More Predict-O-Meter

The second in an ongoing series of Sonic Predictions:

BEST-CASE SCENARIO: Denver implodes as George Karl finally wears out his welcome (shocking!), Minnesota continues to struggle to build a team around KG post-Sprewell and –Cassell, Kirilenko gets hurt ... again, the Blazers fully commit to the Greg Oden Sweepstakes, and the Sonics muddle through to 47 wins and the NW Division Crown (which ranks somewhere between Best Foreign Language Screenplay in a Short Film and a kick in the groin as far as career accomplishments go). They lose in the first round to just about whomever they play.

WORST-CASE SCENARIO: The Sonics make it through November and December in decent shape, pulling into 2007 a hair below .500. In January the wheels come off, the Sonics stagger into the All-Star Break mired in an eight-game losing skid, after a dispute over injury status/playing time/foul prone-ness (take your pick) Danny Fortson gets into a fight with Bob Hill in the locker room, and, finally, the new owners point to the sagging attendance figures and call a press conference.

BEST REASON TO BE EXCITED ABOUT THE SEASON: Mouhamed Saer Sene, aka the Senegalese Assassin. Sene will get bluffed into jumping early more frequently than you’d care to see, but his fantastic leaping skills and highlight-reel abilities will provide a few opportunities for Sonic fans to go nuts this year.

BEST ROAD TRIP: Let’s pray the Sonics are still in the hunt come early March when they travel to play – in succession – the Knicks, Sixers, Boston, and Toronto. That’s about as easy as it gets for an East Coast swing.

BREAKOUT NW DIVISION STAR: Carmelo Anthony should get the nod here, but he’s already so well known he doesn’t really fit (that said, I wouldn’t pass on Melo if I was picking a fantasy team). No, the real breakout guy should be Deron Williams of the Jazz, who’s already putting up solid numbers in the pre-season. If AK-47 is healthy, and Jerry Sloan doesn’t kill someone on the sidelines, the Jazz could be pretty tough this year.

WHY CHRIS WILCOX IS WORTH THE MONEY: Power Forwards who can run and hit baseline Js do not grow on trees, and Wilcox has value in the NBA as a big man who can score and rebound, albeit inconsistently. Of note, Wilcox scored 20+ on six occasions for the Sonics after the trade with the Clippers. The Sonics went 5-1 in those six games, with the only loss coming against Orlando when half the team had the flu/food poisoning.

WHY CHRIS WILCOX IS NOT WORTH THE MONEY: If you read the above paragraph, you know the Sonics went 5-1 when Wilcox went for 20 points. Read between the lines, though, and you’ll notice that Wilcox played 29 games for the Sonics, which leaves 23 other games when he didn’t score 20. Did I mention he scored in single digits nine times, or half again as many times as he scored 20? Or that he finished the year by scoring 8, 7, 9, 6, and 10 points? It’s all well and good that Wilcox is capable of averaging a double-double, but, as the man says, you can hope in one hand and crap in the other – guess which one will fill up first.

BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION ABOUT THE SONICS: That going 14-12 to end the season means anything. After studying dozens of teams in similar situations to the Sonics in the last couple of years, it became obvious that a team’s record in the final two months of a mean-nothing season has about as much relevance to their performance the following season as the weather on Opening Night. It’s fine and dandy that the Sonics played decent ball the last spring, but it doesn’t mean jack this fall. If you don’t believe me, try this on for size: The Rockets and Warriors finished the ’04-’05 season with a combined 39-11 record. Last year? Both were home for the playoffs.

Sonics Fall to Blazers, Fans Jump in Sound

It's just the pre-season, right?

Right?

The fact the Sonics dropped a dud to the lowly Blazers last night - the team, along with Charlotte, most likely to get the #1 pick this coming June - at home, doesn't mean we're facing another season of ineptitude, right?

Well, let me throw some numbers at you. In statistical circles, one term you'll hear often is "outlier." An outlier is any value in a set of values that is markedly smaller or larger than other values. See if you can spot the outlier in the following set of values:

40, 37, 52, 35

If you haven't guessed that 52 is the outlier, well, head back to math class. If you haven't guessed that 52 is the number of wins the Sonics posted 2 years ago, then you're not much of a fan. And if you haven't gathered that it's more likely the Sonics will post 37 wins than 52, well, you're naively optimistic about this team's chances.

