I spent the third quarter of last night’s Mavericks/Sonics game with my dad and his friend Irv in Irv’s seats (or rather, they sat in Irv’s seats, about 7 rows back from the court, while I sat in one of the dozen or so empty seats adjacent to it). It was like sitting with Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets: “You don’t need to know much about basketball to know that the name of the game is moving around, not standing around…it’s great: each game is better than the next…this team stinks.”

Unlike their balcony-dwelling progenitors, my father and his friend had good reason to be grumpy old men. These Sonics are just bad. Last night, they failed to hit 50 points until the fourth quarter. That’s right, folks: they had 46 points at the end of the third quarter. They brought in offensive “genius” Paul Westhead so they could develop the league’s least efficient and most offensive offense, the Still Life on Basketball Court.

Of course, as an old basketball coach of mine used to say, “you can’t make chicken soup out of chicken shit.” As of now, the Sonics don’t have the talent–or that talent is not yet sufficiently developed–for them to be a good team. But that doesn’t mean they should cry “uncle” on the season. Remember in November, when they’d take teams like the Spurs and Suns down to the wire at the Key, simply because they’d play harder? Dallas is by far the better team and was likely looking forward to a virtual off night. The Sonics should have made last night suck for the Mavericks. After the game, Dallas coach Avery Johnson should have been lamenting his team’s poor play, complaining that, although they got the win, such an effort won’t cut it against Boston or San Antonio.

So how can the Sonics turn it around? Who can lead them? It’s a tall task for anyone, let alone a slender-shouldered teenager. But I think Kevin Durant is the answer. For the first half of last night, he was wearing what Lorenzo Romar likes to call “the cool jacket…you know, [the] one you don’t want to get dirty, don’t want to get any wrinkles or smudges on.” This was most apparent as he jogged back on defense on a two-on-one, swiveling his head left and right to keep casual tabs on the hard-charging Mavs.

Please, Kevin, lose the cool jacket. When Josh Howard gets up in your grill, rip the ball through–his nose will take it worse than your elbow–and go directly to the basket. Shoot ten free throws a game. Be a nuisance on defense. You did it for a while in the second half; there’s no reason not to do it all game long. Sure, you’ll come out with a few bumps and bruises. But just like the quarterback who takes the big hit immediately after releasing the touchdown pass, you’ll get the last laugh. You don’t have a deep playoff run to preserve yourself for. Make these games fun again.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Supersonics, Roundball. 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.