As the Seattle SuperSonics perused their schedule before the 2003-04 season, the month of March stood out for its obvious severity.
If today’s road-trip opener at Houston is included, the Sonics have 17 games in the month. Twelve of those games are on the road. Twelve of the games are also against likely playoff teams, with two other games against teams that might make the postseason. Only three games are with teams certain to sit out the playoffs.
Realizing how difficult March was going to be, even before the season, the Sonics discussed the need to build a cushion. That is, win enough games from November to February that they could still have playoff hopes even if March took its toll.
Obviously, that never happened. After playing well for the first two months, Seattle staggered through much of January and February. Now, with the schedule that awaits them, the Sonics need a miracle to have a shot at the postseason.
“We talked about March a lot back in January and now in February, and about where we wanted to be,” said Sonics coach Nate McMillan, whose team takes a 26-32 mark into today’s meeting with the 34-24 Rockets. “But we’re not even close to where we want to be.
“We’ve put ourselves in a position where we’ve made it tough on ourselves. We’re going up against not only some of the top teams, but we will also be traveling on the road. We’ve had some success on the road (Seattle is 10-16 away from home this season), and now we’ll see what we can do.
“I knew coming into the season that there would be some times that would be rough for us,” he said, “and we’re experiencing that now. We’ve had some difficult times, but we have to stay tough and fight our way through this.”
After facing Houston today, the Sonics will complete their Texas swing with contests at Dallas on Tuesday and San Antonio on Wednesday. Then it’s on to Los Angeles and a Friday game against the Lakers before returning home.
Being back in Seattle, though, will hardly bring relief. In that next week the Sonics will host Detroit, one of the best teams from the Eastern Conference, and Midwest Division leader Minnesota before heading back on the road for a 10-day trip that includes stops in Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Memphis and New Orleans.
Later in March, Seattle has home games with Orlando, Utah and Denver before closing the month with road games at Portland, Denver and Minnesota. Given the difficulty of that schedule, it is entirely possible the Sonics might win no more than five or six games, leaving them well out of playoff contention by the time April arrives.
Ever the optimist, Seattle’s Antonio Daniels said the team’s March slate “is something we need. We need a big challenge right now. … There’s a lot of season yet to be played and there’s a lot of things that can happen through the rest of these 24 games.”
Looking ahead to the three-game visit to Texas and the finale in Los Angeles, “those are four definite playoff teams, so this’ll be a definite character builder for our team.”
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