Sonics need to return to the defense of old
Published 9:00 pm Monday, February 21, 2005
The numbers don’t lie, particularly when they tell coach Nate McMillan the same thing he sees when he watches his Seattle SuperSonics play.
Back on Jan. 3, the Sonics opened the new year with an impressive win in Miami against the Eastern Conference-leading Heat. That victory raised Seattle’s record to 23-6, but since then the Sonics have been more mediocre than mighty, losing nine of their past 21 games.
The reason, McMillan believes, is defense. And, yes, the statistics back him up.
In the first two months of the season, Seattle ranked in the top 10 among the league’s 30 teams in points allowed at about 93 per game. Over roughly the past two months, though, the Sonics have seen their defensive average climb to over 97 points a game, and they head into tonight’s game in Houston 16th in the NBA in points allowed.
Also, in the 21 games since the Sonics won in Miami, they have allowed opponents to top 100 points 11 times, and two other times they yielded 99 points. Just twice in that span have they held the other team under 90 points, which happened eight times in the season’s first 21 games.
Some of this is due to the time of year, of course. NBA teams typically score more later in the season because their conditioning has improved and they therefore shoot the ball better. But in Seattle’s case, McMillan thinks the change – and particularly the drop in league rankings – has something to do with his team’s lagging defense.
“Defensively we’ve got to do a better job,” McMillan said. “I’ve felt like our ball pressure has dropped off and we need to be better at defending the paint. But mostly we’ve got to get that intensity back. We’ve got to get that fire back that we’ve been missing.
“We have to come out each night with the scrappy play and the hustle that we’ve seen from this team most of the season,” he said.
Though the Sonics can also improve at the offensive end, the team’s points production has been fairly steady most of the season – around 101 points per game.
“We’re not executing great (offensively),” McMillan said, “but the fact that we’re still scoring points is good.”
Seattle will face a Rockets team tonight that is on a mid-season surge. Led by All-Star starters Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming, Houston has won eight straight games, 12 of its past 14 and 16 of the past 20. The Rockets were just 6-11 in early December, but have since climbed to the No. 6 spot in the Western Conference playoff chase. Houston is closing in on No. 5 Sacramento and has No. 4 Dallas in sight.
Tonight’s game begins one of Seattle’s most rugged stretches of the season. After the game the Sonics head to New Orleans, where they will meet the Hornets on Wednesday. Seattle then returns to host Minnesota on Friday before heading out on the road again for games next week against Milwaukee, Indiana and Cleveland in the space of four days.
In early March the Sonics are back at KeyArena for games against four playoff-bound teams – Detroit, Phoenix, Houston and Chicago. Then they head off for another three road games in four nights against teams on the East Coast and Midwest.
“The (upcoming) schedule, we know, is a tough one,” McMillan said. We’re playing more games and we’re playing a lot of the teams that are in the race with us. So, yes, we do know that, and we want to make sure we prepare (accordingly).”
“This year,” added guard Ray Allen, “people have been saying, ‘Those guys have been playing some good basketball up in the Northwest.’ But we have to continue to do that in the second half of the season and then in the playoffs. Because playoff basketball is when you really gain your reputation.”