Read the gory details here about last night's loss.

Predict-O-Meter

As the regular season draws closer and closer, it’s inevitable that we’d come out with our predictions for the season. Upcoming articles will detail the season more, but here are some quick glimpses at what I expect to see this year, the 40th in Sonic History.

BEST FRENCH-SPEAKING PLAYER: You’d expect a 2nd-year guy to win this, but I’m going with the rookie, Mickael Gelabale. Petro still seems so raw that I don’t expect him to get more than 10-15 minutes a night, while Gelabale could wind up supplanting Damien Wilkins in the rotation and becoming the regular backup to Ray Allen.

WORST STRETCH OF THE YEAR: Mid-December. The Sonics play consecutive road games against Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Memphis, before returning home to face Dallas. The Sonics would never have faced such a horrific Hannukah schedule if a Jewish guy owned the team ...

STEP FORWARD: I’d love to say Robert Swift, but I still think he’s too young to really make the leap this year. I’d also love to say Chris Wilcox, and I suppose going from a string of DNPs in L.A. to averaging 8 points and 8 boards would be an improvement. I still don’t buy into Wilcox being an above-average PF in this league, but just the simple fact he’s going to get minutes this year means his numbers will improve, at least relative to the rest of his career.

STEP BACKWARDS: I hate to say it, but Ray Allen is due for a come-down from his 25 ppg last season. His age (31) merits fewer minutes than the 39 he averaged last year, and shooting guards always begin a decline phase of their careers at around the 30-32 year mark. Allen is a remarkably-conditioned man, so perhaps he can forestall Father Time, but I’m not betting on it.

FIRST PLAYER TRADED: The smart money is on Danny Fortson to be traded at some point this year – but will he be the first to go? Wilkins’ relatively inexpensive contract makes him palatable to other clubs, but Fortson’s presence on a team with a surplus of big men has him the most likely to go first.

RECORD AT THE END OF NOVEMBER: 8-8.

RECORD AT THE END OF DECEMBER: 14-18.

TOTAL WINS: 37. Think I’m being pessimistic? Check the Vegas lines, folks. There are 3 teams with longer odds to win the title than Seattle (currently at 115/1): Portland, Charlotte, and Atlanta. People, when you’re in the same sentence with those clubs, you are in a world of trouble. Right now, the Sonics are sitting at 35 ½ on total wins this year in the sports books – personally, I think that’s overly negative, and I’d expect the Sonics to do better than that, but not a whole lot better.

Da Fort is Back!

Danny Fortson's knee might still be gimpy, but it sounds like his elbows are in mid-season form:

For the first time in training camp, Danny Fortson participated in a scrimmage, which was open to the media. He fared well until getting frustrated and flooring rookie free agent Kenny Adeleke with an elbow.

Fortson, who has not played in a game since Jan. 23, then left the scrimmage, iced both knees and went into treatment. It looks more and more as if he will open the season on the roster and could receive playing time if his gimpy left knee holds up.

Read the rest in today's Seattle P.I.

And, in case you missed it the first time around, here's our Dannny Fortson comic book in all its glory:

Front Cover
Part One
Part Two

Sam's The Man

Thanks in no small part to the efforts of voters from supersonicsoul, Sam Perkins earned a spot on the Sonics' 40th Anniversary Team, joining Slick Watts as the 2 Wild Card entrants. Somewhere in Utah, Tom Chambers is cursing us all.

Dag! We're in Dime!

SELF-PROMOTION ALERT! Check out the latest issue of DIME for a brief (and I mean brief) Sonics season preview by yours truly. The guys at DIME are very cool, so please go buy several copies. Or just send them bags of money. Either way is good.

Battle for Backups

Not much news to report on the Sonics front with the exception of a nice story in the PI about Kareem Rush and Earl Watson returning to Kansas City. Kudos to Gary Washburn for finding a story most people would have skipped - I'll bet 90% of us thought of Nick Collison when the words "Kansas" and "Sonics" appeared in the same sentence, but Washburn delved deeper and found two guys with stronger ties than Nick to the area.

