Last night was the Knicks sole appearance out in Seattle this season. It's been a while since I've taken in an NBA game. But with the NHL on strike, Catfish and Edward taking on the role of uber-Knicks-fans, and my near miraculous fantasy hoops season last year, I've slowly begun to drift back into the NBA fold. And what better way to dive back in completely than a Friday night ESPN-televised game during Sweet 16 weekend.

I left work at 4, catching the commuter bus from my office in Redmond to downtown Seattle. Getting off the bus at the south monorail stop, I shared the monorail station elevator with a French-speaking family on vacation which might have been a more interesting story if the elevator ride was more than 2 stories. The north end of the monorail, my destination, was the Seattle Center, home to Key Arena, the Space Needle, and the new bar Sport, where the Seattle 'fantasy' crew had been hanging out watching the NCAA tournament.

The timing was good. Theher got there just as I was standing outside the restaurant with my back to it wondering where it was. It was my first venture to this new bar. With individual TVs at each booth, it's the first sports bar in Seattle to have reached the point that many suburban bars on the east coast reached several years ago. Not surprisingly, the place is doing well, as theher and I had to share a seat for about 5 minutes until another one was found.

The fantasy crew had been there since 4 after a day of work that consisted of emailing each other about the possible outcome scenarios of our 8 player - 8 team pool, of which I'd already been eliminated after Georgia Tech and Cincinnati bit it last weekend. In one scenario, at the end of the tourney, two of the participants could end up tied. It was decided that in that event, the tie breaker would be a game of beer pong, making me wonder whether I should just suggest that next year, we say 'fuck the brackets' and just have an 8-person $240 beer pong tournament.

After watching the Big Ten send two more teams to the Elite Eight, it was off to the Key. The game started off with an uncalled flagrant foul by Stephon Marbury and a short Sonics run. Ray Allen, who I'd read was supposed to miss this game, played a solid game from start to finish. The Knicks made some runs, the Sonics pulled ahead a few times, but the lead never went above 10 the whole game.

Tim Thomas, whose bright orange shoes successfully prevented him from being shot at by other hunters in the area (hey, there were a lot of Wisconsin fans at the bar down the street), sank a three at the end of regulation to send the game into overtime. For some reason, neither Tim nor Kurt Thomas has their first initial on the back of their jerseys, so the riled up Sonics fans in the men's room before the overtime period were arguing over whether it was Tim or Kurt. They agreed it was Kurt.

All in all, the NBA is still somewhat kind of fantastic, and I have to admit that Mr. Starbucks has done a good job with the game experience. They now have breakdancing kids along with the cheerleaders during the breaks, and the halftime show was a dodgeball round-robin between several branches of the armed forced who've recently returned from Iraq (the Air Force was victorious). The mascot, Sasquatch, though, needs to lower the power on the potato gun that shoots T-shirts into the crowd. He had to bounce them off the roof of the arena into the upper-deck to keep from sending some poor fan to the same fate as Maude Flanders.