If you've poked around the history section of this website (and if you haven't, why the heck not?), I'm pretty sure you've noticed that we have our picks for the Sonics' All-Time team. I must confess that there was not much in-depth research or a scientific method used for creating this team. It was more a case of me saying, "Who do I think were the best players in Sonics history?" Since I'm only 19 and can't really even remember back to the Tom Chambers era, much of my opinion has, of course, been guided by what I've read. That hasn't necessarily been a whole lot. There are series of team histories that must be commissioned by the NBA, and these have really been my main exposure to 'ancient' Sonics history -- you know, the 80's.

By the time grumpyd and myself finish our coverage of Sonics history here at the website, I'd like to hope that things will be different. I don't know of anything else that covers the whole of Sonic history in as much depth as we have here, though I'm certain there must be something out there.

For a few isolated seasons, there are excellent in-depth books including Lenny Wilkens' two autobiographies, Unguarded and The Lenny Wilkens Story; George Karl's autobiography, This Game's the Best (So Why Don't They Quit Screwing With It?); Curt Sampson's account of the 1993-94 season, Full Court Pressure; David Shield's race-related look at the 1994-95 season, Black Planet (these are the ones I've read); Spencer Haywood's two autobiographies, The Spencer Haywood Story and The Autobiography of Spencer Haywood (he obviously wasn't as creative when it came to book titles as he was on the court); and Blaine Johnson's account of the late-70's Sonics, What's Happenin'?

However, there remains to the best of my knowledge no compendium of Sonics history. Last summer, on a whim, I picked up the book From 33rd Street to Camden Yards: An Oral History of the Baltimore Orioles , by John Eisenberg. Despite the fact that I have no interest whatsoever in Orioles history, I found the book a fascinating read. It, along with the dearth of Sonics historical information, has convinced me to set as an unofficial goal for myself writing an oral history of the Sonics should I seriously pursue a career as a sportswriter.

But I've digressed . . . my main point here was to indicate that I was completely going on second-hand information for about half of my choices for the Sonics' All-Time team. Now, however, I have a better tool to evaluate my selections. It's exactly a purpose like this that I designed my player rating system for, as one of its essential goals is to evaluate players over the course of their careers. So for this week's column, I decided to crunch the numbers on the computer and see how accurately I had picked players for the All- Time team.

Unfortunately, there was one serious problem with this plan. My system is, of course, based on today's box score stats. These didn't all exist before 1978, which was the first year the turnover started to be counted on an individual level. Therefore, I can't rate Spencer Haywood or Lenny Wilkens, and even the early years of Fred Brown's career are obscured. On the fortunate side, eight of the 13 players I chose played all of their Sonic careers during or after the 1997-78 season, so we can take a look at them.

In order to avoid boring myself to tears, I decided to limit the study to players who had played a significant amount with the Sonics -- no one-year wonders like Marvin Webster. The odds of them making it given the way I designed the system aren't very good anyway, so no reason to bother. Of course, guys who played three or four seasons but very little in any (read: Steve Scheffler) aren't going to be making the list either. In the end, I decided on 6000 minutes played as a good qualifier.

Oddly enough, over the 25 years the Sonics have played in that time (this season was included, which allowed Brent Barry and Rashard Lewis to sneak in), the Sonics have had 25 players play 6000 minutes, an average of exactly one per season.

One last point as I tease you before actually showing the results. I wanted to balance three different ways of measuring a player's ability using my system. The first is total career value. This actually wouldn't have changed the final results much from what I've used, but obviously a player who plays adequately for ten years isn't really as valuable to a team as one who plays brilliantly for half that time, even if the total may not show that. The second method is top season. Using this would have mixed things up quite a bit, but it's obvious to me that Vin Baker's one excellent season in Seattle should not completely obscure his three poor ones. The final possible method is 'peak value', which I identify as the top three consecutive seasons. Some players, as we know, burned very brightly for a short period of time, and they do deserve credit for that. Players are often heavily judged on the peak of their careers. To combine these three, I divided total value by five (I figured five was about the average of the number of seasons these players would have played in Seattle) and divided peak value by three before adding those two and top season. That way, all three measures are about weighted equally. As another brief note, I pro-rated the '99 season to 82 games, all seasons where players were traded in-season are pro-rated to the number of games they played with the Sonics compared to total games, and this season is pro-rated to 82 games.

Alright, you've been held in suspense long enough. Here are the results:

1. Gary Payton, PG, 423
2. Shawn Kemp, PF, 390
3. Jack Sikma, C, 364
4. Dale Ellis, SG, 363
5. Detlef Schrempf, SF, 320
6. Gus Williams, PG, 301
7. Xavier McDaniel, SF, 274
8. Tom Chambers, PF, 248
9. Derrick McKey, SF, 209
10. Hersey Hawkins, SG, 207
11. Ricky Pierce, SG, 198
12. Sam Perkins, C, 193
13. Vin Baker, PF, 189
14(t). Brent Barry, SG, 182
14(t). Rashard Lewis, SF, 182
16. Fred Brown, SG, 161
17. Michael Cage, PF, 154
18. Nate McMillan, PG, 153
19. Lonnie Shelton, PF, 145
20. Eddie Johnson, SF, 143
21. Dennis Johnson, SG, 123
22. Vincent Askew, SF, 95
23. John Johnson, SF, 46
24. Danny Vranes, SG, 32
25. Wally Walker, SF, 31

