SEATTLE – Hold onto your hats, Seattle SuperSonics fans. The 2004-05 NBA season is bound to be a roller-coaster ride.
That’s our guess, anyway, following the team’s wacky first week.
After getting a 30-point drubbing from the Los Angeles Clippers in their Wednesday opener, the Sonics bounced back with lopsided home wins over the weekend. The first, a 106-85 victory over the lowly Atlanta Hawks on Friday, was perhaps to be expected. But Sunday’s 113-94 spanking of the mighty San Antonio Spurs certainly was not.
Playing in front of an enthused KeyArena crowd, Seattle handed the Spurs their first loss of the young season and did it in convincing fashion. Led by 27 points from forward Rashard Lewis, 24 points from guard Ray Allen, and a spirited 15 points and 13 rebounds from backup forward Danny Fortson, the Sonics pretty much had this game in hand early in the third quarter.
San Antonio did manage two second-half rallies, pulling within six points late in the third period and drawing within nine early in the fourth, but each time Seattle promptly pushed the margin back to double figures, the second time for good.
In the late minutes, the Spurs simply wilted and San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich finally waved the white flag, putting stars Tim Duncan and Tony Parker on the bench (Manu Ginobili, another top scorer, had already fouled out). Subs from both teams played out the closing moments.
It was, Seattle coach Nate McMillan said afterward, ”a big win for us. Our guys worked their butts off and beat a team that a lot of people – and I’m one – are picking to win it all. Tonight we played good, solid basketball.”
”This was a huge win because that’s one of the best teams, if not the best team, in the league right now,” said Sonics guard Antonio Daniels, savoring a victory over his former team. ”For us, it was a total team effort from top to bottom. The starters got us off to a great start, and then when the bench came in there was not much of a letup. Our intensity was there from horn to horn.”
In a nearby locker room, the Spurs were trying to shrug off what was easily their worst showing of the season. San Antonio opened with a home win against Sacramento, then went into Los Angeles and thumped the Lakers.
”Seattle outplayed us every way that a team could outplay somebody,” Popovich said. ”They played harder than we did, they played smarter than we did and they deserved to win the game.”
Many of the Spurs struggled in this game, but no one more so than Duncan. The two-time NBA Most Valuable Player (2002 and 2003) missed his first four shots from the field and was just 1-for-9 at halftime. He finished the night with 17 points, due largely to nine free throws, but was only 4-for-16 from the field and had five turnovers.
”It was just a bad day,” Duncan said. ”All (the Sonics’ defenders) did was stay in front of me and I didn’t make shots.”
As a team, he added, ”we played very badly and we ran into a team who played very well. I give a lot of the credit to them because they played well, but we can play a thousand times better than we did.”
The Sonics, meanwhile, had several heroes, but the man who probably did the most to cinch this win was Fortson. Showing why Seattle swung the trade to get him from Dallas over the summer, the 6-foot-8 backup forward had 15 points and 13 rebounds in a mere 21 minutes. Eleven of those points and 10 of those rebounds came in the second half as he took charge under the basket, snagging one offensive rebound after another and getting fouled on put-back attempts. He made just one field goal after halftime, but was 9-for-10 from the free throw line.
”Danny was out there doing what he does best,” McMillan said. ”He was aggressive on the boards at both ends of the floor and defensively he did a good job of keeping Tim (Duncan) out of the paint. It was a very good effort for him.”
”Fortson was super on the boards,” agreed Popovich, ”but everybody (on the Sonics played well). … Their effort was better, their execution was better, and they wanted the game much more than we did.”
Today, the Sonics will board a charter flight for Denver, where they will take on the Nuggets on Tuesday night. It is a game Seattle could easily lose – the Nuggets are improved and the Mile High City is also a difficult place for visiting teams – but Sunday’s victory seems to have filled the Sonics with newfound hope.
Which is something they didn’t have much of just five days ago.
Losing to the Clippers ”was really bad,” Fortson said. ”Nobody felt good. I didn’t even play (because of back spasms) and I didn’t feel good. And when we beat Atlanta people could say what they wanted to say. But tonight we beat a really good team. The Spurs are one of the elite teams and we handled them for four quarters.”
The rest of this season, he went on, ”is up to us. The only way we’re going to lose is if we beat ourselves. But if we play hard like this every night, no matter who it is, teams will have a tough time beating us.”
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