Last week, Bothell High’s Zach LaVine (pictured) became the latest Seattle-area kid picked in the first round of the NBA draft. That makes 11 first-rounders in the past 10 years, an unprecedented yield of basketball talent. It might just be coincidence, but the childhoods of the 11 first-rounders all coincide with the thrilling, volatile era of Sonics basketball when Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton ruled the court. The correlation doesn’t prove anything, but the connection between the mid-’90s Sonics and the area’s basketball flowering is more than correlative. Payton served as a mentor to many young Seattle hoopsters. But now that Seattle is indefinitely NBA-less, will talented athletes move in a different direction? Read the complete column at seattleweekly.com. SETH KOLLOEN