My friend Mike was right: Wally can still dunk. He dropped in a one-hander just before the halftime buzzer. Exhilarating as that was, it wasn’t enough to rally his team past the injury-depleted Hornets, who won 91-88.

As he has many times this year, Kevin Durant came out flat, missing jumpers badly and seemingly just going through the motions. Nevertheless, he became more aggressive as the game went on and managed to finish with 23 points (mostly by taking a lot of shots). He should have had more, but his ability to finish in the paint is still hampered by his slight frame and his reluctance to try to dunk on people rather than slither around them. (Seriously, someone should explain to him that he has a Mutombo-like wingspan and decent hops.) It was encouraging to see him attempt several left-handed finishes.

Earl Watson had another decent game. While we Sonics fans have been bitching endlessly about the team’s point guard situation, Watson has put together a nice string of games. Over the last five games, he’s shooting over 50% and has an assist-to-turnover ratio of over 3 to 1. He’s also been getting rid of the ball earlier in the shot clock (or perhaps it just seems that way and the real culprit was always Delonte West?)

Finally, a trend I’ve noticed with this Sonics team is that they tend to give up big points to the opposing team’s big men at the beginning of the game. Andris Biedrins, Andrew Bogut, and now Tyson Chandler spent the first quarters scoring seemingly at will in the post. (They cooled down later, often when the Sonics threw different defensive combinations at them.) This makes me wonder whether Kurt Thomas is reaching the point in the age/experience continuum where diminution of athletic skills begins to outweigh savvy. He’s always been known as a good post defender, so perhaps it’s simply that he’s being asked to defend centers rather than power forwards (though it seems that, at this point, the latter would have little trouble outquicking him), or that the team defense is weak (it is). Either way, he’s a nice guy to have on the court for midrange jumpers and a Dennis Rodman-range rebound ratio.

On to Chicago for the Bulls, a game that, for David Stern and the NBA, is probably the equivalent of the air being let out of a giant balloon.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 6:59 pm and is filed under Supersonics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.