Seattle coach P.J. Carlesimo again defended Robert Swift, who was booed by the KeyArena crowd on Tuesday night against Memphis after getting his shot blocked by Memphis center Darko Milicic and struggling through eight minutes.

If you remember, Swift also got booed Nov. 11, the last time he played before sitting out nearly three months to rehab his knee and lose weight. Swift had trouble keeping up with Detroit’s athletic big men.

Now, Swift is trying to get back into game shape, but the KeyArena fans seem to have lost patience with the Swift. Carlesimo thinks it’s unfair.

“I need to educate them on what he’s going through, and we need to be more supportive of him,” Carlesimo said. “It shouldn’t be that it’s easier for him to play on the road than it is at home.

“He’s breaking his ass to get back as quickly as he can,” Carlesimo later went on. “And they’ve got to understand how far he’s come in such a short amount of time.”

Listen to the full conversation with Carlesimo here.

ESPN has an interesting article on Tony Durant, Kevin Durant’s older brother, who is playing at Towson University in the brothers’ home state of Maryland.

Some final thoughts on Kurt Thomas trade, which you can read about here.

I think Seattle did the right thing by moving Thomas on and getting a first rounder in return. Thomas wasn’t going to resign with Seattle at the end of the season because he wants to play for contender.

So now Seattle opens up some minutes for young big men Robert Swift and Johan Petro, and they now have two first round picks each in the next three years, and 13 picks overall in the next three drafts to help put together trades and bring players to help in the team’s rebuilding process.