Life On Road No Problem For Sonics

At the moment, nobody is comparing this version of the Seattle SuperSonics to the team that went to the NBA Finals last year.

But with Thursday’s 108-104 victory at Denver, this year’s team matched last year’s with a 26-15 record on the road, the best in team history. The 1993-94 team also went 26-15 on the road.

“That’s pretty good,” Sonics coach George Karl said. “We might get 30 (road wins) one of these days.”

The difference between this team, now 56-25, and last year’s 64-18 club is the home record. The Sonics this season have a 30-10 mark at KeyArena with one game remaining, while the Western Conference champion Sonics last year compiled a 38-3 record at home.

Still, Karl said the road success says something about this team.

“I’ve liked the mentality of this team all year, and it shows in the road wins and the fact that we haven’t gotten blown out too often,” Karl said. “Winning on the road is a lot mental and overcoming adversity and staying tough and hanging together and we’ve done that.”

Show of support

Sonics players apparently had no qualms about signing an affidavit in support of Shawn Kemp’s position that NBC commentator Peter Vecsey was wrong in reporting that Kemp admitted to the team that he has a drinking problem.

The affidavit is seen by some as the first step toward Kemp possibly suing Vecsey or NBC. At the moment, Kemp is deferring comment on the issue, saying he wants to talk only about basketball.

“It will hopefully have the truth come out,” said guard Hersey Hawkins, when asked why he signed the document. “They definitely owe Shawn an apology. You call a guy an alcoholic on TV and everybody will believe it until they say they were wrong about it.”

Vecsey first said last Saturday that Kemp told the team during a players only meeting on April 5 that he had a drinking problem. But all the Sonics have denied Kemp said any such thing. All 14 players who were present at the meeting signed the affidavit after Seattle’s victory over San Antonio Tuesday night.

Karl doesn’t want to talk much about the issue anymore, but did say that Vecsey’s comments “merit some type of apology or gesture of ‘We made a mistake.”’

3-point blahs

One fairly unnoticed reason for Seattle’s struggles of late has been its poor 3-point shooting. The Sonics put an end to that with 9-for-19 shooting against the Nuggets (47.4 percent).

But prior to that, the Sonics hadn’t shot better than 33 percent in any of the past eight games, and had been under 25 percent the past four.