would out-shoot his Warriors teammate and last year's champion, Steph Curry.

Following the three-point contest was the reason All-Star Saturday Night became the hit that it is today, The Slam Dunk Contest.   

Bothell's very own and defending champion Zach LaVine would battle it out in what will go down as one of the greatest dunk contests in NBA history against the Orlando Magic's AIR'N Gordon. LaVine would repeat as the Slam Dunk champion after a thrilling championship battle that went an extra three rounds.

The great state of Washington has now produced two out of the six repeating NBA Slam Dunk champions (Nate Robinson & LaVine)!

After all the festivities of the weekend were over I was left feeling incomplete. I felt incomplete simply for the fact that I knew that when the season started back up in a few days me and the rest of SuperSonics Zombie nation would be looking from the outside in, once again.

Almost seamlessly from the conclusion of All-Star weekend the rumblings and rumors surrounding the NBA's return would once again be awoken. 

Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times wrote an article over the weekend, found here, regarding how the city officials in Seattle knew of an engineering consultants findings that Key Arena was a viable option to bring the NBA/NHL back to Seattle as long as proper renovations were made. After reviewing this article and listening to Ian & Puck of Sports Radio KJR dissect it themselves, the short of it is that the Key Arena is still a non-starter and that there is no chance Seattle would get a professional team from either the NBA or NHL for Key Arena.

Once again, we are left waiting...

What appears to be our last hope is resting on the shoulders of hedge-funder Chris Hansen and his group that is still looking to build a stadium in SoDo (pictured right). With all the boulders in the way of that actually forming its looking like it may be a long ride before we ever get to enjoy NBA basketball in the city of Seattle again.

Gennady Golovkin Faces Mandatory Challenger Dominic Wade - Preview & Prediction

When: April 23rd, 2016

Where: The Forum, Inglewood, CA

In what will be Gennady "GGG" Golovkin's (34-0, 31KO's) tune-up match before the much anticipated showdown with Saul "Canelo" Alvarez, GGG will take on mandatory challenger Dominic Wade (18-0, 12 KO's) for Golovkin's Middleweight titles. 

This will be Golovkin's 15th title defense, only five behind the all-time leader Bernard Hopkins who had 20 middleweight title defenses.

Wade is an up-and-coming fighter but has not had any noteworthy opponents since becoming a pro in 2009. For a little local connection to the 25-year-old challenger out of Washington, D.C., his last two fights have taken place at the Little Creek Casino in Shelton, WA most recently earning a split decision victory against an over-the-hill former champion Sam Soliman. A lot of commotion has come up due to the fact that nobody see's Wade as a true threat to Golovkin (#2 Pound-4-Pound fighter according to ESPN) but if Golovkin passed on fighting Wade he would have been stripped of his IBF Belt since Wade is the mandatory challenger.

With Golovkin's mantra being #AllTheBelts he wasn't just going to let the IBF committee strip him of his championship belt that easy, regardless of how steep of a dip in competition his challenger may be.

Golovkin was scheduled to make his mandatory defense against the IBF's #1 middleweight contender, Tureano Johnson (19-1, 13KO's), but Johnson suffered a shoulder injury while training.

Maybe the best thing to come out of this card will be that the Pound-for-Pound champion Roman "Chocolatito" Gonzalez (44-0, 38 KO's) will be on the undercard, as has been the case for the previous two fights Golovkin has headlined. Expect Chocolatito to live up to his hyped expectations yet again with another impressive outing when he defends his WBC Flyweight belt against challenger McWilliams Arroyo (16-2, 14 KO's). 

As long as Golovkin and Gonzalez, who have a combined record of (78-0, 69 KO's) continue to work on the same cards expect for great fireworks to take place in the ring. 

Golovkin should be able to dispel Wade early and get us one step closer to the unifying of the middleweight belts against Canelo, so long as they both win their next fight. The only real question about Golovkin vs Wade is how much of a beating will Wade be able to withstand.

