Seattle Sports: In the Morning

Sonics lost again, their 12th in a row, blowing a 10-point lead with five minutes left and losing 109-107 to the Rockets.

Sherman Alexie says Kevin Durant looks passive on offense and is starting to remind him of Glenn Robinson. Whoa. Slow down now. The kid is 19, and he's in the middle of a 12-game losing streak. Do you think Kevin Durant's ever been on a team that had as much as a THREE game losing streak? This is a very, very new experience for him. There's also the fact that he's played 41 games now, players just out of college always hit a wall in the middle of the grind of the NBA season. I know it sux to lose twelve in a row, but let's lay off the "Durant's-a-bust" button for a moment, shall we?

Huskies play 14-3 ASU tonight, but the Sun Devils' star frosh guard James Harden may not play, he hurt his groin at Stanford. The game's at 6pm--no TV. The FSN games tonight are Wazzu @ Arizona at 5:30, and UCLA @ Oregon at 7:30. Sweet.

Former Husky lineman Bob Sapp (probably best known for falling on that fumble in the end zone during the Whammy in Miami) is a huge celebrity in Japan in mixed martial arts (he tells the P-I's Jon Naito he makes about $3.5 million/year). His first local bout will be Feb. 23rd at the Emerald Queen Casino.

Jim Zorn interviewed for the Washington Redskins OC job.

Ex-Mercer Island star and former Mizzou coach Quin Snyder is now coaching the Austin Toros. He tells Adrian Wojnarowski of Rivals.com: "When the water goes out at the hotel before the game, if you can't shower, the whole team can't shower. But I love that part of it. I do. And I love the anonymity. I wouldn't trade that right now. I'm in the moment a lot, which is awesome for me. That's always been a struggle. My mind races a bit."

Arizona and ASU created an annual award for the MVP of their rivalry game, and Bob Condotta thinks it would be cool if the Apple Cup had the same thing. He's right. Who would last year's MVP have been? I guess Alex Brink. Couldn't they go back and award the MVP retroactively? I don't see why not.

John McGrath of TNT says trading for Eric Bedard would just repeat the cycle of overpaying for veterans that has kept the M's out of the postseason for six years--he says the M's ought to be following the Oakland/Cleveland model. I don't care what model they follow, I just wish they would pick one and stick with it--as I said in a column last month in the P-I.

The Times' Bud Withers writes that Gonzaga's success has created unrealistic expectations for other WCC schools.