Details: When: Friday, March 4th Where: Key Arena, Seattle Time (Seattle): 7:30 p.m. TV: Fox Sports, League Pass Projected Starters: <font color="green">Seattle (40-16)</font> Luke Ridnour Ray Allen Rashard Lewis Reggie Evans Jerome James <font color="Blue">Detroit (36-19)</font> Chauncey Billups Rip Hamilton Tayshaun Prince Rasheed Wallace Ben Wallace Injury Troubles: <font color="green">Seattle</font> Mateen Cleaves: Sprained thumb, ruled out. Damien Wilkins: Knee tendinitis, ruled out. <font color="Blue">Detroit</font> Carlos Delfino: Knee surgery, ruled out. Brief Notes: <ul> [*]The Sonics return home from a 2-1 Central roadtrip, and are greeted with arguably the league's hottest team, and of course the defending champs. Detroit are coming off a narrow loss to the Suns in Phoenix, while Seattle recovered from a thrashing by Milwaukee with solid wins in Indiana and Cleveland, to go 5-1 since the All-Star break. [/list] <ul> [*]Rashard Lewis hates playing against Ron Artest. Rashard Lewis hates playing against Andrei Kirilenko. My guess is Rashard Lewis will hate playing against Tayshaun Prince, too. The guy who stopped Kobe in last year's finals has become one of the shining lights of Motown basketball, rounding out an excellent starting five. Lewis and Prince is just one of the intriguing battles taking place, which include silky smooth scorers Ray Allen and and Rip Hamilton, and Reggie Evans and Danny Fortson trying to keep the Wallace twins off the glass. [/list] <ul> [*]Useful/less stat of the day: Vladimir Radmanovic has hit 10 treys in against the Cavs this season. He doesn't like them. He said so. [/list] <ul> [*]Word of the Day: Necromancy; n: Communication with the dead. [/list]"Casanova Swift needs to practice in the art of necromancy in order to learn how to get big and strong like Wilt Chamberlain." <div align="center">Random Family Guy Quote </div> Peter: Gays don't vommit. They're a very clean people. And they have been ever since they came to this country from France. All predictions, analysis and discussion relating directly to the game, both before, during and after, to be posted in this thread.
Pistons just lost a close one (and snapped their 8-game win streak) to Phoenix; will be interesting to see how they respond for our game.
It worries me just a little bit that Pistons lost last game. Sonics is snapped three big win streaks this year (San Antonio 8 games, Miami 14 games, Houston 8 games). So Sonics can be called streak killers this season. But now Detroit will come in with tough loss against Suns and they want to take a revenge for that loss on another Western Conference high-scoring, always-running/gunning, surprise team (Sonics). So it will be difficult matchup - especcially down low where big male bodies will collide tonight (it sounded little gay, but who cares... ) Hopefully threes will fall and we can take another big W. Go Sonics!
I feel the Pistons players will be really drained from last night's game. They played a really tough game and let a game that should of been won, get away. Big Ben only played 30 minutes last night so he should be fresher but I'm not sure about guys like Tayshaun who played alot of minutes.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Casual:</div><div class="quote_post">It scares me to think of Ray "guarding" Rip Hamilton.</div> I am not so worried about Ray's guard duty on Rip. Rip's strength is the constant motion and running off multiple screens spaced throughout the halfcourt offense (a la Reggie Miller). On those screens it becomes more of a weight on the bigs than on the guard. Ray needs to stay close and not get lost chasing Rip. He is likely to get tired, but with the Supes depth at guard they should be OK. The bigs will have to call out the picks for him, and show on Rip when he runs ray off his bigs. They have done a good job with that so far this year. I worry more about Billups who can do the two things that have hurt the Sonics this year. He penetrates well and can hit the three. The Sonics have struggled against quick guard penetration and against solid 3 point shooting. Billups is a streaky shooter, so they will need to react quickly if he hits a couple of 3's and get out on him, trusting the bigs will cover the paint. Prince is another danger...his defense whether on Ray, Lewis or Radman will be crucial. They need to get into his head early and wear him down or he could be a MAJOR thorn in the shooters sides. It would be nice to have JJ and Reggie score down low early, but the Pistons have the best pair of interior defenders in the league in the Wallaces. Success will probably require Reggie and Danny a little wily cunning to get Sheed frustrated...he can be easy to bait, and we have the best pair of interior needlers in the league. I think the Sonics will need a surprise role player like Flip, Vitaly or Nick to change the game and eek out a win tonight. I don't think the core of the starters plus AD, Vlade and Fortson are going to be enough. This will be like Miami or San Antonio where it takes the whole team to pull it out.
Man for man the matchups don't look very good for tonights game: Luke vs. Chauncy: Billups is a physical player who can drain the 3 and get to the rim. Plus Detroit showed they'd be willing to turn their offense inside out and have Rasheed feed him in the post. Ray Vs. Rip: Rip will run Ray off screens all night long. We'll see if Ray is willing to fight through them or if the Sonics plan on switching. Rashard vs. Tayshaun: As stated, Prince is premier defender. At least this year Lewis has shown he won't back down from the challenge, but Prince has the length to bother his shot either from the outside or in the post. Plus I doubt Rashard will be able to put it on the floor against him. I think Radmanovic will be the X-factor, as usual. With both Rashard and him in the game we may have a matchup to exploit with whomever Prince isn't guarding. So it's imperative that Vlade is on tonight, I think. Last thing is Detroit's length on the frontline. I can see Potapenko getting some mins tonight. I hope this is one of those games where you can throw the matchups and stats out the window. Sonics have won 40 despite probably not having favorable matchups in a lot of our games.
