Sonics Vs. Jazz Whets Appetite For Playoffs
If the NBA playoffs started today, the Seattle SuperSonics would face … wait.
If the playoffs started today, it would be about time.
Bring them on, anything to rinse away the ballitosis of the dullest NCAA tournament since the Wizard unrolled his program. If this was March Madness, how then do we distinguish sanity from brain death? Congratulations, by the way, to Kentucky and Rick Pitino, now officially crowned as the patron saint for guys who cheated like crazy when they were young coaches.
May Madness awaits.
And awaits. And awaits. The NBA regular season is an uncommon protraction, like a vigil for Dick Vitale’s next breath. And for every Central Florida in the NCAAs, there’s a Dallas and a Milwaukee in the NBA.
And a Vancouver. Last week, all three of those punching bags trudged through Utah to play the Jazz and left a combined 0-for-their-last-45.
Someone alert the expansion committee that the Washington Generals aren’t doing anything these days.
But occasionally the schedulemaker cracks a little joke and books back-to-back games between a couple of the heavyweights, which is how the Sonics find themselves in Salt Lake City tonight after pulling out a plum over the Jazz here in Key Arena on Saturday.
“It’s like a playoff atmosphere,” said Jazz guard John Stockton after Seattle’s 100-98 victory. “The Sonics are as good as any team in the league and you’ve got no one to play in between - no other team to think about. The intensity just carries over.”
Playoff intensity is a double-edged Gillette, however - especially for two teams so desperate to look sharp.
The Sonics, of course, have been doing hard time for their first-round flops the past two years. And the bell continues to toll for Utah, which was first pronounced too old to win about, oh, five years ago.
So they are in this thing together, but entirely apart.
It was after another tight Sonics victory in January that guard Nate McMillan went public with some dear-diary thoughts on the Jazz and its style of play, which he pegged somewhere between the WWF and aggravated assault.
“That’s a team that likes to take cheap shots,” McMillan said. “Adam Keefe is one of the biggest cheap-shot artists in the game. Stockton is definitely the worst, but he knows what he’s doing.”
Now, maybe a league-wide poll would second Nate’s opinion. But when you locker a few feet away from Frank Brickowski and complain about another team’s cheap shots, it’s like whining to the patrolman writing you up for speeding about the Lexus that passed you when you were doing 90.
On Saturday, McMillan made light of his remarks - and then made a few more.
“I talked to Adam Keefe before the game and he was laughing about it,” McMillan said. “I let him know that the comment I made was a compliment - it wasn’t anything dirty toward those guys. Different guys have different ways of playing. You can’t tell me you didn’t see those guys scrap and hold out there. That’s their game. I don’t think it’s dirty in a sense. They know how to play the game that way and have had some success doing it.
“Stockton is probably the meanest, toughest guy on that team. He’ll set a pick and give a guy an elbow in the ribs, and he’s been doing that for years.”
By the way, Nate is available to hand out compliments at your retirement testimonial, too.
Stockton distanced himself from this manufactured controversy as best he could. Even Hot Rod Hundley couldn’t get a rise out of him on camera.
So Keefe had to come up with the line of the night.
“Sounds like an old guy who’s frustrated because he’s not getting the minutes he used to,” he said.
“Tell him I enjoy the few minutes I do get,” rejoined McMillan.
None of this had much to do with Saturday’s outcome, which turned into a fourth-quarter shooting contest between Sam Perkins and Utah’s Chris Morris. Perkins nailed four 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, including the winner with 12.6 seconds left.
But when McMillan did get around to handing out compliments, they sounded sincere.
“Wins over them mean so much,” he said, “because it’s a team that executes better than anyone in the league. We have all sorts of problems playing the post and defending them when they’re cutting and moving without the ball. It’s one of those games that’s always meaningful.”
And as meaningless as the 82-game regular season can be - other than as a seeding process for the playoffs - some games are of consequence.
“Not for any impact on the standings,” said Sonics coach George Karl. “We’ve both kind of done our job now. But because we play backto-back, they’re going to come at us Tuesday with a very serious effort.
“Tuesday will be the game we’ve got to get. For pride. And for the fun of it.”
And because the playoffs don’t start today.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review