A few days ago, it was reported that Kevin Durant quietly sold his Mercer Island home after being on the market for nearly two years (for the uninitiated: Mercer Island is a very wealthy city near Seattle, where people named Paul Allen and Kevin Durant live/used to live). When Durant purchased the home after being drafted in 2007, it provided a glimmer of hope for Sonics fans hoping to keep the team in Seattle. A potential superstar plants his flag in the Northwest? Maybe it meant something. Well, so much for that notion.
But look how beautiful and majestic it is!
Today, we are presented with the antithesis of Durant — a symbol of every reason why Seattle doesn’t have an NBA team anymore. Robert Swift was selected with the 12th pick in the 2004 draft, the first of three utterly useless 7-foot stiff the Sonics would eventually pick (in consecutive drafts, no less). He went on to play a whopping 97 NBA games, which is somehow still better than the equally stiff Saer Sene (No. 10 overall in 2006), who clocked in at 47 games. But, because it’s the NBA, Swift made an estimated $20 million in his brief career, and he also bought himself a pricey home in a wealthy Eastside suburb.
Unfortunately, it seems that money has dried up — the bank foreclosed on the property last summer, selling it off for half the original price. The new owner is ready to move in, yet Swift is making his last stand — refusing to leave:
“…it seems like a very sad story and I definitely feel for him,” said the new owner, who wanted to hide her identity.
She thought she knew what she was getting when she bought the foreclosed home in January.
Cans of beer dot the grass outside the home. A bullet hole pierced the garage window at some point.
“Cars that don’t look like they’ve moved in a long time,” she noted.
Water festers in buckets outside of what was once a million dollar home in a wealthy Eastside suburb.
Not much else really needs to be said about the Red Headed Menace’s situation, except to address this little dig by the KOMO copy editor:
Swift was once a star on the hardwood. Now the new owner of the house wants the game to end.
Swift averaged four points, four rebounds and one block per game in his career. Hardly star material.
[KOMO]