<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post"> I think Radmanovic will be the X-factor, as usual. With both Rashard and him in the game we may have a matchup to exploit with whomever Prince isn't guarding. So it's imperative that Vlade is on tonight, I think. </div> Good point. With the matchup problems Detroit's starting lineup creates, this may be another game the bench must win. Once the starting fives need to sub out the bench needs to play up to par, and I think we will. Radman, AD, and Fortson need to step up because our bench > theirs. I still think Ray and the rest of the starters will do alright though...but if we win it'll be a whole team win.
This is a very bad match up for the Sonics. We don't do a good job of imposing our will on teams. We aren't a running team and we're not a half court team. We take advantage of running opportunities but at the same time we spend the majority of our time setting ball screens in the half court. Detroit is a slow it down type of team that makes you grind it out on offense. They are probably the most physical team in the league defensively (toss up w/ San Antonio) and b/c they don't look to go inside first, they are capable of going small and matching up well w/ us. Antonio McDyess is athletic enough to stay w/ Radmanovic if he is playing at the four, as is Ben Wallace. Tashaun is capable of giving Shard trouble even if Shard tries to post him up. Detroit defends well enough on the perimeter and post that they can put a small line up on the court and not get exploited defensively. I think that if we are going to win they have to put their most prolific scoring line up in the game and hope that our offense is better than Detroit's defense. I don't think that the Pistons can score in the 100's on a consistent basis so if we're able to open them up and make it a track meet we should be in good shape. They played against the Suns in Phoenix last night so they may not have their legs. If we make them play at a franatic pace, it's more likely that they will wither away before we will.
My X-factor in this one is AD. Physically he is much better match-up for Billups, and our bigs are going to giving Luke a lot backing to try and avoid Chauncey beating up on him. He's simply a bigger, stronger and more experienced player, and Luke is a little guy who's obviously being worn down as the season progresses. Personally I think we need to try and get Luke some open looks early in the game, and if his shot is on, hopefully it will give him the confidence to take it at Billups, who can be a lazy defender. Flip is another guy I like in this one. He possesses a lot of the same attributes as Billups, albeit except experience, and could cause him just as many problems defensively as he'll cause to us offensively.
Ridnour slightly shading Billups at the moment, and he seemingly isn't afraid to shoot the ball at the moment, which is good with Ray's shot so off. Up two with a quarter to play.
That's a big win there. We gave one of the best rebounding teams in the NBA a 49-33 battering on the boards, and got contributions from everywhere. Probably Jerome James' best game for this franchise, too.
I only saw a bit of the 1st half and saw Ridnour hit a couple 3's, Rashard BLOW by Tayshaun for a reverse layup and Jerome James backing Ben Wallace down for 2 turnaround jumpers. Now I see we won with Ray shooting 3-17 and Vlade 2-7. And we outrebounded their bruising frontline. Amazing.
I stand corrected. Very big win for the us and we did it in a grind it out fashion. I wrote earlier that we don't impose our will on the teams that we play but I'm becoming more convinced that their isn't a will to impose. We are versatile enough to adapt our game to whatever team that we're playing. We can run w/ running teams and grind it out w/ defensive oriented teams. We can win with the three ball or we can play pick and roll basketball and get good looks in the half court. Big JJ got some well deserved minutes and played exceptionally well. As I stated earlier this year, when he is motivated he is a top ten center in this league. He has good footwork, a nice shooting touch, and is an effective shot blocker. I wish that he would improve his rebounding but I am still lobbying for him getting another three year contract at five million dollars per year (just about what he's making now). He keeps the team loose and he is capable of guarding the better big men in this league. I just wish that he would play every year like it was his contract year. I know a lot of my post have a pessimistic tone to them but I'm becoming more convinced that we are the second best team in the NBA behind the Spurs. We win consistently on the road, we win when we aren't playing well offensively, and we win w/ Murray on the bench. Three things that if someone would have told me would have happen before the season started I would have never believed. Now the only question that remains is if all of this quality basketball will carry over to the playoffs. Only time will tell.
I'll give Jerome his props, but good footwork? I don't know about that, unless something has changed since the last time I saw him. A good win for the Supes, who keep surprising me with their toughness.
<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Did we just outrebounded, outhustled, outblocked and outscored Detroit??? Wow!</div> Yes, I believe we did. Great win. I thought that we would need to be running on all cylinders to win this game, and we did with the exception of Rays poor shooting. Wow I'm still in shock! I thought Detroit would come out and seek revenge from their loss to the Suns, and give us a spanking. But I stand corrected. Title contenders????? I think so.
These last 3 games are the ones that make it so frustrating to watch Jermoe James the other 90% of the time. And his footwork is funny, it's good for the first 2 steps of his move and then it seems on the last one he'll do something weird, like step back off one foot and shoot a fadeaway instead of finishing strong at the rim. Strange. Anyway, at the end of last year I was thinking 'Just one more year and his contract is up' and during the middle of this one I was hoping Memphis would bite on a Stro for JJ trade. But the last few have showed how there's no substitute for size. As far as the the Sonics in general, I think our style - lots of screens, lots of shooters and guys pounding the offensive glass - tends to wear down other teams mentally as well as physically. I think you have to really concentrate on finding the shooters, jumping screens, switching et al and, at least in the regular season, our opponents tend to have stretches where they lose focus and we go on one of our runs, particularly in the 4th.
