Day Forty: Shawn Kemp

Noah floated through the oceans for 40 days and 40 nights with all the world's animals. And I've been in quarantine for 40 days and forty nights. 40 is a significant number for a kid growing up in Seattle. Some might say that 24 is the most. But for me it's 40. And like Noah before him (wait for it) Shawn Kemp could bring the Reign!!!

I was thinking yesterday that this is usually my very favorite time of year for sports. I don't really watch college basketball for a variety of reasons, and football is definitely a distant third as far as sports I like. But baseball and basketball are everything for me. I just love both Major League Baseball (I love baseball in spite of itself really) and even though there's a certain level of heartbreak involved, I really love the NBA. And the NBA playoffs are definitely my favorite sporting event of the year. I love the second season. I love that they are all 7 game series (you can thank the Sonics tank job against Denver for that one as well) and that there is always drama. It is a delightful time of year, with baseball getting going in its second month, the flowers blooming out, and meaningful NBA basketball every night of the week. It's awesome. And of course we won't be seeing an NBA champ this year. They were (of course) the first responsible party and shut things down pretty quickly. I will be dutifully wearing my Toronto Raptors championship hat for an extra year. But anyways, I was thinking, man I miss the NBA right now. I would love to watch Utah play OKC (the game that sent us into Corona Country) tonight. The last sporting event I tried to watch was Utah vs OKC and I couldn't get it to launch of the League Pass. It kept saying the game was scheduled but I couldn't watch it. I wondered if it might be broken. But no, it was just that Rudy Gobert had COVID-19. It's an entertaining clip watching Chris Paul try and come say hello to the Jazz bench and Joe Ingles is all "you should go back to your bench bro." Who knew it would be like this? Oh well. Here we are.  So as a special I thought why not honor my favorite basketball player of my childhood. So without further ado, here is a special edition of A Mariner A Day featuring the greatest Sonic of all-time (come at me bro) and one of the most electrifying athletes I have ever seen: The Reign Man.

The Sonics were the best team in town. They were the coolest team in town. They had it all. They had a point guard who talked trash and played great d, they had a weird tough flat-topped Centralian German, they had Hersey Hawkins, they had such a fucking squad. And they had The Reign Man. No one in the history of Seattle sports has been as regularly electrifying as Shawn Kemp. Maybe there were times that Griffey came close, but basketball is such a more dynamic looking sport than baseball. There are about a dozen iconic Griffey plays. There are probably 30 Kemp plays. Maybe more. He dunked on Chris Gatling so hard that Gatling gives him daps. And then there were the moves he would make after he slammed it home. Each and every one of them would get you tech'ed up these days. But they were all magnificent. Everything that Kemp did was magnificent. He made wearing a tiny piece of hair on the front of your otherwise bald head look really cool. He drank at The Keg and got into tons of trouble. He was everyone's first pick.

It's popular nowadays to claim GP for your favorite childhood player. But c'mon now, Gary was pretty amazing, but he wasn't The Reign Man. For about three or four years there nobody was like Shawn Kemp. And (not old body Portland and Orlando Kemp) he is one of the few pre 00s basketball players who looks like he could physically play with the guys nowadays. He was one helluva athlete. Things fizzled out pretty badly for Shawn after his time with the Sonics, but he knows where his bread is buttered. He is probably quarantining somewhere in Lynnwood right now. Every NBA playoff season I think of that amazing run back in 1996 and it makes me happily sad. And thinking about Shawn Kemp brings that same mix of emotions into my heart today when no NBA playoffs or daily baseball grind are happening. But we have memories and tonight I am remembering Shawn Kemp and all the nasty ass dunks that he threw down over the course of his meteoric career.

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