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Payton said he and Lin still exchange text messages, but never truly went head-to-head on the court in their training sessions. "He basically just wanted to play me all the time," Payton said. "That was his dream. I told him: You're not ready to do that. I'm not going to give you the opportunity until you prove it." Jeremy Lin has proven a lot over the past few weeks. The mentor has noticed. "This is how fate goes," Gary Payton said. "Everybody gets hurt, he gets off the bench, and he does what he does.…He's showing he can play basketball. They just didn't know it." Wall Street Journal

New York Knicks, Gary Payton, Jeremy Lin 

Tim Duncan has scored 10 points and grabbed eight rebounds and passed another NBA statistical milestone as the Spurs have charged to a 56-42 halftime lead. Duncan moved past Gary Payton for 26th place on the NBA’s scoring list on a 20-foot jumper with 1:07 left. DeJuan Blair leads the Spurs with 12 points and Tiago Splitter has added eight as the Spurs have pounded the ball inside against the Suns. They have a 28-16 edge in points in the paint. Steve Nash leads Phoenix with 12 points and four assists and Marcin Gortat has added 10 points and a team-high seven rebounds. San Antonio Express-News

San Antonio Spurs, Gary Payton, Tim Duncan 

Payton’s stated goal since the Sonics left has been to get a team back in the city. And in a recent interview with SoCalSportsMedia.com after an autograph-signing in Anaheim, Calif., Payton re-stated his belief that it won’t be long before Seattle has its own team. That’s his “agenda” for the upcoming year, and he made reference to some kind of time frame that begins in September.“I want to get a team back there and I think we got a lot of people that are really on board for that,” Payton said in the interview. “We’re eligible to do that in September of next year. … We’re going to be OK. I think it’s going to happen.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton 

Payton predicted shortly after the Sonics left in 2008 that the NBA would return to Seattle by 2011, which obviously isn’t going to happen. “You’ve got to go to a lot of business people, you go talk to them,” Payton told the P-I’s Gary Washburn in 2008. “We always want to talk to a lot of business people who got a lot of funds and money that we can get involved with, so it’s going slow. A lot of (former) players are trying to get something going and then hopefully we can get it done.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton 

Shaquille O'Neal: Just before the start of the ’03-’04 season the coaching staff called us in and said, “No more public sparring or you’ll get fined.” Everyone knew it was simmering, but Mitch [Kupchak] never came down. Magic Johnson, who was around all the time, never said anything. But Phil was tired of it. Karl Malone and Gary Payton were sick of it. I said, “All right, I hear you. I’m done.” So what happens? Immediately after that Kobe runs right out to Jim Gray and does this interview where he lets me have it. He said I was fat and out of shape. He said I was milking my toe injury for more time off, and the injury wasn’t even that serious. (Yeah, right. It only ended my damn career.) He said I was “lobbying for a contract extension when we have two Hall of Famers playing pretty much for free.” I’m sitting there watching this interview and I’m gonna explode. Hours earlier we had just promised our coach we’d stop. It was a truce broken. I let the guys know, “I’m going to kill him.” HoopsWorld

Los Angeles Lakers, Shaquille O'Neal, Gary Payton, Magic Johnson, Jim Gray, Karl Malone 

GQ: Fine. It's safe to assume it's a big name player. Is the NBA starting to become a league of Super-Teams? Carmelo Anthony: I think people fail to realize that teams and organizations have been stacking teams since way back in the day. The Lakers had the Showtime era. Boston had six hall of famers on one team. You had Detroit, the New York Knicks, and now the Miami Heat. They were stacking their teams back then, it just fell off over the years and now it picked back up. Boston did it first, then LA. I was fortunate enough to play against them when they had Shaq, Kobe, Rick Fox, Gary Payton, Karl Malone... that's five hall of famers on one team! So you can't get mad at Miami for doing what they did. A lot of people don't agree on how they did it, or how LeBron did it. GQ.com

Boston Celtics, Denver Nuggets, Detroit Pistons, Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, New York Knicks, Carmelo Anthony, Gary Payton, Karl Malone, Hall of Fame, Rick Fox 

Xiamen University beauty Guo Jiayuan won 2011 Tsingtao Beer NBA Cheering Squad Final on 28th Sep in Beijing. She together with five other winners will receive professional training in United States and perform for NBA, reports Xiamen Economic Daily. Guo Jiayuan, a cheer leader from Xiamen University, impressed judges with her dance and finally won appreciation from Gary Payton, a former American professional basketball point guard. What's On Xiamen

Gary Payton, China 

Seattle brought its basketball players back together Friday -- on the baseball field. The Mariners honored the history of the SuperSonics before their game against Tampa Bay. They gathered many of the Sonics' greatest names, including Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkens, George Karl, Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, Tom Chambers, Hersey Hawkins, Slick Watts, Dale Ellis, Jack Sikma, Spencer Haywood, Fred Brown, Gus Williams, Nate McMillan, Michael Cage and James Donaldson. ESPN.com

Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton, Nate McMillan, Lenny Wilkens, Shawn Kemp, Jack Sikma 

