SEATTLE – With their season down to five final games, and with their once-comfortable lead in the Northwest Division standings reduced to a mere four games, the Seattle SuperSonics are looking for a way to revive their flagging fortunes.
They hope it happens tonight when forwards Rashard Lewis and Danny Fortson, and guard Antonio Daniels, all absent with injuries in recent days, are due to return for a 7:30 p.m. game against the Dallas Mavericks at KeyArena.
The Sonics, coach Nate McMillan admitted on Tuesday, feel “a great sense of urgency,” brought on by a five-game losing streak, the team’s longest of the season. “If those guys can get back,” he said, “it’ll be great to see them back on the floor. Because we need to get that hunger, that attitude back that we had before. And we need to start now.”
“To get those guys back, especially for these last five games, will be huge,” agreed guard Luke Ridnour. “Those are the guys who’ve been playing all year. They’ve been a big part of this team and we need to get them back.”
The three injured players will officially be game-time decisions, McMillan said. In other words, it is possible that any of them, and perhaps all three, could end up sitting out another night. But on Tuesday the trio practiced – an easy workout, to be sure – and there was no indication that any of them would not be in uniform against the always-formidable Mavericks.
Daniels, the only one of the three to address the media after practice, said he would prefer to take some extra days off to give his still-sore right knee time to heal. But with the team trying “to clinch the Northwest Division and get a little breathing room,” he said, “it’s something I’ll just have to play through.”
“I’m going to do my best not to worry about it,” Daniels added. “I’ve worked out the past couple of days and I had a good workout (Tuesday). I definitely feel like I can go out there and contribute a little bit, once the adrenalin gets going and the knee loosens up.”
Daniels, who has missed Seattle’s past three games, said it’s been difficult “to just sit there and watch on TV or watch on the sidelines.” The team, he went on, has not shown “that same swagger we had eight or nine games ago. It’s not there right now. We show flashes of the type of chemistry that’s got us 50 wins, but then at other times we kind of go the other way.
“We need to get our swagger back and we need to get our confidence back as a unit going into the playoffs,” he said.
Lewis, meanwhile, has missed Seattle’s past eight games with a severe bone bruise in his right foot. And Fortson has been out two games with a sprained left shoulder, and has played in just 10 of the team’s past 15 games because of injuries and disciplinary reasons.
The last injured Sonic, forward Vlade Radmanovic, is definitely out tonight and will likely miss the rest of the regular season with a stress fracture in his lower right leg. The team hopes to have Radmanovic for the playoffs, which will probably start on April 23, though his return on that that date is unsure.
On April 1, the Sonics dropped their magic number to one for clinching the division title, which would give them the No. 3 playoff spot for the Western Conference. Since then, though, Seattle has lost five in a row and in the same span second-place Denver has won seven straight, meaning the magic number is still stuck on one.
Winning the division is Seattle’s foremost goal, but another is to secure homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs. It is still possible Seattle could win the division, but finish with a lower record than either Sacramento or Houston (two teams outside the division that could finish sixth, thus becoming Seattle’s opening-round foe), meaning the Sonics would begin that series on the road.
With plenty to play for in the season’s final eight days, then, McMillan spent several minutes at the end of Tuesday’s practice, addressing his players with quiet, measured words.
The message, he related later, was “not so much about one game as it was about the position we’re in, about what we’re about to face and about where we want to be.”
The Sonics, McMillan pointed out, have not been sharp in recent games – he calls it “slippage” – and the emphasis now must be on “making sure we’re doing the things necessary to have ourselves ready for the remaining games and then into the playoffs.”
“I know it’s been hard because a lot of guys haven’t been here,” he said, “but we’re trying to get that back.”
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