Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive! The SuperSonics beat the Boston Celtics 113-100 last night and somehow find themselves only a half game out of first place in the Northwest Division. Go figure.Ray Allen bounced back from one of the worst games of his career Tuesday to lead the Sonics with 32 points. Rashard Lewis had five steals (!) to go along with his 22 points, and Nick Collison is quickly making everyone forget poor Reggie Evans by grabbing 13 boards and scoring 19 points.
With the brutal road trip (six games in eight nights) behind them, the Sonics return to Seattle for three home games with the division lead easily within their reach. It looks like the team might be starting to turn things around, and just in time too—I was about to turn this site into a Smallville blog!
10 comments:
man, nice way to end that trip. When Collison is able to stay out of foul trouble, we look like a much different team. He moves without the ball better than anyone on the team.
By the way, who's in first place in the Northwest Division?
7 of the next 8 at the Key...
Gotta love the home cookin'
-Q
Just to see if I had any idea of what I was talking about, here is how the Sonics fared against the Celtics in the four areas I pointed out the other day:
1. Rebouding: Sonics outrebounded Boston 44-37, including 17-11 on offense.
2. Defense: Terrible, again. Boston shot 52%. Give me an F for this one.
3. Shooting: Much better. Sugar Ray finally went off after a mini-slump, although the rest of the team managed all of one 3-pointer made. You have to like the 83% FT mark.
4. Turnovers: Again, much better. Seattle only committed 10 TO's, down from their horrific 17 per game average, while inducing 15 from the Celts.
Well, I got 3 out of 4. In all honesty, the only surprising part is the rebounding, and all of that credit has to go to Nick Collison. My favorite part of his game last year was his ability to handle the ball in the paint without looking like an oaf. Now, you can add defense and rebounding to that mix. If he continues to show the improvement he has, he's going to emerge as a steal as a mid-first round pick.
As bad as I felt about this season a few days ago, I feel much better now. Nick, Allen, and Lewis are 3 nice pieces. With all of these home games coming up, I think I can move the toaster out of the bathtub and back into the kitchen where it belongs.
The Mateen Cleaves era has become gentlemen. It is amazing that Cleaves hasn't had success yet, given how much of a superstar he was in college. You would at least think he could be a Chris Duhon. Which reminds me, Duke point guards shouldn't go to the second round, because they are always solid. And athletic 7 foot 18 year olds shouldn't last to the 25th pick for that matter. Starting Petro is gonna pay off big time in years to come. The defense is bad though. Limiting offensive rebounds and free throws seems to be the way to do it, because they cant hope to shut teams down. They forced turnovers well too. It's just the oppossing FG% that sucks.
As I've been saying, I'm really not too worried about this team. Yeah, they didn't get off to the kind of start we'd hoped, but they'll be fine. They have enough talent to get things back on track, it's just gonna possibly take some time before the young guys get fully acclimated to their roles.
The Northwest Division is extremely weak this season, which means that a 41-41 record may, perhaps, be enough to win it.
Big writeup on si.com from Ian Thomsen in his "Inside the NBA" piece about the Sonics, specifically the lack of discipline of Weiss v McMillan.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/ian_thomsen/11/17/sonics/index.html
It's funny how a few 30-point losses can change people's perspective on the type of coach they want.
impressive game folks.
See now, that's more like what I was talking about
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