Opponent: Indiana Pacers
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: KeyArena, Seattle
TV: KONG (Ch. 6/16)
Radio: KJR (950 AM)
Probable starters: For Seattle – forwards Rashard Lewis (6 feet, 10 inches) and Vlade Radmanovic (6-10), center Jerome James (7-1), guards Brent Barry (6-6) and Flip Murray (6-4). For Indiana – forwards Jermaine O’Neal (6-11) and Ron Artest (6-7), center Jeff Foster (6-11), guards Reggie Miller (6-7) and Kenny Anderson (6-1).
Luke Ridnour’s love of basketball – not just playing games, but any chance to be in a gym – is beginning to spawn stories.
Sonics coach Nate McMillan had this one to tell about his rookie point guard on Thursday. In the preseason, the team took buses to Bellingham for a public practice at Western Washington University. After returning to Seattle, the other players all hopped in their cars and went off into the night.
Not Ridnour.
He took a ball into the darkened gym at the team’s practice facility and had a solo workout. The only light was from the window of McMillan’s second floor office, where the coach had gone to work before heading home himself.
Thinking he was alone in the building, McMillan was startled to hear a bouncing basketball.
“It was,” he said, “like a movie, it really was. You could hear this ball bouncing and you could see darkness. And you look out and it was Luke going up and down the floor. He went up and down a few times and he shot a few times. He was not so much working on anything, but just being in the gym. I think he had to be in the building.”
McMillan’s reaction?
“I just thought it was different,” he said. “You don’t (usually) see that.”
Of course, as well as Ridnour has played the last two games, other Sonics might take note. Against Houston on Sunday, he had 11 points and three assists in 18 minutes. In Wednesday’s game with New York, he had season bests of 15 points, seven assists and five rebounds in 28 minutes, including the entire fourth quarter. Both were Seattle victories.
“The last two games, it’s been tough to take him off the floor,” McMillan said.
Missing Peja: This is Vlade Radmanovic’s third NBA season and his first without former teammate and fellow Yugoslavian Peja Drobnjak. Though Radmanovic, who turned 23 last month, mixes well with his other teammates, this season “has been different,” he admitted.
“We were close,” he said of Drobnjak. “Even though I didn’t know him before I came here, we were like brothers here. We would hang out all the time. On road trips, Peja and I would go out for dinners and stuff like that.
“But now he is not here anymore so you have to forget about it and try to focus on what you have to do.”
To help ease his loneliness in a foreign country, Radmanovic’s parents make overseas frequent visits. They are currently staying with their son in Seattle.
Blunder provides “teaching point: “ Though he played well in Wednesday’s game, Radmanovic committed an obvious blunder in the late moments. With the Sonics trying to protect a lead, he made a steal as the Knicks were bringing the ball out of backcourt. The proper play was to hold the ball and run some time off the clock, but instead Radmanovic launched a quick 3-point attempt that missed.
On Thursday, McMillan called it “a teaching point. You have enough points (to win) and you just need the time to run out. But he knew. It was just one of those things where he was feeling hot and he felt he could put the dagger in. But time, score and situation is what those guys have to learn, and that was not a good shot.”
Allen update: Injured Sonics guard Ray Allen flew to Los Angeles Thursday for an afternoon consultation with Dr. Richard Ferkel, the surgeon who took bone and cartilage fragments from Allen’s ankle on Nov. 1. He was due back for tonight’s game, and is hoping to begin workouts in the next day or two, either in Seattle or with the team on the upcoming road trip to the East Coast and Midwest.
Barry sits: Seattle guard Brent Barry missed Thursday’s practice with a sore wrist, but is expected to play tonight.
Familiar face: Former Sonic Kenny Anderson, who had a forgettable 2002-03 season with Seattle and New Orleans, has landed on his feet in Indiana. Anderson, who signed as a free agent before the season, is the only Pacer to have started all of the team’s 19 games. He is averaging 6.2 points, 3.6 assists, 2.6 rebounds in 26.1 minutes a game.
Bobble, bobble: The first 10,000 fans attending tonight’s game will receive free Ray Allen bobblehead banks. The gift features a small and fairly lifelike bobblehead figure of Allen on the left, with his hand on a large basketball, which is the bank.
Rich Myhre
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