An avid Jock Itch reader recently brought to my attention that this column is "angry, unintelligible nonsense and you should quit trying to write about sports since you obviously don't know shit."

Angry? Perhaps. Don't know shit? Okay. But unintelligible nonsense? My good friend, you are way out of line! And to prove it, this week I'm attempting something that usually encourages in me great heaps of diarrhea, the Reasoned Expository Essay:

It would be nice to live in a city with a winning professional basketball team, so after each game we could loot, ransack, and turn over cars in joyous celebration. Instead, Seattle basketball fans have to contend with a young team lacking maturity that will most likely continue playing like hillbilly frog-fuckers until a spot in the playoffs is far out of reach. It is my contention that the Seattle SuperSonics, without Gary Payton, suck. For example, last week against the Lakers, even after Reggie Evans, bless his soul, collided with Kobe Bryant (who, as a result, will be out for another month), the Sonics still lost 99-91.

In conclusion, without Gary Payton the SuperSonics lack the leadership necessary to be competitive in the postseason.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, although I have Ansu Sesay's autograph, neither he, nor Reggie Evans, nor Vitaly Potapenko deserves love. Gary Payton does. God loves Gary Payton, and even though he left us here in Seattle, his spirit is all around us. When you're good at your job and everyone else you work with is always complaining, calling in sick, and trying to start fights, and you just sit there working hard and focusing all day and don't get any attention for it, Gary Payton is there with you. You may be famous and unbelievably rich, but you don't always get the headlines, because you work with whiners and freaks like Kobe and Shaq.

In conclusion again, I'd like to reiterate that it would be nice to have a basketball team that aroused so much passion that Seattle would erupt in joyous violence each time the team won.

So much for the crappy Reasoned Expository Essay! Stay tuned next week for the Seasoned Suppository Essay.

jockitch@thestranger.com