Prediction: Golovkin wins via KO in Round 4 

I don't expect this fight to go the full 12 rounds. Wade will have a tough time keeping Golovkin's power off him and after watching a couple of Wade's previous fights I don't believe he will have what it takes to last any longer than the 4th round, not to mention this will be Wade's first fight in 10 months. After a win vs Wade, Gennady's next target will turn to one of the biggest names in boxing today, Saul "Canelo" Alvarez for a unification bout for their middleweight championships.

King Khan Challenges Canelo Alvarez - Preview & Prediction

When: May 7th, 2016

Where: T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas, NV

On May 7th, 2016 Britain's own Amir "King" Khan, a former welterweight title holder, will go toe-to-toe with current middleweight champion Saul "Canelo" Alvarez for Alvarez' WBC Middleweight Title. This will be Canelo's first title defense since winning the belt in November by defeating Miguel Cotto by unanimous decision.

The fight will be at a catch-weight of 155lbs and will be taking place on HBO Pay-Per-View at the new T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Canelo is coming into this fight with an overall record of 46(32 KO)-1-1, with his only loss coming at the hands of Floyd Mayweather and his lone draw coming from a 4-round contest early in his career. Alvarez will be making his first title defense since his UD win over Miguel Cotto for his WBC Middleweight Title in November.

Khan will be entering the ring with an overall record of 31(19 KO)-3-0, with 2 of his 3 losses coming in his last 7 fights. This will be Khan's first fight in the middleweight division, his last four fights taking place in the welterweight division. Khan will be making a return to the ring after a 12-month layoff, earning a UD win over Chris Algieri last May (Khan was hoping to get a shot at Mayweather or Pacquiao last fall but neither of those negotiations fell thru)

This fight was a huge surprise to the boxing world with no word of negotiations even being held between the two parties. Both boxers will be looking to move towards more lucrative bouts each fighter has their eye on later on this year.

Khan, who is continuing to try and prove himself to the American public will attempt move closer to a either a rematch with welterweight titlist Danny Garcia or put on a fight against his fellow countryman Kell Brook for his IBF welterweight title.

Canelo on the other hand will be one step closer to setting up what will undoubtedly be the fight of the year and is hands down the biggest fight that the boxing world has to offer, going against middleweight champion Gennady "GGG" Golovkin. This fight is being reported to take place September 17 at AT&T Stadium, better known as "Jerry's World" and home of the Dallas Cowboys, so long as both fighters win their next fight (GGG will face Dominic Wade April 23rd)

Prediction: (Canelo wins via TKO in Round 6) 
Canelo's size and power will be too much for Khan, who has great foot and hand speed but is considered to have a glass chin. Khan's speed should help him last for a while in the ring but eventually the hits will take their toll and slow him down. After weigh-ins Canelo usually inflates himself back to somewhere around 170lbs by fight time. Khan, a true welterweight, fighting usually around 147lbs will struggle just to reach the catch-weight at 155, let alone add the extra 15lbs Canelo will walk into the ring with. Khan may think he can out-point Canelo the way that Mayweather did in 2013, Canelo's only loss of his professional career, but Khan is nowhere near Floyd's skills and knowledge of the sweet science that is boxing. Canelo also has a couple more years of experience under his belt since his only defeat and has  greatly improved his skill set since he took on the pound-4-pound champion at the age of 23.

Marshawn Lynch Is Hanging The Cleats - Is He A Hall Of Famer?

The Man-The Myth-The Legend that is Marshawn Lynch has decided to hang up his cleats and retire from the NFL.

The decision came at a time of year where oddly enough we have become accustom to hearing from Marshawn over the past three years, during the Super Bowl. It was in the 4th quarter of Super Bowl 50 when Marshawn put the deuces up and tweeted a picture of his cleats hanging from a wire.

