John Blanchette: How’s this for encore: Sonics hire P.J.

For a team prone to never-ending burlesque, the Seattle SuperSonics did manage a wry and hopeful spin Thursday with the introduction of their new head coach, P.J. Carlesimo.

Just look at how it all played out. Here we have the most broken model in professional sports – the National Basketball Association – and its most broken franchise finally reclaiming, a decade removed from his bizarre undoing, the victim of perhaps the ultimate example of just how broken the NBA system is.

Of course, it’s always possible that Carlesimo is the wrong guy for the job. It’s 50-50. But if you toss out the recent no-brainer draft, how long has it been since the Sonics’s odds of getting it right were even that good?

What’s that you say? You couldn’t care less?

Well, yes, that’s another problem altogether.

Bad enough that owner Clay Bennett has the franchise on the express to Anywhere But Here, but at least in Seattle the Sonics are still on the relevance radar. Not so much over here. That’s what happens after two years without a playoff appearance and when the games are televised on the Book-‘em-Danno Channel.

But the revamping of the Sonics is merely an exercise in faith at the moment anyway. If you have any taste for the NBA at all, perhaps you can trick yourself into thinking that the arena issues will somehow be resolved, that the Oklahoma dingbat will butt out and that the drafting of Kevin Durant and Jeff Green will supersede any previous or subsequent missteps – like, oh, letting Rashard Lewis get away for nothing.

Buy into that and the hiring of a new coach actually matters.

This is the conceit of the Sonics’ new general manager – with the Sonics, everyone’s new these days – Sam Presti. The 30-year-old whiz kid from San Antonio – with the Sonics, everyone’s from San Antonio these days – is determined to assemble a team that is “willing to be coached,” and therefore found it paramount to bring in “someone who can teach the game at a high level and communicate the game at a high level.”

Hmm. For those of us who were fortunate to sit close behind the Seton Hall bench when Carlesimo took the Pirates to the Final Four in 1989, the notion of P.J. as Mr. Chips is a wonderment. The high-level communicating he did with his players was pretty much restricted to words that rhyme with America’s most popular jam.

Hey, but being called names like that has to be good, right?

When Carlesimo made his leap to the NBA a few years later, he brought his chalk, his lesson plans and his colorful if limited bench vocabulary. It was not a particularly seamless transition. In Portland, he did get the Blazers into the playoffs three years running, but won all of three games. In the meantime, he managed to get under the skin of one of his stars, guard Rod Strickland, who walked out on the team for a week.

Then it was off to Golden State, where Carlesimo was famously attacked by star guard Latrell Sprewell in practice after suggesting he “put a little mustard” on a pass. Naturally, there had been some ongoing back-and-forth for weeks to get to the point of Sprewell with his hands clamped onto Carlesimo’s larynx, but it was all made irrelevant by the despicable act of a player assaulting his coach – or so it seemed when Sprewell was suspended for what would be appealed down to 68 games.

Then, of course, the craziest thing happened. Sprewell returned to the NBA and was never more popular – from 2000-2004 his jersey was one of the league’s Top 10 sellers. Carlesimo was canned after failing to pump any life into the Warriors and spent the last five years trying to rehabilitate his name to make himself hireable as a head coach again.

In the NBA, it makes perfect sense.

“The NBA is about the players, no question,” he said Thursday. “Hopefully, I have learned from my relationships. But in reality, every coach has his moments – and we’re going to have some moments, no question about that.”

Thanks for the warning.

Job one is keeping any moments with Durant to a minimum, but Carlesimo is convinced that his prize rookie is from a different mold who “understands his obligations to the team.

“Candidly, if you look at our roster, it’s guys who embraced coaching, guys who’ve embraced being asked to work hard and defend and play together and that in itself is different,” he said. “Hopefully, our guys are going to want to be called (on it) when they miss an open guy and don’t pass the ball or miss a defensive rotation.”

Maybe there is something to it, seeing as his likely starting lineup next year might actually be younger than his old Final Four team at Seton Hall, the handiwork of the whiz kid GM and the tight-pockets owner. Carlesimo alibied for that, noting that sometimes you “have to do things that are painful in the short term” for the long-term good.

Never mind that there may only be a short term in Seattle.