Not that there was any real prospect of a move to Seattle, but the Milwaukee Bucks will no longer be a straw for Sonics fans to clutch. Longtime owner Herb Kohl announced Wednesday, pending NBA approval, a sale of to the team to hedge-fund billionaires Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens for a  league-record $550 million.

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The Seahawks' average player salary last season was the second highest in the NFL at $2.3 million, but in comprehensive research done by ESPN The Magazine, the champs ranked only 116th in the world among pro sports teams -- or 43 spots behind MLB's Mariners.

The data was compiled by SportingIntelligence.com and considered 294 teams in 15 leagues, including cricket in India. The 8,663 athletes surveyed made $16.15 billion in combined salaries.

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The off-season for the San Francisco 49ers has been just about as much fun as their final game of the 2013 season.

Oft-troubled LB Aldon Smith, the first player drafted by Jim Harbaugh as Niners coach, apparently did something of breathtaking foolishness -- telling Los Angeles International airport employees he had a bomb, while being "belligerent and uncooperative'' to TSA agents  -- and was arrested Sunday on a charge of making a false threat.

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In the narrow context of a single infant season, Robinson Cano was right.

"You don't want to look at anything negative right now," said the Mariners star and well-compensated proponent of the party line. The 3-0 loss Sunday was the fourth defeat in six tries against Oakland, and again featured feeble hitting reminiscent of the past season, and the season before that, and the season before that.

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A sports anniversary as distinctive as it is dubious is upon Seattle this summer -- 20 years ago July 19, waterlogged tiles on the underside of the Kingdome's ceiling crashed down 180 feet upon unoccupied seats, a couple hours before a Mariners game.

Sheer luck avoided death and injury. The episode ignited an astonishing chain of civic events that transformed the Seattle sports scene and, to some extent, the political landscape. It led to two controversial, publicly funded stadiums that retained the Mariners and Seahawks and led, fairly directly, to the departure of the NBA Sonics and the arrival of the MLS Sounders.

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If you're one to savor emotional whipsaws in sports, you would have enjoyed the time between 6:45 and 7:15 p.m. Wednesday night at Safeco. That's when coach Pete Carroll and seven Seahawks brought the sellout crowd to its feet for the ceremonial first pitch in the Mariners home opener, and the Angels sat them down unceremoniously with back-to-back homers and a 3-0 lead in the first inning.

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Befitting a gent beginning his 10-year draw on a quarter-billion dollars, Robinson Cano was in a fine mood before the Mariners' home opener Tuesday night against the Angels.

"This team can compete with anybody, not only in our division, but in the league," said Cano, surrounded by a couple of dozen media types in the pre-game dugout. "In the past, everybody saw this team as young kids that needed to learn and grow. Now it's different. Now we're in a different place, and that's not something your rivals want to see."

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Four months after the deal, Seattle gets to welcome in person Tuesday night at sold-out Safeco Field the latest change to its skyline -- Robinson Cano.

The Mariners have bet big that it will last 10 years -- a long time in sports, but less than half the life of the Kingdome. The big difference is that the Mariners franchise already has imploded. Cano is in charge of the resurrection (Easter nears, but let's go no further with the analogy).

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If the Washington Huskies produce a dynamic offense this fall, it will be one of the more remarkable feats in recent UW football history. Because in addition to breaking in a new coaching staff, the purples are auditioning two quarterbacks, neither of whom has thrown a pass in college, while the presumed incumbent sits out spring practice suspended for being a knucklehead.

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In describing Pete Carroll Friday, John Schneider twice used the phrase, "low ego." As in: "The football stuff is very obvious for everybody. What everybody doesn’t see is the low ego and the passion he has for the game."

In contrast, a common phrase used by outsiders in describing Carroll's style is "rah-rah," a short-hand cliche that is almost always a pejorative, because it implies that he's covering up with attention-getting enthusiasm an absence of substance.

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John Schneider wryly described it before any writer had a chance: "A love fest."

The Seahawks general manager Friday was announcing the club's agreement to extend head coach Pete Carroll's contract through the 2016 season, and was a little embarrassed at gushing up so many compliments. But when his team wins the Super Bowl 43-8, he's entitled to gush, fawn and direct lots of Paul Allen's money toward the primary creator of Seattle's first major pro sports championship in 35 years.

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After the Seahawks victory parade in downtown Seattle, Pete Carroll was asked at a press conference about a contract extension before he enters the fifth and final year of his contract.

"I'm in great shape," he said, declining to elaborate on what that meant. We'll find out a little more Friday, when the Seahawks have a press conference to announce the extension.

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DeSean Jackson, thrust upon the free agent market after the Philadelphia Eagles cut him without compensation, found an eager taker for his premier NFL talents when he signed Wednesday a three-year, $24 million contract with the Washington Redskins, who guaranteed $16 million.

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Apparently conceding nothing will be happening for awhile on his proposed arena site, Chris Hansen told an audience at a fundraising breakfast Wednesday that he will dedicate  some of the interior space he owns in SoDo to the A-Plus Youth Foundation.

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Overshadowed by the NCAA hoops tournament and the start of baseball season was a federal-agency decision that will go a long way toward imploding a sports fraud more complicated and enduring than Lance Armstrong -- the amateurism myth in college sports.

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At the open house at Safeco Field Monday night, some of the 10,000 or so who showed enjoyed the giant-screen telecast of the Angels-Mariners game from their seats on a rainless (!!) March evening. Others were permitted onto the field’s warning track, where they walked in circles.

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When last we left the Mariners, the manager, after quitting during a days-long public rant, later slaughtered his bosses in a news story, ownership went nuts on its own with an outlandish player contract, and the Seattle sports market finally experienced a major national sports championship.

Other than that, it's been quiet. Which is, of course, the problem.

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Pete Carroll has developed a reputation, largely deserved, as a modern-day Father Flanagan,  providing at his Renton Hostel for Wayward Youth some shelter from the storm. But with the sudden availability Friday of one of the NFL's premier talents, WR DeSean Jackson of Philadelphia, Seahawks fans should keep three things in mind:

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Seahawks fans: Be you doomsayers, or pollyannas?

Doomsayers believe the predations of free agency left the roster vulnerable, beyond off-season repair and likely consumed in the fall by the hellfires of the NFC West. Pollyannas believe that the losses were mere flesh wounds, easily salved by the potions of Pete Carroll and John Schneider, who have nearly divine knowledge of football talent scorned by others.

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The Seahawks' darling neighbors to the south, still bitter about missing an NFC championship and probable Super Bowl triumph by a foot on the final pass of their season, are moving toward locking up the thrower of that pass, Colin Kaepernick. The 49ers apparently figure that next season, $20 million should buy 12 inches.

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