Thursday, March 6

Sonics Lose

Lost amid the high-pitched talk of Steve Ballmer being a partner in the group looking to buy the Sonics, the team actually played a game last night.

And, yes, they lost. Plenty of guys turned in strong offensive performances, including:

-Johan Petro, 11 points and 15 boards
-Earl Watson, 17 points, 8 assists
-Kevin Durant, 23 points on 9 of 18 shooting
-Damien Wilkins, 17 points

Unfortunately, you'll note that I was only pointing out offensive performances, as Petro allowed Andrew Bogut to grab 23 points to go with double-digit rebounds, and Charlie Villaneuva - apparently left unguarded in the Sonics' innovative new "Box and None" defense - finished with 32 points on 26 shots, making some observers wonder if he wasn't channeling Sidney Moncrief or Junior Bridgemann last night.

Finally, while it appears the Sonics may be headed out of town in a couple of seasons, Luke Ridnour and Mickael Gelabale have decided there's no sense waiting until the moving vans show up. While their bodies reside in Sonic uniforms, their games have long since left town.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

something that's been plaguing my mind since this summer, but never really thought to pick others' thoughts about it until now: While by and large Mr. Presti has done a bang up job preparing this team for the future (while at the same time leavening a certain jackass' wallet, but oh well), I never really understood the Carl Landry deal to Houston. I actually really liked the guy going into the draft, and trading him for a future second round pick (he was the first pick of the second round) never made sense to me as he seemed like he could play, and there's no way we were gonna get that high of a 2nd rounder out of Houston anytime soon. I realize we wanted the 'cash considerations' but I feel like it was a pretty poor choice in retrospect (hell, I didn't like it at the time, whatevs). It only serves to salt the wound when I check the box scores every night to find that he dropped another 15 and 5 on 60 someodd percent shooting on a pretty good (17 wins...) Rockets team.
anyway, not really much to any of this, just kind of wanted to get it off my chest. it seems like the sonics are really good at drafting players for other teams (Glen Davis, Carl Landry, Bobby Simmons, Corey Maggette, Bobby Jackson, etc)
anyway, I will still let my inner 8 year old hope that this whole new local deal can have at minimum SOME positive impact. lost so much faith in Mr. Stern in the past couple of months...

Anonymous said...

I agree 100%. All you heard entering this year's draft was how it was the deepest in many years, and it would be better than any future draft.

If that is the case, then a future 2nd-rounder from Houston would never be worth what it is now, not even taking into account the fact that the Sonics are going to be worse than the Rockets for at least a couple of years.

When you add in Landry's performance, the fact he would be a top 15 pick were the draft re-done, man, it really sucks.

Good point.