Beginning with the 2008-2009 season, Washington has had to live without an NBA team. While the emotional battle of dealing with the loss of a beloved friend has had it's highs and lows, with exception of when the team first left, the current run to the Western Conference Finals has many Sonics fans up in arms.
The motivation for this post comes from some recent hate/cockiness that I have received via twitter, my love of current and former players with Seattle ties, and also some news that I heard last night.
"Rep. Mike Hope, R-Lake Stevens and Rep. David Frockt, D-Seattle, said they plan to start a task force this summer [to bring a NBA team back to Seattle] after the current session ends."
That is amazing news. The best thing to compliment a great MLS team, a MLB team that shows brief flashes of having a pulse, a history making NFL team (first team to make playoffs with a losing record! HOLLA!), the current champions of the WNBA, runner up and previous champion of the MLL, and the reigning champions of the AFL is having a NBA team back in the Seattle market. Well, I think that's enough of blowing Seattle's horn, so let's take a look at the last Sonics team and the current basketball team not from Dallas in the Western Conference Finals.
Here are some quick stats for the players on the Sonics from the 2007-2008 season.
Player Current Team MPG w/SEA MPG w/Last
Nick Collison OKC 29 21
Ronald Dupree N/A 5 4
Kevin Durant OKC 35 39
Francisco Elson UTAH 13 10
Mickael Gelabale N/A 12 12*
Eddie Gill N/A 5 7
Jeff Green BOS/OKC 28 23/37 (33)
Adrian Griffin N/A 7 7*
Donyell Marshall N/A 12 8
Ira Newble N/A 9 14/16/9/5 (14)
Johan Petro NJN 18 12
Luke Ridnour MIN 20 30
Mouhamed Sene N/A 5 5/5/6 (5)
Robert Swift N/A 12 13
Wally Szczerbiak N/A 23 21
Kurt Thomas CHI 25 23
Earl Watson UTAH 29 20
Delonte West BOS 21 19
Chris Wilcox DET 28 17
Damien Wilkins ATL 24 13
Mike Wilks N/A 11 15
*final season with the Sonics
(#)average of final season team MPG
As we all know, the Sonics were finishing near the bottom of the league. Many critics of the Sonics have said that the success of their current form is due to how the team is rebuilding and not giving any credit to the Sonics. Now, I'll be the first to admit that there isn't much statistical strength behind this post, but just keep your mind open to my hack job of a post.
Looking at average minutes per game between how much the Sonics used a player and how other teams used the player shows a rough picture of how that player fits into other systems. Of course some players will go from a starting role to a reserve role or vice versa and playing time will increase or decrease if they were younger or older respectively, but over the 3 seasons, playing time won't change a whole lot (generalization). Out of the 21 players that played for the Sonics in their final season, 15 of them did not vary by more than 5 minutes per game in their most recent season. The exceptions to this are Nick Collison (who dropped to playing just under half of the game), Johan Petro (who dropped from 18 MPG to 12 MPG), Luke Ridnour (who jumped from 20 to 30 MPG due to Minnesota not having any talent or "talent"), Earl Watson (who moved to Utah who is a decent team that is just under performing), Chris Wilcox (who wasn't really a big performer anywhere in my opinion), and Damien Wilkins (wait, he's still around?).
So, with a majority of the Sonics players maintaining around the same MPG that they had while with the Sonics, this shows that the Sonics coaches and owners actually may have known what they were doing (contrary to popular belief).
Now that we looked at how the players that played for the Sonics are faring now, we can look at the current roster.
Name Year Drafted Team Drafted
Cole Aldrich 2010 NO
Nick Collison 2003 SEA
Daequan Cook 2007 PHI
Kevin Durant 2007 SEA
James Harden 2009 OKC
Serge Ibaka 2008 SEA
Royal Ivey 2004 ATL
Eric Maynor 2009 UTAH
Nazr Mohammed 1998 UTAH
Byron Mullens 2009 DAL
Kendrick Perkins 2003 MEM
Nate Robinson 2005 PHX
Thabo Sefolosha 2006 PHI
Robert Vaden 2009 CHA
Russell Westbrook 2008 SEA
Out of the current 15 man roster, 10 of the players were drafted while the sonics still existed (showed by all highlighted players). Of these 10, four of them were drafted by the Sonics (green highlighter). While at first look, only 27% of the players on the team were drafted by the Sonics, we can really only look at the players that have played in the league while the Sonics still were in Seattle. Of this population, 40% of the players were drafted by the Sonics.
So after this long and pointless post,I will try to sum it up. The Sonics were pretty logical with playing times given to their players. After the Sonics were stolen from us, there was some rebuilding done that benefited the team and some hurt the team, but some credit has to be given to the Sonics for the two stars that are the poster boys during the playoff run (Durant and Westbrook). If you are a die hard Sonics fan, you don't have to cheer for the team in the playoffs, but at least watch the games and cheer on our players that are out there battling hard and leaving it all on the hardwood. If you watch the games then the local television ratings will increase and it will show possible owners and the NBA that there is an interested market up here in Washington.
I will leave you with this. Stay strong and keep your hopes up, we will have another basketball team in Seattle eventually. They won't be to heal the wounds that were made by Schultz, but at least you can consider it a scab, which is the first step in the healing process.
Sound off in comments with your feelings.
Great point about watching the games, even if only for the reason of posting higher ratings to draw teams.
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