With no games to review, let's take a look at how the battle for the final roster spots are going for the Sonics thus far. As I see it, the following guys are locked in for the season:

Allen, Lewis, Collison, Ridnour, Watson, Wilkins, Wilcox, Petro, Swift, Gelabale, Sene, Fortson.

That's 12 people, leaving 2 or 3 open slots. Of those 12, they break down this way by position:

PG - 2
SG - 3
SF - 3
PF - 3
C - 3

(Some guys can play multiple positions, so it's not faulty math on my part).

The Sonics will likely carry 13 or 14 guys, including the "King of DNP-CD" Danny Fortson, at least until he's moved to somebody else by midseason. That means the rest of the guys on the training roster are competing for 1 or 2 spots. Here are the competitors (And wouldn't this make a better reality show than most of the crap out there? Really, do we need 2 nanny shows?)

1. Denham Brown, 6'6", SF, 8-1
2. Desmon Farmer, 6'5", SG, 20-1
3. Mike Wilks, 5'10", PG, 10-1
4. Milt Palacio, 6'4", PG, 30-1
5. Kenny Adeleke, 6'8", F, 50-1
6. Kareem Rush, 6'6", SG, 5-1

The last bit in each line is my guess at the odds of each making the roster. Palacio and Rush have a leg up on the rest with their relatively extensive NBA experience, but the fact Milt's only gotten 8 minutes in the first two games shows where he ranks in my mind. Wilks' presence on the roster last season should be an edge for him, and Brown's extensive minutes in the Portland game shows how the staff seems to like him.

Obviously, this is a total crapshoot at this point, and the ends of the roster have (almost) zero influence on how many games the Sonics will win, but, hey, it's a Saturday and there isn't a whole lot else to talk about, so there you go.

Sonics All-Star Team

The voting is mostly done for the Sonics' 40th anniversary team (Actually, in a strict interpretation of the word, next year would be their 40th anniversary, because the first year doesn't count. Think of it this way: You get married in 1971. Would that mean that 1972 would be your 2nd anniversary? No, it would be your first anniversary. The Sonics' first season was in 1967-68, which means their 40th anniversary would be the 2007-08 season, not the 2006-07 season. But I digress).

The lone remaining spot is for the "Wild Card," and your options are:

Tom Chambers
Slick Watts
Brent Barry (!)
Sam Perkins
Bob Rule

I'm sorry, but I don't want to live in a world where Brent Barry gets more votes than any of those 4 guys. For the love of all that is holy, get yourself to supersonics.com and vote as often as you can for any of the other 4 guys. Personally, I'll mark a big X for Mr. Sam Perkins.

Sonics Fall to Lakers

The big story out of LA wasn't that the Sonics lost a pre-season game to the Kobe-less Lakers, but that Nick Collison is a MAN ON FIRE!

Collison contributed 20 points in a scant 24 minutes, his second consecutive impressive showing in the two pre-season games. In fact, comparing Collison to Chris Wilcox through two games, you get:

Collison: 31 points, 16 boards, 4 fouls, 51 minutes
Wilcox: 11 points, 13 boards, 5 fouls, 46 minutes

Conclusion? Pre-season games don't mean squat. Still, it's nice to see Nick isn't racking up fouls like Alton Lister on crack anymore. Hopefully, it will be a trend he continues during the course of the regular season as well.

In other news, Ray Allen broke the shotclock on a dunk, Luke Ridnour's thumb isn't broken but he'll still miss the next game, the Sonics will be playing in Collison's old gym, the Sonics' trio of young centers stunk up the joint last night, Bob Hill doesn't think Earl Watson should start, Gelabale impressed Hill by scoring in the post in the late stages of the game, and the Sonics have been outscored 45 to 18 from beyond the arc.

Phew.

Sonics knock NateBlazers, 99-89

Preseason already? I guess that means the Supersonicsoul Summer Vacation is over . . . (sigh).

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Rashard Lewis scored 13 of his 17 points in the third quarter and the Seattle SuperSonics defeated the Portland Trail Blazers 99-89 on Wednesday night in the first preseason game for both teams.

Zach Randolph had 20 points and seven rebounds for Portland, which squandered an 11-point lead.

