The big news out of last night's loss was Luke Ridnour's broken (?) nose, suffered at the elbow of Ron Artest in the first quarter. Ridnour will have a CT scan today to determine if indeed the nose is broken. It remains to be seen if he will sport a Rip Hamilton-style face mask. Perhaps he can borrow Nick Collison's from a year or so ago.
In other news from the game, it appears that Bob Swift played well before tiring down the stretch, Johan Petro was a foul machine, Delonte West played pretty well, the Sonics turned the ball over waaaaaay too much, Damien Wilkins made the most of his starting nod with 18 points in 27 minutes, Jeff Green was a non-factor, and Chris Wilcox did well.
Oh, and what's that rookie's name again? Right, Kevin Durant. Well, The Franchise wasn't exactly earth-shattering in his debut, only picking up 12 points, but he showed a nice touch on the jumpers I saw on the news, and he was poor at the line for some strange reason. As all the reporters said, chalk it up to a first-game learning experience.
Nice writeup of the game from ESPN here:
ReplyDeletehttp://sports.espn.go.com/nba/trainingcamp07/columns/story?columnist=kreidler_mark&page=durantdebut
All together now: "It's pre-season, folks!"
Maybe the Arrest just did the Sonics a huge favor. With Ridnour sidelined for a game we'll get to see more of Watson and West. If their's a defensive drop off when Ridnour comes back, then we'll be able to better assess how much of defensive liability his is.
ReplyDeleteSo I can believe I'm typing a big thanks to Ron Arrest!