I think it’s pretty silly to talk about choking, anyway — it’s mind-reading, story-based analysis — but I’ll give you the Denver series, if you want. They should have won. It wasn’t stunning that they lost — I was nervous going in, and lots of fans were — but it was heartbreaking.

I don’t think Karl’s teams were chokes. I just think he wore out his welcome (and it took him a lot longer in Seattle than anywhere else he’s coached).

What makes matters worse is that MJ’s bulls were out of contention those two years. I highly doubt that more than 5 percent of Supes fans agree with your assertion that the 94 Denver series wasn’t a choke.

to seven games
</blockquote

You mean six, Scraps.

People talk about the next year against the Lakers as though it were the same, but Seattle was a four seed and the Lakers were a five seed. And nobody mentions that the year before the Denver flameout, the Sonics — under Karl — completely unexpectedly clawed their way to the Western Conference finals. Game 5 against Denver apparently meant that run, the year before, had never happened. And the Sonics going to the finals and taking Chicago, arguably the best team ever that year, to seven games, and playing them much harder than anyone gave them credit for, apparently that didn’t matter either. “Chokers” is a better story.

The Sonics collapse began with firing George Karl, and that’s a fact.

I could care less about wins and losses at this point, I just want a breath of fresh air. I want direction.

Haha, that was good.

Ahhh yes, you can smell the grittiness from here.

Or, a word that rhymes with “grittiness”…

In other words, one of them ultimately had to lose it.

Does it hurt worse getting blown out or thinking you’ve got a chance to catch up and still losing?

That’s the question the M’s are trying to answer this year. As anyone familiar with stats knows, however, you can’t base your conclusion on a small sample size, so we need lots of losses of each type to make it an accurate study.