Among those kids from the state were Schrempf, Donaldson, Doug Christie, John Stockton, George Irving, Jamal Crawford, James Edwards, and more recently, Jason Terry, Brandon Roy, Nate Robinson, Spencer Hawes, Jon Brockman, Aaron Brooks, Martell Webster, Marcus Williams and Rodney Stuckey. "You have pride that you have a team, but when all of that went down it broke my heart," said Hawkins, who was part of the team that played the Bulls in the 1996 NBA Finals. "It was disheartening in the fact that the fans were left out in the cold." "Hopefully, we'll get a team back because this city definitely deserves a team, with all tradition and history the Sonics have," he added. ESPN.com

Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton, Nate McMillan, Lenny Wilkens, Shawn Kemp, Jack Sikma 

That has been the mission for Payton, perhaps the franchise's greatest player. He is trying to muster up support from local leaders to build a new arena. "We're not able to talk about a team coming back here yet because the five-year deal is not over yet. That was part of the deal when Clay Bennett took the team," Payton said. "When that happens then you can go to (commissioner) David Stern and say, 'Look, this is what we have.' We need to get an arena here first. "We all know that this is a great city, a beautiful city, but NBA is about show. You got to show them. The history is rich here. The team was here for a long time. Then we broke it. We just gave the team away. This city needs basketball." ESPN.com

Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton, David Stern, Clay Bennett 

Spencer Hawes: Just got a Gary Payton resign on my jersey from when i was 10. #priceless. Twitter

Philadelphia 76ers, Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton, Spencer Hawes 

Maybe Gary Payton would have retired in Seattle, and maybe McMillan would be coaching the Sonics instead of the Portland Trail Blazers. "I try not to play the what-if game because you can't win that game," Kemp said. "But I'll admit, it's hard not to. We had something good and if we could have finished it off the right way — with a championship — that would have changed everything." Seattle Times

Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan, Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton, Nate McMillan 

Kemp joined KJR in Seattle to talk about how tough it would be for him if the Thunder and Heat were to advance to this year’s NBA Finals, how he was offered the opportunity by the Thunder to come down to Oklahoma City and sit in the front row and be honored during the Thunder-Nuggets series, why he declined the offer without hesitation, being happy that he didn’t see Gary Payton take the Thunder up on the same offer, and how his buddies joked that he should have gone and worn a Sonics jersey. Where his rooting loyalties would lie if the Thunder were advance on to the Finals to play the Heat: “It’s going to be tough but let me tell you guys this…I live out here in Seattle, I’ll cary the Sonics in my heart for the rest of my life, but I have a problem rooting for Oklahoma. I just do. I was invited to the last game when they played against in Denver to sit in the front row. I can’t do it.” Sports Radio Interviews

Oklahoma City Thunder, Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp 

On Gary Payton also declining similar offers from the Thunder: “I got to tell you the funny part about it. The funny part about it is this….I didn’t get a chance to call you guys but I was like ‘man, I hope I don’t turn this game on tomorrow night and see Gary sitting in the front row’. I knew it wasn’t going to happen that way and it wasn’t. I didn’t see any guys on the front row so they probably shot that down when they realized.” After the hosts joked that Payton might have gone just to play a joke on the Thunder organization, Kemp mentioned his buddies suggested he do something similar: “My buddies told me ‘you should have gone down there and put on your old Sonics uniform and sat in the front row.’” Sports Radio Interviews

Oklahoma City Thunder, Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp 

Isaiah Thomas tells HoopsHype.com that he's been in Dallas training with Jason Terry and plans to work out with Gary Payton in Las Vegas next week. Some outlets are reporting Thomas has hired an agent, but according to the NBA the Washington junior doesn't have an agent. There's a chance he could return to UW if he pulls out of the draft before the May 8 deadline, but Thomas seems pretty adamant that he's staying in the draft. Seattle Times

Draft, Gary Payton, Jason Terry, Isaiah Thomas 

Fans root for the young Kevin Durants of the league who (at least for now) stay and build rather than buy and sell to the most attractive bidder. "Our era is just a little bit different," said retired NBA guard Gary Payton. "These kids right now are just in an era of buddy, buddy, buddy. During our time we was hard. You know that's why basketball has changed and it's not like when we used to play." Orlando Sentinel

Oklahoma City Thunder, Kevin Durant, Gary Payton 

"During our prime we would have never left," Payton said. "I always wanted to play against Karl and them, I wanted to play against John (Stockton). I didn't want to play with them and make the game easy. We wanted our own market." Orlando Sentinel

Utah Jazz, Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton, Karl Malone, John Stockton 

Seattleites can expect to see a lot more of former Sonics point guard Gary Payton in the next several month. Payton said Tuesday on Dave Mahler's show on KJR that he and former teammate Shawn Kemp are planning to hold youth camps in Seattle and hope to announce a charity game to be played in July. We know the Seattle fans are great," Payton said. "They need some kind of basketball support out there. And we want to give it to them." Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton 

It's all part of Payton's efforts to get the NBA back in Seattle. And he said he wouldn't mind being an assistant coach for any future Seattle franchise. "I really want to be back in Seattle, and be on a bench in Seattle," Payton said. Payton said he's not sure he would ever want to be a head coach, but he is interested in coaching fellow point guards in the league. "Basketball has changed a lot since my era," Payton said. "They don't play basketball the way I played." Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton 

He would not attend an alumni event in Oklahoma City if invited. "I didn't play in Oklahoma City," he said. "That would be disrespect to Seattle fans. We never played there. Why would we go to Oklahoma City and give the fans that opportunity or privilege?" Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Seattle SuperSonics, Gary Payton