Dan Dickau, acquired in a draft-day trade, scored eight straight points and gave the Blazers a 35-24 lead in the first half. Jarrett Jack and draft pick Sergio Rodriguez made consecutive 3-pointers to give Portland a 53-45 halftime lead.

Lewis' third-quarter outburst helped close the gap to 70-67, and Nick Collison's layup gave Seattle a 73-72 lead.

Read the rest here.

Greatest Dunkers

In light of the Sonics’ celebration of their 40th season, we thought we’d do our part to honor the heroic history of the Sonics, such as it were. Today’s entry highlights the 5 greatest dunkers in Sonic history, counted down, Casey Kasem-style.

Keep in mind that I’ve only been following the Sonics since the early 1980s, so apologies to fans of Spencer Haywood, Bob Rule, etc., as I just never saw them in action.

5. DERRICK MCKEY
What? Derrick McKey? Pete, I thought this list was greatest dunkers, not most confounding small forwards!

Well, gentle reader, let me educate you on the gloriousness that was Derrick McKey in his young prime. Tell me, what other Sonic bumped his chin on the rim? I regret that YouTube is barren of evidence, but, trust me, McKey’s leaping ability had few equals.

4. XAVIER MCDANIEL
What McKey had in grace, the X-Man had in power. Whether it was an offensive board put-back slam, or the cruising-in-from-the-wing fast break tomahawk, X was arguably the most powerful dunker in Sonic history (non-Olden Polynice Division). My favorite Sonic dunk will always be his alley-oop against the Lakers in January 1986 on CBS.

3. DESMOND MASON
You have to respect the only man to win the Slam Dunk competition in a Sonic jersey. D-Mase’s speed and agility meant any number of beautiful, under-the-basket wraparounds, fast-break sprints, and just dozens of fantastic jams. His between-the-legs, show-it-left-and-right move sealed the deal for his 2001 Slam Dunk title at the All Star Game.

2. TERENCE STANSBURY
Ah, the Statue of Liberty: Seldom imitated, never duplicated. A forgettable career, but a remarkable feat, Stansbury was the true winner of the 1987 Dunk Contest, not the bald guy from Chicago. Stansbury’s dunk remains a thing of beauty, from the takeoff to the clenched fist at the end. I think everyone in my high school gym class at the time spent the next week trying to imitate that move.

1. SHAWN KEMP
There are dunkers, and there is The Man. The fantastic dash through the Knicks in the middle of traffic ... the unbelievable dunk and quasi-kung fu move against the Warriors in the playoffs. Like ice cream, everyone has their personal favorite, but we all can agree that Shawn Kemp has no equal when it comes to dunking greatness.

Honorable Mention: Tom Chambers, James Bailey, Ruben Patterson, Sedale Threatt.

Support the team--GO TO THE GAME!

Do you want to keep the Sonics in Seattle? Of course you do. The best way to support the team is to buy tickets to the game, which is where my friend Jason Rubenstein comes in.

Jason works for the Sonics and is as passionate about the game as we are. He also wants to get as many people to games as possible, so he's offering some special deals to Supersonicsoul readers:

Hi everyone! We currently have seating available for season seats for the 2006-2007 season, 4 Games - $40 Total.

All-Star

Wed., Jan. 10 Miami

Tue., Jan. 23 Denver

Wed., Feb. 14 Phoenix

Tue., Mar. 13 Detroit



Weekend

Tue., Jan. 16 Cleveland

Sat., Feb. 10 Sacramento

Fri., Mar. 23 Minnesota

Fri., Apr. 6 Lakers



Seating is available in the $24 section, so it's a great value at almost 60% off. This also gives you guaranteed playoff priority and the privilege to add-on additional games at the package discount (This is the big benefit - add-on Opening Night, Chicago, Dallas, Spurs, etc...).

Seating is limited. Contact me with questions or to order your seats--I'm happy to assist!

Be sure to mention that you found my information on Supersonicsoul and I will be sure to get you down to the arena for a tour, complimentary game, and a great deal!

Jason Rubenstein
Official Supersonicsoul Ticket Representative,
206-272-2526
Jrubenstein@sonics-storm.com

If you want to help keep the team in Seattle, then do your part and buy some tickets.