Details: When: Sunday, November 20th Where: KeyArena Time (Seattle): 6:00 PM TV: FSN, League Pass Projected Starters: <font color=""Green"">Seattle (4-5)</font> Luke Ridnour Ray Allen Rashard Lewis Nick Collison Johan Petro <font color=""RoyalBlue"">Sacramento (4-5)</font> Mike Bibby Bonzi Wells Peja Stojakovic Shareef Abdur-Rahim Brad Miller Injury Troubles: <font color=""Green"">Seattle (4-5)</font> Rick Brunson - Plantar fasciitis (probable) Ronald Murray - back spasms (doubtful) <font color=""RoyalBlue"">Sacramento</font> None Inactive List: Unknown <div align="center">Brief Notes:</div> * This will be a rematch of last year's divisional playoffs for the Sonics. The Kings might have come in with a chip on their shoulder, but only Bibby, Miller, Stojakovic, and the sophmore Kevin Martin return from the team that lost to the Sonics. The Kings and Sonics haven't been known for their defense the last five years, so the game may turn into a shootout as meeting between the two often do. * Flip Murray's injury seems to be getting better instead of worse, and he's probably out for the next three games. * Rick Brunson, on the other hand, is ready to play again and may get a few minutes in tonight's game, although Mateen Cleaves will continue to get the bulk of the backup point guard time. * Danny Fortson seems to have dropped out of the rotation despite coming back from injury. He hasn't been able to do much more but rack up the fouls and sing to the media this season, and it makes you wonder how long he can stand not doing one of the two. * The Kings haven't been shooting well as a team, but given the pedigree of their veterans, it's hard to believe that won't end sometime soon. Random Sonic Quote: "If I'm a fan, I'm looking up from the stands and I'm like, 'Man, these guys suck,' " Ray Allen on the first half of Friday's game against Chicago (Seattle Times) All predictions, analysis and discussion relating directly to the game, both before, during and after, to be posted in this thread.
Wow, this place is dead of late. Back to .500 after a great last three periods (after giving up 36 in the first quarter and 25 first half points to Peja). Ray does his usual, Nick was efficient and Luke again tied his career high with 13 dimes. Rashard went cold for the first time in a while, but we had the Vlad of old off the bench picking up the slack with 17 points, six rebounds and four dimes, and it seems Damien played some super D on Peja in the second half, who didn't even score in the last two periods - and DW dropped 10 off the bench himself. Interesting to see Fortson get the start - is Johan hurt? I assume so, but I remember Brad Miller getting a bit whiny last season when we got physical against them, so maybe it was an unsettling tactic. No Reggie, either.
They said something about Johan being dehydrated. I don't think he was even at the game. Brunson was on the inactive list for some reason. The game was pretty much an offensive spectacle, partly due to the fact that just about everybody was hitting their shots, and partly because there was no interior defense. How about Collison with the baseline J to put the Sonics up with 30 seconds left? He wasn't even open, and he just swished it like it was no big deal, no big deal. That's not only going to do wonders for his confidence, but the fans's confidence in him. Horrible defense at the end letting Bibby get two open looks for three. We just got lucky that he didn't hit the second one.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Casual:</div><div class="quote_post"> The game was pretty much an offensive spectacle, partly due to the fact that just about everybody was hitting their shots, and partly because there was no interior defense.</div> The Kings shot 56% for the game, yet we still came out on top. A win is a win, but the fact that just about every single opponent has shot better than 50% against us is a cause for concern. Still, we're back to .500, and I'll take that given some of the performances we've put in this season.
Taped the game, haven't watched it yet. Feel kinda bad that Reg is the odd man out right now, I'd rather see the minutes go to him rather than Fortson. Nice that Vlad had a breakout game, it'll be interesting to see if this is a turning point. Anyway, Kings are still a good team with a lot of talented guys so it's a nice win.
It was nice to see Nick be such a big part of the W - 2 FT's and an ice cold baseline jumper late in the 4th. The defense was non-existent. Damien did a pretty good job on Peja - but towards the end of the 1st half, he really jammed the pinky on his shooting hand and it was taped up like the finger was broken during the 2nd - not to take anything away from Damien, but it likely had as much to do with stopping his tremendous scoring in the 1st quarter. Brad Miller and Bibby work really well together. We couldn't stop the interior passing - they did a great job of quickly doubling Lewis in the 2nd half after he looked to be going off in the 1st quarter. He didn't do a great job of passing out of the double tonight, but he did draw it virtually everytime he posted up - it shut him down, but still a good sign.
