Sonics whack Sac, take 2-0 lead

Not the 1-2 punch I was expecting…

Seattle 105, Sacramento 93
Sonics lead series 2-0
Next Game: Friday at Sacramento 7:30PM Pac time

Player of the game:
Let's give props to both Allen & James. Allen had 26 pts, and several shots at the end to seal the deal and Jerome.... well, I really don't know what more to say about him right now. For the 2nd straight game Bizarro Jerome showed up with these silly stats: 19pts (on 9-11 shooting) and 9 boards. His average over the two games is now 18pts, 12 boards, & 3 blocks. It was rightly mentioned by chunkstyle that foul troubles have often been the bane of his game, and for the first two games he's held himself in check on the hacking...

By the way: The TV crews at both TNT & Foxsports have been beating this news bit of Jerome James being cut by the Kings, given his clothes in a plastic bag, and coach Adelman advising him to think of a career change to death. It is an interesting tidbit, but I'm hoping they come up with something new come game 3.

Reasons to feel good:
1) There were contributions to be seen from all the guys that played minutes tonight. Aside from Reggie, who contributed with 8 boards, and Wilkins (who got in for only 1 minute) every player scored at least 8 points.

Reasons to be cautious:
1) The Kings scoring trio of Bibby, Stojakovic, and Mobley combined to shoot 14/37 for 34 points and were not even involved in the late 4th quarter Kings run. I don't know if others will see this as a good or bad thing (maybe it's neither) but the Kings stars/go to guys have not really played well as of yet in these two games. Can we really expect this to continue? From my seat, I didn't see stellar defense being the cause of this.

Fun stat of the night:
Luke Ridnour had an efficient floor general performance with 6 assists and 0 turnovers.... and 2 blocks! If you can recall seeing those blocks in the game please let me know cause those totally passed me by.

Other notes on the night:
-After game 1 Rick Adelman decided to attempt to take Lewis on the post out of the equation early, with repeated aggresive double teams that forced the ball out of Lew's hand. For the few situations where Lewis had Peja 1 on 1, he resorted to the jab step-fall back J instead of driving or backing him further in for an easy shot. This crap may be O.K. vs. the Kings but it just won't do come round 2. Lewis needs to be a little more aggresive in the post.
-Mike Dunleavy on Jerome James: "you can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him." Discuss amongst yourselves.
-During halftime Kenny "the Jet" Smith stole my material!! On Vlad's contribution to the team he mentioned the Sonics record pre & post Radman injury. Heeeyahhh!!! Now gimme some candeee!
-The officiating was horrible for the Nets vs Heat game, with a majority of the close/questionable calls going the Heat way. I hate seeing that crap happen.

I'm dying to throw some new predictions, questions on the series outcome here, but some superstitious folk may consider that bad luck... For those brave readers who don't carry around crosses and cloves of garlic, what are your thoughts? Are the Kings done? Can the Sonics s...., sw.., swe.., well you know what I'm getting at.