Shawn Kemp goes to the basket against Hakeem Olajuwon during the Sonics' 104-103 victory at Houston 13 years ago Tuesday. Kemp had 16 points and 18 rebounds, and Olajuwon finished with 36 points and 12 boards.

Despite their 32-12 record, the SuperSonics took the floor at Houston's Summit in a bit of a funk.

It was Saturday, Feb. 3, 1996, and Seattle was two days removed from a desultory performance that ended in a 103-100 loss to the Mavericks at Reunion Arena in Dallas.

Suffice it to say the Sonics coach George Karl did not wake up on Groundhog’s Day in a festive mood. The night before, following his team’s loss to the 15-27 Mavericks, Karl wondered aloud about the leadership skills of Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp.

"I think we're very childish on some of our coolness toward teams with poor records," Karl said. "It always hurts us. It has hurt us for four years and the majority of the responsibility falls on Gary and Shawn to give us direction and toughness instead of coolness.

"We are improving in that area, but after you lose you feel like, 'Did we lose it? Or did they win it?' I feel we lost it. And a lot of losses this year we gave away. It drives me crazy."

On the docket in Houston for Seattle were Hakeem Olajuwon and the 30-16 Rockets, who were coming off back-to-back NBA championships.

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Clockwise from upper left: Bob Lanier, Hot Rod Hundley, Bill Walton, Adrian Dantley and Richard Nixon conspired to steal the spotlight from Spencer Haywood in 1974.

Spencer Haywood sat in the corner, sulked and wondered why he should be so unlucky at his own coming-out party.

Thirty-five years ago today, Jan. 15, 1974, Haywood scored 23 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to help the West All-Stars defeat the East, 134-123, before 14,360 at the Seattle Coliseum.

Why was "Woody" so unhappy?

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Spencer Haywood goes against the Cavaliers in 1972, the same team he burned for 48 points on Jan. 7 that year. Haywood made four All-Star teams for the Sonics and was twice named first team All-NBA.

Now that the Thunder has soared to six victories and put plenty of breathing room between itself and the Philadelphia 9-and-73ers, we can turn away from ritual mockery and consider some franchise trivia.

Like, for intance, who owns Oklahoma City's single-season scoring and rebounding records? (Yes, you already know this if you read the previous, wholly unsatisfactory post.)

He's the same fellow who holds the ABA's record for single-season rebounding average with a whopping 19.5: Spencer Haywood of Silver City, Mississippi.

Haywood averaged 29.2 points per game for the team that, way back in the 1972-73 season, called Seattle home and went by the name of the SuperSonics. He averaged 13.4 rebounds per game the following season, which also has a place in the Thunder record book.

Before he arrived in Seattle, Spencer Haywood tore a red, white and blue streak through the American Basketball Association. In his lone ABA season, Haywood averaged 30 points and 19.5 rebounds a game for the Denver Rockets. That was 1969-70, a season that was nearly over by the time Haywood turned 21.

Having ruled the ABA, Haywood looked elsewhere for a challenge and decided to take on the NBA power structure.

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Who owns the Oklahoma City Thunder's record for single-season scoring and rebounding average?

If you guessed Spencer Haywood, you'd be right. Just check Wikipedia.

It's all there.

Haywood averaged 29.2 points per game for the then-Seattle SuperSonics during the 1972-73 season, and 13.4 rebounds a game the following season.

Haywood was in his first full season in Seattle 37 years ago, when he laid 48 points on the Cleveland Cavaliers on Jan. 7. The Sonics won, 125-111, and "Woody" fell a point shy of Bob Rule's then-club record of 49 points.

More to come ...

After dropping a career-best 40 points on the Chicago Bulls two days before Christmas, Detroit's Rodney Stuckey unloaded another 38 on the Sacramento Kings on Friday night.

Either Rodney Stuckey has arrived, or he's getting there in an awful hurry.

"There" in this case would be a place of distinction among the upper echelon of NBA players.

Stuckey, five years removed from leading Kentwood to a Class 4A state hoops title and earning MVP honors in the process, is turning heads and opening eyes with his dynamic play at point guard for the Detroit Pistons in his second NBA season.

Floundering within stumbling distance of .500 for most of the season, the Pistons have improved to 20-11 and are riding a six-game winning streak. Stuckey, who unloaded 38 points and seven assists on the Sacramento Kings in Detroit's 98-92 victory Friday night, has been a catalyst in the Pistons' resurgence.

Folks around the NBA are starting to take notice of Stuckey's evolution, including a chagrined Kenny Natt, the coach who watched the former Eastern Washington University star torch his Kings.

“Stuckey had a monster game, and we weren’t able to contain him," Natt told the Associated Press on Friday.

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First I want to say thanks to our own John Wallingford for doing an excellent job of maintaining the blog the past few months. His contributions have been both informative and entertaining, and hopefully they have quenched a little of your thirst for Sonics-related stuff.

With my new duties on the Seahawks blog I’ll be checking in less frequently here, but I still will attempt to provide regular updates on what’s happening with the City of Seattle’s proposal to obtain funding for the KeyArena remodel.