For someone like myself who grew up in Washington, there are only a few athletes who have been able to transcend the Pacific Northwest to the masses the way that Beast Mode did.

There was The Great Steve Largent - a small-statured 5'11 wide receiver out of University of Tulsa who became the first Seattle Seahawk to enter the NFL Hall of Fame.

Then we had a kid, well not just any kid but "The Kid" Ken Griffey Jr - the #1 overall selection in the MLB's 1987 draft and became the highest percentage(237-240 votes - 99.3%) voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

How could you forget about "The Glove" Gary Payton - Seattle's first Bay Area loves was a 6'4 PG who became the most beloved Seattle Supersonic of All Time (Bring Em Back!). Hailing out of Oregon State by way of Oakland, CA. Payton was one of the fiercest competitors the NBA had to offer in the 90's and brought an attitude to Seattle that only one other player has been able to emulate...

That player happens to be the man of the hour, Marshawn Lynch - Lynch came to Seattle on a different route than the rest of Seattle's most beloved sports heroes. The #12 (Ironic right?) overall pick in the 2007 NFL draft made his trip to Seattle after he was traded to the Seahawks in the middle of the 2010 season from the Buffalo Bills for two draft picks.

Lynch not only became the face of the franchise but also brought about an attitude that was strictly “About That Action Boss” helping lead the Seattle Seahawks to their only Super Bowl win in franchise history.

Beast Mode became an instant sensation for all Seattle sports fans and changed the entire culture of the Seattle Seahawks.

Maybe it was his powerful and bruising running style and how he left it all out there on that field every snap, or his mentality and charity which both features the same message "Family First” or it could even all stem from how he brought back an attitude that we haven’t seen since our first Oakland sports hero. Whatever it was the love was thick and there wasn't any way to change it.

Their was however some people who were not too fond of Seattle's favorite athlete, that would be the journalists who were given the ultimate test to their profession, covering the Beast.

Marshawn Lynch became a major thorn in the daily lives of many journalists around the nation because he would refuse to speak with them. The reasoning behind his about-face to the media is somewhat of a mystery but rumblings thru Seattle say a lot had to do with the way the media reacted to his DUI from 2012. We will never know for sure because Lynch doesn't feel the need to explain, and that's cool its his choice and has no effect on the way he played on that field each and every Sunday that he suited up.

Marshawn Lynch earned the ultimate respect nationwide when he played in his first playoff game and put the rest of the NFL on notice, Beast Mode wasn't just a name, it was the his style.

It was January 8th, 2011; a brisk afternoon where the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints made their way in to what was then Qwest field for a wild-card playoff game. It was on this day that Marshawn showed the entire nation why he is referred to as "Beast Mode".

Lynch pulled off what I consider the greatest run in NFL history that day when he busted thru the entire defense of the Saints for a 67-yard touchdown, bucking some, stiff-arming others and flying into the end-zone with nothing but him and his balls (LOL).

 That is a play that will live in infamy for the rest of eternity in Seattle.

That day was only the beginning. The beginning of a run that would send the Seahawks to back-to-back Super Bowl appearances; winning one in dominating fashion and losing the other when Pete Carroll made one of the most controversial calls in Super Bowl history and decided to not give the ball to their bell cow and the most dominating force on an NFL offense on the 1-yard line. (Ahh, it still hurts!)

On a day like today it’s depressing to think that all the fun we had cheering on Beast Mode has finally come to a conclusion.

The Chapter Has Ended.

Is Marshawn Lynch a Hall of Famer? Unfortunately for Marshawn, the people who vote for the Hall of Fame are the same people Lynch would choose not communicate with in the NFL, the media.

I certainly believe he deserves to be enshrined given his regular season and playoff stats but even if the voters don't believe so I know it won't matter much to him. He will be a Hall of Famer to his fans in Seattle, to his teammates, and to his family, and that is probably just fine with him.

Thank You Beast Mode!