Everyone has their favorite whipping boy, but for me it all starts at the top. It's time for Howard to step up to the plate & exhibit some leadership instead of deferring to the "basketball guys" as the new kid on the block. That excuse is getting old. It's time to show some leadership instead of cheerleadership & quit acquiescing to the diffident Wally Walker. It's time to take some decisive action; anything to let us know that someone really is in charge. ANYTHING! Surely even Weasel Wally knows that it's becoming painfully obvious to even the least astute basketball minds that something needs to be done. When Jim Ratt jumps on the bandwagon, it's way PAST time. Brighter minds have led Santa's sleigh.

I don't know about the rest of you, but without revisiting the notion of "blowing up" the Sonics, I reiterate that the time to take action needs to be sooner rather than later. How many consecutive years of not making the playoffs can this town take before the fan base errodes to the point where Howard is forced to come up with yet another cockamamie scheme to increase revenue? Selling over-roasted coffee is not the same as tired over-worked marketing ploys. Sooner, not later, the issue of talent needs to be addressed. Talent on the court, & talent in the front office. We don't CARE how much concessions cost if we can't put a competitive product on the court. We don't care about the shootarounds with the players & the kid friendly atmosphere. We don't care about the dancing girls & the celebrities -- WE WANT A WINNER!

To this end, it's time to bring in an Antonio McDyess or at least some veterans on the bench who will instill a winning attitude on this hapless bunch of laissez-faire losers who smile on the bench as they are losing to the worst team in the league at home. I don't care how much talent you have, if you don't give a shit save for your own stats, then you're a loser in my book. That means YOU "quiet man"; that means YOU "rubberband man"; that means YOU Shammond; that means all of you!

The Seahawks went from bad to worse before Holmy weeded out all the dead weight, & have shown only modest improvement since Vanilla Fudge brought in HIS guys. The jury is still out on how effective the house cleaning has been. Do the Sonics need a similar house cleaning? I think they do, & not next summer, NOW! Let it be known that accepting losing is a form of behavior that will simply not be tolerated in Seattle no matter who you are. Gary still hasn't gone off on anyone that I'm aware of, but is it any wonder that he's starting to give up & trying to do it all on his own again? The result is predictable & detrimental. Most of our players play with all the urgency & commitment of a shoot-around, languidly lobbing lazy jumper after jumper. It's the most self-centered egotistical stat-seeking group of glory hogs I've ever seen assembled in a single uniform.

Wishing they had the spirit to go along with their talent won't make it so. If Nate can't motivate this group, then maybe it's time to start thinking about getting rid of some of them. Sometimes it's senseless to beat yourself up over the shortcomings of others you're associated with. Sure someone like Shawn Kemp was a headcase, but he HAD the talent to make up for it. So does Rasheed Wallace; so does AI; so does Stevie Franchise. But even IF these kind of guys were the poster boy personalities Schultz envisions stocking his team with (& they're not),are those the kind of players this team needs? Do we really want to be substituting one kind of problem for another? Would we be any happier with a Portland kind of situation that the one we have now?

No, I don't think we would. We need some strong-willed, veteran blue collar role playing bench players who will by sheer strength of personality & character WILL this team to accomplish more of what they are capable of. Gary & Nate apparently can't do it by themselves, & we don't have the luxury of time to wait for everyone else on the team to grow up. There is absolutely no URGENCY on this team, & that needs to change immediately. Unfortunately as I have said before, I have little confidence that Wally Walker would have even the slightest clue of how to go about fixing this team even if he had the cajones to make some bold moves. So look for the bleeding to continue. Look for the spin doctor to become ever more creative. Look for the phantom injuries to mount, but DON'T look for what we really need to happen any time soon. And don't look for the team to add a psychiatrist. Why would Wally do something that might actually make some sense?

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