Other than June 5th, 1977 and June 1st, 1979, June 28, 2007 has got to rank as the best day in Northwest pro basketball history. The Kiwi & Kangaroo was Seattlest Draft HQ, where Seattlest David, Seattlest me, and our friend Frank kept track of the action and insulted each other. Since ESPN kept showing "must improve" for each player drafted, (example, Spencer Hawes' "must improve" was rebounding) we came up with "must improve"s for......

Proving once again that Garfield grads are smarter than their private school counterparts, Marcelus Kemp today announced he'll stay in school for a year and improve his game, while Spencer Hawes announced he'll enter the draft and become the Robert Swift of 2007. You'd think Hawes would learn from fellow Prepster Martell Webster, who entered the draft early and has never found consistent playing time in the NBA, his career so far could best be......

Really the only thing worth remembering from last night's game was an amazing swing by Ichiro. In the 4th inning, Harden threw him a nasty splitter that fooled him. But he changed his swing mid-stroke, adjusted his bat downward, and reached the ball about a foot off the ground. And he didn't just make contact, which would've been an amazing feat in itself--he lined the ball into centerfield. Then Beltre grounded into a double play.......

Ex-Garfield High and UW star Brandon Roy would seem to have a lock on the NBA Rookie of the Year award, but the Blazers aren't taking any chances. They've teamed with Portland-based Leatherman to create a limited-edition Brandon Roy tool which they'll send to 250 ROY voters. They are also selling a few. Why a Leatherman? Let the PR people tell you: Their similarities are striking. They have both been described as do-it-all and multi-talented......

We don't know about you, but when we were 19, we made some pretty indefensible decisions. Baking a pizza while blind drunk, then forgetting about it, causing the NYC fire department to evacuate our girlfriend's dorm while we were passed out in her bed comes to mind. Surely our city's sports columnists made similarly idiotic choices in their final year of teenagerdom. Yet the entire Seattle sports community is reading their Spencer Hawes-o-scopes, trying to......

Seattle Prep, which never made the state tourney with current and future NBAers Martell Webster and Spencer Hawes anchoring the squad, has clinched a 2007 berth with slightly-less-touted players Jack Hanley and Jordan Hamilton leading the way. They beat #2 Rainier Beach 61-59 in a Sea-King district winner-to-state game Thursday night. Beach, which won the Metro championship Friday, must now win two loser-out games to make a state tournament they'd be one of the favorites......

Yesterday we wrote that the Huskies would beat #10 Wazzu, and we were wrong. Don't be that surprised, it happens a lot. What was most frustrating about the game is that Huskies could have easily won. Several times in the final four minutes UDub had the ball down one, and instead of dumping it inside, which had worked all game, the Huskies resorted to the offensive scheme that has made us weep all season: A......

One thing we love about Coug fans, when their teams are winning they are the cockiest, most trash talkingest group of hombres this side of the Cascades. This year is no different, and with good reason. After a decade of dreadful basketball they are currently second in the Pac 10, number ten in the country, and have a realistic shot of nabbing a three, or dare they dream, a number two seed come March. Tonight......

--Copper theft is our absolute most favorite crime. Where else does the size of the score correlate directly with the weight of the material you have to haul away? Who else steals raw materials? --"Starbucks" and "unions" continue to appear in news stories and blog posts together. Like espresso and soy, they go together. --Salon has a piece on the "Ashley Treatment" or the "Pillow Angel" or whatever you want to call it. How......

So. The Huskies. The team that's our city's best chance at a 2007 championship trophy, and they can't even beat the Cougs. Historical fact: No team has ever lost to Washington State University and gone on to win the championship of anything. But here's the good news: because the Huskies are in the nation's best conference, they have six more games against ranked teams, and three against teams ranked in the top 10 (Oregon, Pittsburgh......

After the Huskies' played the last five minutes of last night's game [Times, P-I, S.F. Chronicle] as if they'd been inhabited by the spirit of Mike Jensen, we got a little chippy with our Kenmore dryer and kicked the inanimate-ing shit out of it. The Dawgs are a young team, and psychological meltdowns happen. We're not too worried about the team, they actually played terrific for 35 minutes, especially the first half when they stayed......

Two sick plays in last night's game [boxscore]: 1) Quincy Pondexter drove along the baseline, split two defenders, and sent down a rim-rattling dunk. 2) Spencer Hawes pulled another move out of his NBA-ready bag: a left-handed hook that had the crowd whacking whoever was next to them and saying, "holy shit, did you see that?" Recaps: [AP], [P-I], [Times].......

As bad as the Dawgs looked against Gonzaga is how good they looked Wednesday night against LSU. You can read the recaps: [AP}, [P-I], [Times], [New Orleans Times-Picayune] but let us just observe: --Jon Brockman had his best game as a Husky (19 pts., 14 boards) --Spencer Hawes had "the look" before the game. He has moves that Tim Duncan didn't have his rookie year with the Spurs. The 18 -foot jumper, the pivot and......

