Opponent: Utah Jazz
When: 6 p.m. Friday
Where: Delta Center, Salt Lake City
TV: KONG (Ch. 6/16)
Radio: KJR (950 AM)
Vlade Radmanovic was in Seattle’s starting lineup on Tuesday night, sore knee and all.
Radmanovic banged his left knee against another player early in Sunday’s game with Washington and missed practice on Monday. After an MRI, which was negative, he pronounced himself ready to go before Tuesday’s game.
“It’s still sore,” Radmanovic said, “but I’m not concerned about it because there’s nothing major wrong with the knee. I just have to go through the pain, and when I warm up it almost disappears. But if I go to the bench and sit for awhile it gets colder, and then when I get back in the game again it’s still stiff and sore.”
Radmanovic wore an elastic sleeve on his ailing knee with a protective pad tucked inside. During timeouts, he put a heat pack on his knee.
Next question: Evidently, Sonics coach Nate McMillan is getting weary of questions about Jerome James being dropped from the regular rotation.
“You’re making a big deal (of nothing),” McMillan said before the game. A player, he added, needs to “bring it, it’s as simple as that. If you bring it, you earn your spot. If not, we fill in for you. We have to move on.”
Before Sunday’s game, McMillan promoted Vitaly Potapenko to be the first backup at center, moving him ahead of James, who had just one rebound in his previous two games, a combined total of 28 minutes.
Aches and pains: As a rule, retired NBA players are not the healthiest people in the world. Years of pounding up and down the court, not to mention the occasional injuries to knees and other joints, can take a toll, often leaving the ex-athletes to move slowly and stiffly in later years.
“That was one thing I was concerned about when I retired,” said McMillan, who moves better than many onetime NBA players. “I wanted to be able to walk away and have a life afternoon basketball. To be able to walk around without limping and not have some type of injury prevent me from being able to do that with my kids.
“This game requires so much of your body,” he added. “And if you play 10-12 years, normally you have put some type of strain on your body that a lot of times you won’t feel until you’re older. I’ve seen a lot of retired players who are now in their 50s and 60s, and they need hip replacements and knee surgeries and they can barely walk around because of all the pounding and stress they put on their bodies.”
Foul shooters: It’s still early in the season, but the Sonics have already shown a disturbing inaccuracy at the free throw line. Heading into Tuesday’s game, the Sonics had only a .703 percentage (168-for-239) at the stripe, the 28th-lowest mark in the NBA. Only Golden State (.693, 214-for-309) was worse.
Last season, Seattle finished with a .744 percentage at the line.
Rich Myhre
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