Taped the game too and haven't seen it yet. Coincendentally we have won three games in a row with Flip being sidelined for all of them. Contrary to the aformentioned sentence I'm beginning to think that this is no coicidence. Just like it is probably no coicidence that the Kings are struggling mightly with Shareef on the roster. In all seriousness (not that I wasn't being partly serious though) it seems as if we have better continuity when Flip is out of the line up. The only game that we played well with him logging a ton of minutes is against the Raptors and they won their first game this season tonight. An injured back is something that can take a while to fully recover from and I'm beginning to have a deja vu feeling from last year when we developed a good rotation with Flip nursing an injury. This year's team is different b/c of the fact that we don't have a three guard rotation but if Damien can log effective minutes at the two and Mateen/Brunson can play limited minutes at the point effectively w/ Luke playing 35+ solid starters minutes than Flip may again be relegated to the 12th man role. I'm not lobbying for this to happen but again I'm a Sonic fan first and foremost. If Fortson continues to play the way that he has so far this season, we find a rhythm with Flip sidelined, and we struggle to find that same rhythm in his return then Bob may have to reevaluate his training camp philosophy and Rick Sund may have to get on the horn quicker than he had anticipated. This is something that I hope isn't in the foreseeable future. It may not be about us finding a third scorer as opposed to us getting 60 points a game from everyone not named Ray and Sweet Lew. I'm estatic that we've been able to put together a winning streak after our atrocious play of beginning stages of our east coast road trip. Bob is learning on the fly and I hope that this winning streak can at least curb the talk of the "Fire Weiss" talk for the time being.
I cant for the life of me figure out how the censored the Kings lost. How the hell do you shoot 56% from the field and not get killed in any statistical category and lose? The Sonics have the Kings number and i absolutely hate it. I hate all of you. Will i ever live to see the day that the Kings beat the Sonics? Theyre the new Twolves for the Kings.
Two key positives for me at the end of the half despite the Kings shooting light's out. Sonics outscored the Kings in the paint in the first half. Two players not named Allen or Lewis were in double figures or skirting the edge. Vlad had 10 and Nick had 9. Peja at the 2 is tough on Allen defensively with his height. However, it gave Lewis an advantage over Wells. Special thanks to Danny for helping quiet the hot shot of Stojakovic. Quote of the day from Bob Weiss per the Trib... “Our strategy was to let Peja get a sore arm in the first half.” – Bob Weiss, Seattle coach, joking about Stojakovic’s first half.
Couple things to add after watching the game: Rashard really needs to learn how to pass out of the double team a lot better - many times, including one critical possesion late in the 4th - he tried to make floating cross court passes when it wasn't there. Just kick it back out and let the other guys swing the ball. And Luke's to the hoop game needs a rehaul. A couple times he shot the running hook shot, which is fine. But that jumping off the wrong foot twisting thing needs to go. I think the jump stop and fadeaway ala Nash or stop and one handed floater ala Parker need to be in his repetorie. Otherwise he obviously did a nice job again distributing the ball. I like what Cleaves is bringing to the court - ball movement, aggressvie defense and an occasional surprising knuckleball or drive to the hoop. The 4th quarter lineup of Ray, Rashard, Luke, Vlad and Nick is our best offensive group, and were able to rebound alright against the Kings. <div class="quote_poster">Quoting Iron Shiek:</div><div class="quote_post">Just like it is probably no coicidence that the Kings are struggling mightly with Shareef on the roster.</div> What is it about Shareef - he's a solid player, can score, rebound decently, seems to be a quality guy, he also had 8 assists last night - but his teams always seem to do poorly.
Very enjoyable game to watch. Of course a few times I felt the need to look away on the defensive end when Peja would get 4 seconds to get set and take a shot or all those layups that we were givin away. Of course we got a fair share of those as well which was partly Sacramentos bad defense and partly are well done offense (ask Potapenko how he got in the statsheets). Vladimir Radmanovic was the player of the game for me. He was aggressive on both ends of the floor and pretty much was attempting to always make the RIGHT play. Except a couple of times when he passed up a decent looking 3 for a wideopen Luke..thats just a bad idea. Right now its hard to condone taking Cleaves minutes away because we really havent lost a beat at all when he comes in for Luke. if anything we may actually end up with a better scorer. Atleast this far this season. This could become a very interesting situation when Flip and Brunson come back.
Good exciting game. I say keep Flip out of the line up, it seems without him our offense flows soo much better and we're winning with out him, I like the rotation of we used in the last 3 games. Hopefully we can keep winning, and hopefully our defense steps up because these teams are shooting lights out against us.
