Ouch. The only thing worse than (another) Sonic loss at this point is a Sonic loss combined with an injury to Kevin Durant.
Fortunately, it appears Durant's sprained ankle isn't serious (he tells Gary Washburn that he'll be ready for Opening Night). He suffered the injury with a couple minutes to go in the fourth quarter of last night's OT loss to the Warriors, a loss which dropped the Sonics' pre-season record to 1-5. However, Percy Allen notes on his Times blog that Durant will miss the final two pre-season games, including the game in Vancouver that I get to go to. Thanks alot, Marco Belinelli. I hope you wake up with a horse head on your pillow.
On a brighter note, the insertion of Nick Collison into the starting lineup seemed to help the team's tougness. Granted, the Warriors are not the Rockets when it comes to size (heck, they might even qualify to play in a Filipino league with some of their lineups), but when Collison and Chris Wilcox combine for 21 boards, I'll take it.
Oh, and you can't miss this quote from Don Nelson, brought to you from Percy Allen's blog:
"Seattle is not a good team and they almost beat us tonight so I don't know where that puts us. They're kind of a fun team. They're so young, they're going to suffer early until these young guys learn how to play. ... PJ has a tough job in front of him."
Normally, you'd be angered by reading something like that about your team, but I totally agree with Nelson. As these pre-season games drag on, I am more and more getting the feeling that we could be in for a really l---o---n---g season. I'm talking less than 30 wins kind of bad.
In fact, before I had read Nellie's quote, I had thought about how much money you could make this year by betting the over on Denver and/or Utah's total wins. Portland, Minnesota, and the Sonics are all going to suck royally this season, and the Jazz and Nuggets will be able to reap the benefits over and over again.
Finally, in a sign of how far off the radar Mo Sene, Johan Petro, and Mickael Gelabale have fallen with this coaching staff, the three imports combined for 0 minutes.
In a pre-season game.
With at least two teammates injured.
In overtime.
Au revoir, mes amis.
2 comments:
Man, Nellie has really reached the point in his life where he just does not give a sh!t about anybody. I'm not saying that in a bad way, though. I just mean that he can just say whatever and not worry about being PC. Must be nice.
Of course, if the Baron gets hurt and GSW goes 39-43 this year and doesn't make the playoffs, he won't be so bulletproof. Have fun while it lasts, big man.
The Sonics may very well be a truly bad team this year but you can't EVER base those opinions on preseason results. I think last night was the first time we've seen any semblence of what the rotation is going to look like and even still it was missing some (hopefully) key components in West and Swift. I'll hold out final judement until I see at least 2 weeks of regular season action.
It was discouraging that a good number of our starters lost to some of their bench/fringe players but if Wally makes a free-throw we're talking about what a nice win it was. Best to have something like that happen when the games don't matter. One thing is for certain, if every team thinks like Nellie does and and plays the Supes thinking they are going to just walk over them, the Sonics are going to win a good number of games this season.
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