You might have noticed that I haven't spoken at length, or at all, about my beloved Sonics this season. There's a reason for this. It's been a disaster of a year for us, one that I don't really enjoy watching or talking about, and one that I really just wish would go away. It's agonizing enough to look at the standings and see that we're 13 games below .500 with no chance in hell of making the playoffs. But I like looking at numbers, and when I look at the numbers, they tell me that we're one of history's worst teams, at least when it comes to defense.

According to defensive efficiency, the Sonics are the worst defensive team in the NBA this season, and it's not even close. We allow 112.3 points per 100 possessions, which is 3.4 points worse than the next worst defensive team, the Toronto Raptors.

I can't even begin to express how awful that is. . . . but I'll try: It's the worst defensive efficiency rating since the league began tracking turnovers in 1977-78, according to basketball analyst Bob Chaikin. It's so bad that you can comfortably describe the second-to-worst defense this year as being far better than ours. Think about that.

Defensive Efficiency
Five worst defenses in 2005-06
30. Seattle: 112.3
29. Toronto: 108.9
28. Portland: 108.8
27. New York: 108.3
26. Atlanta: 108.1

Don't go anywhere, Random-osity will return after these messages.

According to a column John Hollinger wrote for the New York Sun in January, since 1977-78, no team has had a defensive efficiency rating 10 points below league average -- that is, until the 2005-06 Sonics came along. Our defensive efficiency this year? Eleven points worse than the league average.

Eleven!

That's beyond ridiculous; that's ridiculously ridiculous. You could put five Johnny Weirs on the court and they'd do better than that.

I'm not trying to say I'm surprised that the Sonics defense is bad. Nobody, not even Scottie Pippen, would find it necessary to point out that a defense will struggle when its backbone consists of Ray Allen, Rashard Lewis, a rookie center, and a point guard who can't guard a chair. But it's hard for me to believe that we can be THIS bad.

Let's take another commercial break.