Before you leave...

Seattle 97, New Orleans 92

Seattle Supersonics: 2005 NW Division Champs

Ray Allen goes for 32pts (and 7 assists) to negate Lewis going 1 for 12 on the night (1 for 12, is that line real?)

-Great PR move on the Sonics organization part at the end. After the win, after the now traditional team huddle at midcourt, the players remained on the court to hand out t-shirts, frisbees and a crap load of other autographed goodies. Antonio Daniels was even signing and giving away a shiny set of new kicks; damn it, why the hell do I get the games with free balloons... In addition, fox NW got in on the act and interviewed practically the entire team afterwards with the standard, great to be here, what’s good, what’s next stuff. Seriously, it's these little things that the Sonics did after the game tonight that endear fans to teams, and sell future tickets.

-I don’t have insider access to his brain, but I think Calabro was reigning himself in from berating fans for leaving prior to the outcome of a blowout victory. I found him suppressing his thoughts kinda funny.

I don’t consider it messed up at all that fans want to leave blowouts early… but I will say that under the situation, them playing a game so reminiscent of the good times of the early season, winning after a 6 game losing streak, and knowing it was a division clincher should’ve brought enough interest till the end of the game to warrant the 10-15 extra minutes in traffic. Whatever, their loss; I mean free Antonio Freakin Daniels autographed kicks for chrissakes!

-Small thing that only interested me: actually thrown up during the telecast was a +/- stat for Rashard Lewis’ influence on the game and commented on by Ehlo. Maybe the revolution will be televised?

-Wait, another praise for Ehlo?? In the 3rd, Ridnour was pushing the ball up and made a beautiful pass/lob to Rashard, who was just barely open and ahead of the defenders. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to dunk it, instead resetting himself (and the D) and passing it out to Allen for a jumpshot. Ehlo immediately caught it and made the comment that if that was 20 or so games ago, that’s an alley oop. Here’s to hoping it will be one come playoff time.

My congratulations to the team for the season's accomplishment.