Alas, Bob Weiss, we hardly knew ye.

The coach the Sonics’ players lobbied management to choose this summer lasted just 30 games in his new gig, dismissed after his team did an impressive impersonation of a dead horse being rebeaten in a 115-96 loss to Indiana on Tuesday (mind you, their opponent was missing three starters, including Jermaine O’Neal).

The Sonics, who won the Northwest Division a year ago, were only 13-17 under Weiss, and in truth, they were lucky that mark wasn’t worse.

Since coaches don’t get the ax just 30 games into their tenure as a matter of course, let’s review how things got to this point. A year ago, the Sonics won 52 games behind a devastating half court offense. Unlike most great offensive clubs, the Sonics weren’t an up-tempo team – they ranked just 25th in the league in Pace Factor. But because they hit so many 3-pointers and were so effective on the offensive glass, Seattle ranked third in the NBA in Offensive Efficiency, my measure of a team’s points per 100 possessions. Their undoing was at the defensive end, where they ranked just 25th in the corresponding metric, Defensive Efficiency. The Sonics’ slow pace helped mask that weakness in the eyes of much of the press, but it was there.

Thus, considering Seattle’s slippage this season, you might expect me to tell you that the defense stayed bad while the offense got worse. Actually, the complete opposite happened. Relative to the league, the Sonics’ offense is about as good as it was a year ago – they were 5.0 points per 100 possessions above the league average a year ago, and 4.8 above it this year.

But the defense went from bad to worse. Traffic-stopping, you-won’t-believe-what-I-just-saw worse. The Sonics’ Defensive Efficiency mark of 112.7 points allowed per 100 possessions is easily the league’s worst; in fact, it’s more than 10 points worse than the league average of 102.4.

Ten points worse, or 10.3 to be exact, sounds bad, but I don’t think the average fan has caught on to just how bad. To help you digest the ramifications for a minute, let’s start with a quick quiz. Can you guess how many teams, since the NBA began tracking turnovers in 1973-74, have ever been 10 points worse than the league average in Defensive Efficiency in a season?

The answer is zero. None. Well, until now. In other words, the Sonics are on pace to be the worst defensive team of all time.

Okay, here’s where it gets kind of amazing. Can you guess how many teams have ever been nine points worse than the league average? That’s right, nobody. Never been done before. Care to guess how many have been eight points worse? Right again.

These Sonics aren’t just the worst defensive team to grace an NBA court, they are redefining what it means to be the worst. The record for defensive ineptitude is held by the 1998-99 Clippers, who were 7.8 points below league average. In a non-strike year, the distinction belongs to the 1982-83 Mavericks at 7.5. Even compared to the other historically awful defenses, the Sonics are in a league of their own.

Just how does a team get this bad? Let’s break it down into the four basic elements of defense: Forcing missed shots, avoiding fouls, creating turnovers, and gathering rebounds.

Amazingly, the Sonics aren’t half bad in two of them. For starters, they force more turnovers than the average team – 16.0% of opponent possessions compared to 15.6% for the rest of the league. They’re also marginally adequate on the boards.

Actually, Seattle has a reputation as a physical team on the glass, and forward Reggie Evans has one of the best rebound rates in basketball. But the Sonics’ Windex men do most of their damage on offense – defensively, the Sonics rebound only 70.8% of opponent misses, below the league average of 71.9%. Still, that’s hardly a worst-of-all-time performance.

It’s the other two categories where the Sonics are particularly bad, and unfortunately, they’re the two most important ones.

First, Seattle fouls with unusual abandon, ranking fourth in the league in opponent free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt. Putting the other team on the line so much costs the club a couple points per game relative to the league.

But even if the Sonics weren’t so foul happy, they’d still be the worst defense of all time because they’re so bad in the fourth and most important element of defense. Seattle is last in the league in opponent field-goal percentage at 49.8%, nearly five points worse than the league mark of 44.9%. The disparity between the Sonics and the rest of the NBA is huge; for instance, the difference between Seattle and 28thranked Milwaukee is greater than the difference between Milwaukee and the league average.

Additionally, a huge number of Seattle’s opponents’ made shots are 3-pointers. The Sonics allows the fourth-most 3-pointers per opponent field-goal attempt, so not only are their opponents making a high percentage, but they’re getting an extra point on nearly one shot in four.

To see the impact, look at True Shooting Percentage – my measure of a team’s shooting percentage once we account for 3-pointers and free throws. The league average here is 53.0, and the second-worst team is Toronto at 56.9. But playing Pluto to Toronto’s Neptune are the Sonics, way off in the distance at 59.0.And when the opponents are effectively shooting nearly 60%, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the defense isn’t up to snuff.

Brought in to clean up the mess is assistant coach Bob Hill (a polar opposite from the laid-back Weiss in terms of coaching style), and despite his club’s defensive deficiencies, there’s some good news in all of this. Defense is as dependent on a team’s tenacity and determination as it is on talent. Thus, if Hill can just get more effort from this team (and really, how he could get less?), the Sonics might not have to be so unrelentingly awful over the season’s final 52 games. And if that’s the case, their offense is good enough to shoot them back into the playoffs.

For now, however, we’re left to ponder the Weiss administration and the truly mind-blowing defensive meltdown it left as its legacy. It was well-known that the Sonics were a bad defensive team, but few realized the scale of the disaster was so great. One hopes the Sonics have enough time to recover and keep themselves from appearing in the record books for all the wrong reasons.

Mr. Hollinger is the author of the “2005-06 Pro Basketball Forecast.” He can be reached at jhollinger@nysun.com.