It's been a near constant refrain from ESPN's Sports Guy recently: Seattle sports, in his opinion, are horribly depressing. Here's Bill Simmons' latest effort to deconstruct our corner of the globe.
↵↵↵Won nine games total in 2008 and 2009, overpaid a college coach, gutted their team and somehow ended up with the league's fifth-highest payroll ($138.8 million). Throw in a general Washington sports malaise -- the Mariners might lose 100 games, the Zombie Sonics look like a title contender, Kevin Durant flashed GOAT potential in Turkey, the Jake Locker Heisman Bandwagon careened off I-5 and flipped 35 times and the state's two biggest sports highlights of the past three years involved the WNBA and MLS -- and it's hard to imagine the Hawks winning more than six games.
↵You can't overstate how devastating the Sonics/Durant double whammy has been for Seattle fans. After my gushing Durant column last week, my former editor KJ, a lifelong Sonics die-hard, sent me an e-mail that simply read, "Cue up Eddie Vedder: 'I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky, but why can't it be mine?'" Any time sports drives a fan to quote "Black," the single most depressing song by a Seattle band other than "Black Hole Sun," you know something truly hideous has happened.
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One thing is for sure: He's right about Jake Locker.
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