SEATTLE – Mathematically, the Seattle SuperSonics still have a chance of making the NBA playoffs.
Realistically, those prospects are anything but rosy.
One night after losing at Salt Lake City’s Delta Center, the Sonics had a chance for payback – not to mention a much-needed victory – against the Utah Jazz. Alas, Seattle was beaten again, this time a 93-92 overtime setback in a feisty, physical clash at KeyArena.
The slumping Sonics, who have lost 16 of their last 23 games to fall a season-low five games under .500 (26-31), had chances to win in both regulation and overtime. Instead, and despite a dandy 40-point effort from guard Ray Allen, they were undone by careless turnovers, missed shots and assorted other miscues that are the traits of losing teams.
“At this time of the season, teams are playing their best basketball,” said Seattle coach Nate McMillan. “This is the best basketball right now in the NBA. Teams are not going to make a lot of mistakes and you can’t either.”
The Sonics trail Denver, the No. 8 team in the Western Conference, by five games with 25 to play, with Portland and Utah also ahead of Seattle. It is a sizable deficit, particularly because the Sonics have shown no sign of breaking out of their recent slide.
“Everybody’s disappointed,” said guard Antonio Daniels, one of the few players available in a rapidly dispersing Sonics locker room. “This was a game we should have won and we didn’t. We need to make those plays (in the late minutes) and we didn’t make them.”
Hopefully, he added, “we’ll learn and move on from here.”
In a game that swung back and forth – there were 10 ties and 11 lead changes – Seattle seemed ready to secure a victory early in the fourth quarter. Allen’s 3-point shot almost two minutes into the quarter pushed the Sonics to a seemingly comfortable 74-65 lead. Over the next five minutes, though, Utah kept Seattle scoreless and by then the visitors had gone in front.
Both teams had opportunities to win in the final seconds of the period. Seattle gave up the ball on an errant pass by Allen, while a last-second shot by Utah’s Carlos Arroyo was well short of the rim.
In overtime, Seattle scored on its first two possessions, including a 3-pointer by Daniels, to go up 89-86. From there, though, the Sonics missed their next three tries from the field and committed two grievous turnovers – cross-court passes that were easily intercepted by the Jazz.
Then, in the late seconds, a huge mental lapse helped seal Seattle’s fate. Utah had the ball and a two-point lead with 12 seconds to play when Jazz forward Tom Gugliotta slid into the lane for a short shot that bounced off the rim. The Sonics should have had the basket sealed, but instead Utah forward Andrei Kirilenko slipped past his defender – Seattle’s Vlade Radmanovic, who had his back turned, totally unaware – for a tip-in that put the visitors on top by four.
“When that shot goes up, we need everybody in the paint,” McMillan sighed. “You have to turn, look and find someone to box out because you’ve got to get the ball. If we get that rebound, who knows what happens.”
“I was just trying to be active in the last seconds,” said Kirilenko, a native Russian who had seven of Utah’s nine points in OT. “Use every available move. At the end of the game, 10 or 15 seconds, if you stay active you can do something and win a game.”
After a timeout, the Sonics missed one shot from the field, got an offensive rebound, and Daniels dropped in a 3-pointer at the horn that did nothing but turn a four-point defeat into a one-point defeat.
The victory “was there,” McMillan said. “But at the end, we just had some costly turnovers. And we missed some open looks at a time we have to nail those shots. You just have to win when the game is close like that.”
Allen, who posted his third 40-point game of the season, had 27 of those points in the second half and overtime. He finished 13-for-25 from the field, including 6-for-11 from the 3-point line, to go with eight free throws. He added seven rebounds and four assists, though he also had a team-high five turnovers.
Unfortunately, his teammates gave him little offensive support. In one decisive nine-minute stretch from the late third quarter to four minutes left in the game, no Seattle player scored except Allen.
“He is just a wonderful player to have to try to deal with,” said Utah coach Jerry Sloan. “You just have to have a little bit of luck one in a while.”
These days, luck is something the Sonics cannot seem to find.
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