Honor for Williams

Opponent: Miami Heat

When: 4:30 p.m. Friday

Where: American Airlines Arena, Miami

TV: None

Radio: KJR (950 AM)

The Sonics will mark the 25th anniversary of their 1978-79 NBA championship season with a halftime ceremony during a March 26 game against the Denver Nuggets at KeyArena. As part of the program, the team will retire the jersey (No. 1) of former All-Star guard Gus Williams, the leading scorer on that squad.

Many of the players from that team are expected to be on hand, including Williams, Fred Brown, Jack Sikma, John Johnson and Wally Walker, today the team’s president. Lenny Wilkens, the head coach, will not be able to attend since he is coach of the New York Knicks.

“It will be wonderful to honor that special group together,” Walker said. “It will also be a great opportunity for Sonics fans to stroll down memory lane, and for our current players to connect with the Sonics’ proud heritage.”

Current Seattle coach Nate McMillan says he is looking forward to the reunion. As a teen-ager in Raleigh, N.C., that year, “I was a Sonics fan,” he said. “I used to watch the SuperSonics (on TV) in the Kingdome. I don’t know if it was the green and gold or if it was just the team, but for some reason that was the only West Coast team I liked. I was a Philadelphia (76ers) fan and a Seattle fan.”

Little did McMillan know that he was only a few years from becoming a Sonics point guard, the same position Williams played so well.

“Gus is a big-time man here,” McMillan said. “If you talk about championships and legends and players who really had an impact on this organization, the guys you could talk about are Sikma, Gus, Fred Brown and Lenny. When you look up and see the guys who have their jerseys retired, and after watching Gus and just hearing about what he did for the city as far as the way he played, you could say his jersey needs to be up in the rafters.”

Williams will become the fifth Sonics player to have his jersey retired. The others are McMillan (10), Wilkens (19), Fred Brown (32) and Jack Sikma (43).

Welcome back: One day after saying he did not expect to play until at least the opener of Seattle’s upcoming five-game road trip, Brent Barry was back on the court. His return came exactly six weeks after he broke his right ring finger in a Jan. 27 game against Dallas.

Barry, who was not available for comment before the game, entered the contest midway through the first quarter and got a loud ovation from the KeyArena crowd.

“His conditioning is definitely not there after being off for over a month,” McMillan said.

Though McMillan said he encouraged Barry into playing Tuesday, “he felt he was ready. One of the questions he asked was, ‘How did I look (Monday) at practice?’ And he looked OK,” McMillan said.

Barry was activated from the injured list before the game. To make room for Barry on the active roster, the Sonics placed guard Richie Frahm on the injured list.

Lineup change: McMillan moved Calvin Booth back to the starting lineup, replacing Reggie Evans, in an effort to get more size in the opening lineup against the T-wolves’ tall front line.

Expansion draft coming: The NBA has released its format for this summer’s expansion draft, tentatively set for June 22, which will provide players for the new Charlotte Bobcats franchise.

Each team will be allowed to protect up to eight players from its active, injured and suspended lists as of the last day of the season, though each team must leave at least one player unprotected.

Unrestricted free agents and unsigned draft picks will not be eligible to be selected, which means the Sonics will not have to protect Brent Barry (whose contract expires after this season) unless they sign him to a new deal before the end of the season.

Almost certainly, the Sonics will protect Ray Allen, Antonio Daniels, Luke Ridnour, Flip Murray, Rashard Lewis, Vlade Radmanovic and Nick Collison. The eighth player would probably be either Reggie Evans, Jerome James or Vitaly Potapenko.

Rich Myhre