Sonics Sleep In Class, Likely Fail Another Draft

For the Sonics, the annual NBA draft has always been a little like going to the classroom for most college athletes in school on a scholarship. It’s something they know they have to do, but like the college player in school to play hoops, when the Sonics plan for the future, the draft is an afterthought.

It isn’t as though they have completely blown off the draft, but when you look at core of the Sonics and how they are reflected through the college grab bag, you notice Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp and Nate McMillan are the only players of any significance drafted by this team. OK, you can throw in Ervin Johnson, who was going to be the center of the future and finally got to play a little the last few weeks of the season when coach George Karl froze out a few veterans and needed someone to fill some minutes.

The point is that the college draft continues to be an exercise in shortsightedness for the Sonics.

Last year, it was Carlos Rogers, a player Karl almost yawned over when his selection was announced. Other recent selections include Doug Christie, Rich King, Dana Barros and Gary Grant. The only one who looked like a player was Barros, but for reasons that are still a mystery, Karl refused play Barros, traded him, and Barros became an All-Star.

The Sonics have always come off as an organization that distrusts the draft and all the information they hear surrounding it. They have, at times, invested money in scouting, and at other times they seem to rely more on word of mouth. There was 1983, when some of the Sonics’ own personnel people were advising them to select Doc Rivers, but the decision eventually was to draft Jon Sundvold as a backup to Gus Williams because they didn’t think Rivers had the heart and the desire to be a solid NBA player. Rivers is still in the NBA and has earned league-wide respect for his understanding of the game and his ability to work in a team concept.

Jon Sundvold, where are you?

Back then, the Sonics seemed to change their perception of what they wanted from Sundvold on an almost weekly basis. After the first year he was an NBA basket case.

The latest Sonics’ first-round draft choice is a player named Sherell Ford, a high-scoring shooter from Illinois at Chicago who said he’s looking forward to joining the Sonics.

Wasn’t that what Dontonio Wingfield said last year and Chris King and Christie said the year before?

Excuse me if this doesn’t sound like a rah-rah report on the Sonics. It’s just that after enough years of watching them go through the motions in the draft - not counting those years when Bob Whitsitt trades moved them into a position to make a weighty selection - it all seems such a waste of time. Other teams invest in the draft, then work hard to develop young players. The Sonics seem above it all. They laugh at opportunities for their drafted players, dropping hints that these guys don’t have a shot to make the team.

Funny how it all becomes a selffulfilling prophecy.

With their second-round selection Wednesday, the Sonics had something of a miscommunication with the NBA. Whether the Sonics announced the wrong name or the NBA messed it up may be one for the ages. In either case, it was a classic example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.

When it came time to select, it was announced that the Sonics had chosen Zydrunas Ilgauskas out of Lithuania. A few minutes later that was corrected. Instead, the Sonics chose Eurelijas Zukaukas, another Lithuanian, but no Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

Who’s drafting these guys, Vanna White?

Turns out neither will be here because Sonics GM Wally Walker informed us that Zukaukas was drafted for Milwaukee and the Sonics traded him to the Bucks for Michigan State point guard Eric Snow.

It is the opinion of the Sonics, or at least Walker, that Snow, selected 43rd, was the best pure point guard available in the draft.

If he’s correct, it means a whole lot of teams made a variety of mistakes the Sonics will benefit from as soon as Snow jumps into the offense to give Gary Payton a break, drives the lane and dishes to a jump-shooter for a wide-open 20-footer. When that happens, you will read a lengthy apology from this writer for doubting the Sonics’ scouting wisdom.

In the last two days, the Sonics approached a chance to re-shape their team by trading Kendall Gill to Charlotte, then acquiring the jumpshooter Hersey Hawkins. The next day they added another shooter in Ford. On paper, all of this looks good. For two years in a row, the offense has worked like a plugged drain at playoff time and the obvious answer was outside shooting.

Now they have the outside shooting and they have another guard who can get it to the shooters.

All they have to do now is learn the lessons history should have taught them. This would be an excellent time for the Sonics to show up in class as if they wanted to be there.