SEATTLE – Last year there was Gary Payton, petulant about not having his contract extended and selfishly staying away from the opening of training camp.
In the years before that there was Vin Baker with his big contract and his big waistline, bogging the team down in more ways than one.
Over the past five years, dating back to the forgettable lockout-shortened 1999 season that coincided with the Seattle SuperSonics’ fall from NBA prominence, some kind of cloud has always darkened the team’s preseason prospects.
On Monday, though, the Sonics hosted their annual media day to tip off today’s start of full-squad training camp – players with three years or less of NBA experience had their first practice on Saturday – and what was obvious to everyone was the refreshing absence of problems and predicaments. It was eerie, almost, this feel-good aura that seemed to fill the building.
One who noticed was guard Brent Barry, who is preparing for his fifth Sonics season and his ninth overall in pro basketball.
In years past, Barry said, “there’s always been something and it’s always been significant. Vin’s situation was tenuous and it was a difficult situation for everybody involved. Gary’s was magnified 10 times because it was Gary. Now, though, we don’t have that looming problem between what’s going on upstairs (in the front office) and what needs to be going on downstairs (on the court).
“I think this is a year where the organization has really cleaned their slate,” he added, “and now it’s time to start building.”
Payton’s boycott of early training camp a year ago set a dubious tone that seemed to carry over into the regular season. By the time he was traded on Feb. 20, the Sonics were 22-30 and virtually out of playoff contention. Despite the arrival of Ray Allen and an 18-12 finish, Seattle ended up 40-42, missing the postseason for the third time in five seasons and breaking a string of 15 consecutive non-losing seasons.
“This year everybody is in camp, and for the most part they’re ready to start,” Sonics coach Nate McMillan said. “It’s more of a relaxed atmosphere. There’s not that tension about what’s going to happen and what’s (Payton’s) contract situation. We know who we have here. We know that our key guys are here, our draft picks are here, and these are the guys we’re building around. So this is definitely more comfortable than it was last year.”
Though Payton and Baker were the best players in Seattle’s last really good season – it was 1997-98, when the Sonics were 61-21 and reached the Western Conference semifinals – their issues helped torpedo the team in the last half-decade. As it turned out, addressing those problems became problems in themselves. With Baker struggling, for instance, the Sonics traded for notable but aging stars like Horace Grant and Patrick Ewing. Neither solution helped very much, and the only thing that did was getting rid of Baker and starting fresh.
Credit for that decision goes to Seattle general manager Rick Sund, who somehow coaxed Boston into taking Baker and Shammond Williams, another problem. Sund worked some more magic last season, getting guard Ray Allen – one of the game’s best perimeter scorers – for Payton as part of a multiplayer trade with Milwaukee.
In the season ahead, the Sonics will put their fortunes on the shoulders of Allen and still-improving forward Rashard Lewis – “Those two guys are the cornerstones of this franchise,” McMillan said – along with a few skilled veterans like Barry and some promising youngsters. It is a team that has changed dramatically in a little over two years, with just Barry and Lewis remaining from the 2000-01 squad.
Yes, Sund said, the Sonics are rebuilding. But they are doing it from the middle of the conference standings, not the bottom, and that means the playoffs are a tangible goal this season. At the same time, improvement from up-and-comers like Vlade Radmanovic, Reggie Evans, Jerome James, Nick Collison and Luke Ridnour could make the coming years that much brighter.
Questions remain, Sund admitted, “and some of the answers are going to take a few years, but this year is the start of it and we’ll see where it goes from here. But the last couple of years, because of Vin and because of Gary and all of that, we weren’t totally pointed in the right direction. This year I think our direction is totally defined, and now we just have to wait it out a little bit.”
Said Barry: “People ask, ‘Can you make the playoffs?’ Well, who knows? They say, ‘Do you think you guys can compete against the top teams in the West?’ Again, who knows? We have a lot of questions right now going into the season, and only with the work we’re going to do on our practice floor are we going to be able to find out the answer to those things.
“To me,” he added, “that sounds like rebuilding and that sounds like a young team, and I think that’s what we have.”
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