Some random observations at first glance from the chart . . . That's a pretty formidable starting lineup at the top of the chart. I think I'd take them in a game. . . . Odd that Brent Barry and Rashard Lewis would be in a flat-footed tie. Actually, that doesn't take into account Wednesday's game with Phoenix, so Barry might have pulled slightly ahead. . . . Anyone else chuckle at seeing Wally Walker dead last? I know I did. . . . How will Vin Baker backers explain that his five years in Seattle rate as only slightly more valuable than Barry's three and Lewis' four (which are really three because he did nothing his rookie season)? . . . Fred Brown would rate way higher if we looked at his whole career. . . . It's bittersweet to see Dale Ellis, my first favorite Sonic during the 1988-89 season when I was six, rate so highly as he faces legal troubles. I'm doubting that Ellis is ever introduced in KeyArena so long as Howard Schultz owns the team.

Now, how does this compare with the team I selected?

Amazingly, the first eight transfer over perfectly. Lenny Wilkens, Spencer Haywood, and Bob Rule are unrated. Brown, as noted, is being undervalued because his peak years are missing. By 1977-78, he had become the Sonics' Sixth Man behind Williams and Johnson. That leaves only one player with whom my head has a discrepancy with my heart . . . Nate McMillan. I must say that I actually am a little surprised at this result. I've read a fair number of statistical looks at the NBA from the late 1980's, when they were all the rage thanks to the baseball impact of Bill James, and they universally rate McMillan fairly highly. To be fair, McMillan is actually rated pretty well early in his career -- his first two years are light years ahead of Payton -- before tailing off. As well, this system -- and most any -- is generally lousy at evaluating the effect of defense, which we all know was his strongpoint. It is true, in hindsight, that McMillan's proneness to injury really limited his value by about the 1995-96 season. If ever there were an exception to the rule, it would be Nate McMillan and I'd take him on my team any day of the week.

Some more partial thoughts inspired by this study . . . who ranks highest in each of the individual components?

Gary Payton ends up the career leader, which is about as shocking as that he made the All-Star team this season. Interestingly, if you add Baker and Kemp's value, you about get Payton's. I don't know what, if anything, that means, other than that there's a pretty good-sized gulf between Payton and Kemp, who's number two.

I'm going to surprise a few people even more than I did myself with the greatest individual season in Sonic history. Would you believe Detlef Schrempf's 1994-95 campaign? I wouldn't either at first glance, but let me show you the results of a little study I did. I often talk up Barry as an extremely efficient story. Because he shoots so well from three, Barry scores far more points per possession taken then any other current Sonic (his 2000-01 season tied for the 23rd best performance of all time in scoring efficiency). However, he does this by shooting selectively and not very much. What is extremely rare is scoring both frequently and efficiently.

That's what Schrempf did during the 1994-95 season. His 1.30 scoring efficiency (calculated by points/(fga +(.4*fta))) came up just short of Barry's 1.33, but he did it while scoring more than double Barry's 8.8 points per game.

To see just how rare this is, I found all the players since 1952 (when the NBA started tracking minutes played) who had played at least 800 minutes and had a scoring efficiency of 1.30 or better. It's a select group -- 60 players in 50 years, or only a little better than one per season. I then sorted these players by points per game to see how many players had been both as efficient and productive as Schrempf was in the 1994-95 season. It's an extremely select group:

Adrian Dantley (1982-83, 1983-84)
Charles Barkley (1986-87, 1987-88, 1988-89, 1989-90)
Kevin McHale (1986-87, 1987-88)
Chris Mullin (1989-90)
Reggie Miller (1989-90, 1990-91)
Wilt Chamberlin (1966-67)

I think it's safe to say that if you make this list, you're doing something right offensively. And Schrempf was in 1994-95. However, he was not one-dimensional, finishing second on the Sonics in boards per game and maintaining a 1.76 assist/turnover ratio that many guards would be proud of.

What I find remarkably odd is that Kemp also had his best season by my formula in 1994-95, and Payton his second-best season. Three superstar players essentially peaking at the same time and the Sonics couldn't even win their division? I think that shows just how awful Kendall Gill really was at the shooting guard and how beautiful an acquisition Hersey Hawkins was.

Dale Ellis rates the best of any Sonic since 1978 in peak value. His first three years with the Sonics were simply phenomenal; as good as Payton and Kemp have been, neither came close to touching Ellis' points per game averages of 24.9, 25.8, 27.5. His scoring efficiency was also excellent, at around 1.2 these seasons, but a part of me does wonder what kind of numbers Kemp and Payton might have put up had they not played their peak years with each other and Schrempf.

One last bit of fun with numbers that I found in this study was taking a look at the best Sonics rookie seasons. With George Karl around, there haven't been many good ones lately. The six noteworthy rookie seasons in the past 25 years:

Jack Sikma (1977-78), 220
Xavier McDaniel (1985-86), 197
Derrick McKey (1987-88), 115
Nate McMillan (1986-87), 90
Shawn Kemp (1989-90), 83
Gary Payton (1990-91), 56

I'd add in Tom Burleson, Fred Brown, Spencer Haywood, and Bob Rule from the pre-1978 era for the top 10 Sonics rookie seasons of all time.