As of right now, everything that I’m hearing is not good. I talked to state Rep. Ross Hunter for a story I wrote for today, and he seemed uncertain as to how the Sonics project would be received in Olympia this session – or if it would be heard at all. You can read about it here, but the quick version is the task force has not met since the Dec. 1 meeting and does not plan to meet until the Legislative session begins Jan. 12. Because of the budget shortfall of over $5 billion, state lawmakers have other things to focus on, and the KeyArena project will once again be a low priority.

Brian Robinson over at SonicsCentral provides a good rundown of the players involved and what is happening behind the scenes here.

Jan. 1, 1968: While the Sonics were losing to Lenny Wilkens and the St. Louis Hawks, O.J. Simpson was scoring a pair of touchdowns and leading USC to a Rose Bowl victory over Indiana.

The SuperSonics spent their inaugural New Year's Day at the Seattle Coliseum, where they took a beating from the St. Louis Hawks and two guys who were destined to play significant roles in the franchise's greatest moment.

Lenny Wilkens scored 26 points for St. Louis, and Paul Silas added 23 as the Hawks rolled to a 115-94 victory before a sparse holiday crowd of 3,604 on Jan. 1, 1968. It was St. Louis' fourth victory over the expansion Sonics that season.

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Those heartless wags at ESPN sure had some fun with the latest dose of disgrace to strike our hapless Thunder.

That occurred Saturday night, when 3-27 Oklahoma City hobbled into the nation's capital for a back-alley showdown with the 4-23 Washington Wizards.

The Wizards, bless their souls, were the one team in the NBA doing their best to make the Thunder feel hopeful about its league-worst situation.

So what if the Okies had just three victories? Why, that's only one fewer than the Wizards had before tipoff Saturday.

Going strictly by the teams' respective records, the game marked the second worst matchup in NBA history.

Rising to the occasion, the SportsCenter sages introduced the game highlights variously as the "coal in your Christmas stocking" and the "Second Worst Show on Earth." The producers trimmed out the color and dressed up the highlights with a vintage Charlie Chaplin effect.

It was a feast for the senses.

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Bremerton's Marvin Williams shows off his subtle-to-the-point-of-invisible Mohawk as he defends against Kevin Durant during the Atlanta Hawks' 99-88 victory over the Oklahoma City Okies on Tuesday

Marvin Williams has never been the kind of NBA millionaire to make outlandish fashion statements.

And he probably never will be. There is precious little of the flamboyant and next-to-nothing of the Dennis Rodman in his boy-next-door makeup.

Nonetheless, the Bremerton export's finely tuned Mohawk is all the rage among NBA cognoscenti.

OK, maybe it's sort of the rage.

Williams, who left North Carolina after the Tar Heels won a national title during his freshman season, debuted the new look Dec. 13 when the Hawks opened an eight-game homestand with a 97-92 victory over Cleveland, one of just four losses for the Cavaliers this season.

Perhaps the new 'do is working as a good-luck talisman for Atlanta, which is 6-1 on the homestand following Saturday's 129-117 victory over the Chicago Bulls.

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After resurrecting the moribund Sonics and taking them to the NBA Finals in 1978, Lenny Wilkens was named the News Tribune's male sports figure of the year. Better things yet were ahead in 1979.

They never got a victory for Christmas.

When it came time to tip off on Dec. 25, the Seattle SuperSonics seemed to play under the curse of Ebenezeer Scrooge.

In their 41 seasons, the Sonics played 11 times on Christmas Day. They lost every time.

That blue trend held even during the most glorious season in franchise history, as the San Diego Clippers dropped the Sonics to 0-7 on Christmas games with a 123-118 victory at the Kingdome on Dec. 25, 1978.

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With plunging temperatures in Lyubertsy no doubt aggravating his surgically repaired left knee, Oklahoma City is looking like a real-life Shangri-La to Nenad Krstic.

Only the notorious Russian winter holds the epic power make Oklahoma City look like paradise to poor Nenad Krstic.

Knowing well the lessons of history, Krstic wanted out before it was too late. If frigid Mother Russia could bring the Nazis and Napoleon to their respective, power-mad knees, what horror might she deliver poor Nenad?

Thus Krstic decided that life with Triumph Lyubertsy was a dead end street and signed an offer sheet with the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday.

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Rainier Beach's Jamal Crawford, left, dropped 50 points on Charlotte on Saturday, two nights after Garfield's Brandon Roy unloaded 52 on Phoenix.

On Friday afternoon in Tacoma, the over-the-hill gang on the Trib's copy desk was abuzz about the 52-point tour de force Portland's Brandon Roy laid on the Phoenix Suns the night before.

The question arose as to whether Roy's 52 pickup was the all-time NBA high for a Seattle-bred player. Suffice it to say there was a good deal of head-scratching and that not one of us quick-witted sports savants could think of any performance that might rival Roy's.

As if on cue, former Rainier Beach High star Jamal Crawford went for 50 the very next night in Golden State's victory at Charlotte.

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