--UW researchers have discovered how to spy on users of the new Nike+ipod sports kit. --Are there any bloggers out there who wouldn't consider a career change to alpaca sales? --The Robotic Gourmand's verdict on Pagliacci pizza: nice crust, tasty sauce, cheese that tastes like it comes from a box. --If you think the Hawks' D.J. Hackett kicks ass, you're right. Seahawks Insider proves it. --Looking for cool greeting cards? Look no further. --"Do I......

The Hec Ed PA announcer actually said that, before an unexpectedly entertaining Northern Iowa/Nicholls St. clash to kick off the Basketball Travelers round robin. Washington's first game of the year, which came next, was expectedly entertaining. It would've been more so had the refs not called the game like a seniors' rec league, calling 52 fouls. The Huskies jumped out to an early lead on the strength of true freshman Quincy Pondexter's ferocious defense, open......

All-everything Husky recruit Spencer Hawes is having arthroscopic surgery tomorrow. Something's floating around in his knee. From the UW press release: The 7-foot center is projected to be sidelined for two to four weeks, but a true timeline for his return won't be available until the day after the surgery at the earliest. "This is obviously a setback for Spencer and our program," said [coach Lorenzo] Romar. "But, we are very optimistic based on what......

Nate Robinson, Brandon Roy, Jamal Crawford and Spencer Hawes on one squad. Our fantasy basketball team circa 2008? No, fucking reality--if you were watching the Entertainer's Basketball Classic at the Rucker courts in the Bronx yesterday. It's a two-on-two tournament. Seattle played L.A. in the first game, going with Nate Robinson and Spencer Hawes exclusively. [Pause while we cream our pants] They won that game, then the Seattles went with Brandon Roy and Jamal Crawford......

Once upon a time, we'd spend August devouring Husky football coverage in anticipation of a run at the Pac-10 title. Now, we spend August searching for info on the Husky basketball team. From Scout.com, photos of the Dawgs playing pickup in Hec Ed. And Bob Condotta of the Times, in his terrific Husky hoops blog, writes up his observations during these games, including this about incoming freshman Spencer Hawes, who's maybe the Huskies' best recruit......

As the NBA's 10th worst team, the Sonics had about a 1/25 chance of getting one of the top three picks, and about a 9/10 chance of getting the 10th pick. They did not pick up an ace "on the river" however (if you have been unemployed in the past year you will know what this means), and so the tenth pick is theirs. This is a weak draft, and there's a reason for......

For the first time since maybe the 2004 tournament loss to UAB, the Husky men were beat by a more athletic team Thursday, as Oregon upset them in the first round of the Pac-10 tournament. When the Huskies seemed ready to pull away, athletic plays by Jordan Kent and Malik Hairston kept the Ducks in the game. They hassled Ryan Appleby (who, it's now clear, probably shouldn't ever handle the ball) leapt for rebounds and......

The State 3A hoops tournament started yesterday. All the favored teams won their first round games, setting up some interesting quarterfinal matchups. Undefeated Renton plays two-time defending champions O'Dea at 3:30 today. O'Dea, with junior guard Jamelle McMillan (son of coach Nate) plays a defensive-minded game. We're hoping for a Renton win, which would set up an run and gun game between the Indians and Rainier Beach. But... Rainier Beach must first beat 24-1 Lynden.......

This weekend, Seattlest will be representing at a high school basketball game, a chamber music concert, a church in Burien, and Alderwood Babies-R-Us, respectively. For the full 411, see below. Audrey's watching HBO's happy-go-lucky AIDS film. Tomorrow, she'll evince her newly-found concern for third-world poverty and disease by going Christmas shopping downtown. Sunday afternoon, find her at the Triple Door, having successfully weaselled her way into the KEXP event with Morcheeba. Sunday morning, most Seattlests......

Oh were we ever excited about December 1st. Not because it is the birthday of our senior year high school president, Max Grinnell, but because it is the day that Husky men's basketball single game tickets go on sale. We'd organized a group of five. We were ready to buy our tickets for the Gonzaga, Arizona and Stanford game. But, when we called the ticket office yesterday to ask a preliminary question, we discovered this......

On Friday, Issaquah High pulled off its second earth-shattering upset of the year, defeating Bellevue High's nationally-ranked football team. What makes this such a big upset? Check out Bellevue's resume: --Four-time defending state champions --Winners of 30 consecutive games --Ranked 10th in the country by USA Today --Ranked 1st in the state by the Seattle Times This isn't the first time Issaquah's shocked the prep sports world. Earlier this year, they knocked Seattle Prep out......

Why did Seattlest not post about the weekend's sports? Because, unless you are a Europhile, all the news was depressing. In football, the Huskies lost a "heartbreaker", and the Seahawks blew almost a sure win (again). Lennon/McCartney presciently summed up the last week of the 2005 Mariners season in "Eleanor Rigby." First, playing to the lowest crowd in Safeco history, they "darned their socks in the night when there's nobody there (nobody cares)." Then, in......

Seattle Prep's boys basketball team, ranked #1 in the state and nationally-ranked for much of the season, will not qualify for the state tournament after Issaquah beat them 63-61 in a loser-out district game yesterday. Issaquah employed a rare triangle and two defense to neutralize Prep stars Martell Webster and Spencer Hawes, who may both play in the NBA soon. Gutsy Issaquah, undersized and undermanned, won in an overtime period after their top player,......