Today, Monday, April 1, is a critical day for the future of the Seattle Supersonics. No, they don't play a game today. No, they're not expected to make a roster move. Yet they will still face perhaps their most arduous challenge in a sesaon chock-full of them. This is an opponent more lethal than the threes unleashed by Sonic-killer Anthony Peeler, more mammoth than the Los Angeles Lakers' Shaquille O'Neal.

And to imagine that just 10 years ago, this foe was regarded as a harmless younger brother than the Sonics. Well, it's all grown up now.

On the off chance that you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, this possibly unbeatable foe is none other than the Seattle Mariners, who open their defense of their 2001 AL West title tomorrow afternoon against the Chicago White Sox.

It isn't so long ago that even I, who haven't quite yet escaped my teenage years, can't remember when the Mariners played third-fiddle in Seattle sports. During my formative years as a Mariners fan, 1993 and 1994, I often attended games that were as quiet as morgues and as empty as the Sonics' bench nowadays. Throughout the 1990's, the Seahawks have languished in fan apathy, with only a brief spike at the end of the decade when they won the AFC West in Mike Holmgren's first season as coach.

So, for much of their run during the 1990's -- the Mariners' 1995 run to the ALCS excepted -- the Seattle Supersonics have been the big dog in the Seattle sports scene, the team that always sold out its games, the headline story in the paper.

Well, three middling years and one 116-win record-setting season for the Mariners have changed all that. I think I got my wakeup call as to just how much the sports heirarchy had shifted in this city on a chilly Friday morning, January 25. The night before, both of Seattle's basketball teams had recorded remarkable upsets, the Sonics going into Milwaukee and beating the Bucks (I suppose this doesn't seem like much of an upset now, but then it did) and the Huskies slaying the Pac-10-leading Oregon Ducks in Hec Ed. When I picked up my Seattle Times that morning, what was the headline? "Baldwin Could End Frets of 'Thinness'".

Yes, that's right . . . the Mariners were perhaps going to fill that elusive spot of . . . fourth starter.

And that was a more important story than the Sonics winning on the road against their old coach, who had his team near the top of the Eastern Conference? Than the Huskies shaking off their horrible Pac-10 play to beat a local northwest rival who just happened to sit atop the conference?

It's hardly as if this was the first indication I received of the Sonics' slippage on the media's radar. This summer, the local sports talk radio station, KJR, discussed the Sonics only on rare occasions, primarily the draft (though they did happen to make time for the KGP). The fact that Gary Payton had not been labeled untouchable went virtually ignored on those airways.

However, do not misinterpret my comments. This is not a rant against the Seattle Times or KJR, and they can hardly be blamed. Just like everyone else in a capitalist society, the media is subject to the 'invisible hand' of supply and demand. And the plain, honest truth is that there hasn't been much demand for the Sonics lately.

The fact is that mass media is called mass for a reason; it has to cater to an extremely large and heterogenous population. They can't be expected to cover everything equally, nor anything as in-depth as hard core fans like ourselves would want. That's exactly why I've started this website, where the Sonics are king -- or, more aptly, the center of our attention.

It's fortunate in my opinion that the Sonics have been hot the last month and a half, and their wins the last two games might just have been critical. Without them, and a playoff drive that's building momentum, it would be easy for the Sonics to be overwhelmed by a maelstrom of Mariner- and Ichiro-mania.

These final three weeks -- and, almost definitely, more for the playoffs -- will be a critical time for the future and direction of the organization. If, somehow, the city of Seattle can rally behind the Sonics come playoff time just as it did the Mariners throughout last season, such positive momentum can easily carry over into next season and propel the Sonics upwards as they look to return to their 1990's upswing.

Of course, with that optomistic hope comes unfortunately paired a negative possibility. If the Sonics do succomb to their injury woes, drop to the eighth playoff spot, and get swept in the first round by some as-yet-undetermined opponent, don't expect to hear much of anything about them outside of this site until the Mariners are eliminated. Another quiet off-season would mean a further declining ticket base and, quite possibly, more complaints from the organization about KeyArena, not realizing that the real problem is Safeco Field, not the Key.

All these facts, the constant jockeying for position in the public eye amongst the city's five major sports teams -- Sonics, Mariners, Seahawks, and Husky basketball and football -- is an important reason why I felt that Gary Payton should not have been traded last summer. Dealing Payton for a group of younger players would have meant an almost inevitable visit to the lottery this season, with a win total in the 30's. And if you think the Sonics have been ignored, imagine what little press they'd be getting if they weren't contending for the playoffs. I don't think it would be quite as bad as the Golden State Warriors, whose local newspapers aren't even sending beat writers to away games, but it surely would not be peaches and cream either.

So, as they open the season tomorrow, I'd like to wish the Mariners good luck. And the Sonics better luck.