Playoffs Force Sonics To Face The Age Factor

Of the team’s two acknowledged superstars, one is so mercurial that no one seems to know from day to day what he will do.

The team’s third-best player is 34 years old and has missed 40 games the past two years with three separate injuries.

The team’s spiritual and emotional leader is 32 years old, has played only 92 games the past two seasons because of injuries that aren’t fully healed, and has said he’ll likely play only one more year.

The team’s two best centers are 35 and 36 years old, capable only of playing limited minutes.

As the team enters the playoffs, even the coach says it may have only a year or two left playing at a high level with its current personnel.

The Utah Jazz and aging Karl Malone and John Stockton?

Nope.

The Houston Rockets and the grandfatherly trio of Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley and Hakeem Olajuwon?

Air ball.

We’re talking, instead, of the Seattle SuperSonics, who may have more of a past than a future. And that could make the playoff run that starts at 6:30 tonight against the Phoenix Suns one the players approach with greater urgency.

Or maybe not.

“That’s something that coaches worry about more than players,” said center Sam Perkins, the 35-year-old listed above, who feels players aren’t enlisted with worrying about a franchise’s future.

Gary Payton, the lone player on the team who appears absolutely certain to still be here in the year 2000, seems similarly unconcerned. He says he’s certain he’ll be back in the NBA Finals a time or two before his seven-year contract runs out.

Shawn Kemp, the superstar whose own future could be somewhat on the line in the playoffs, says hopefully that the Sonics are known for making moves and that he figures the organization wouldn’t waste much time rebuilding.

It was Sonics coach George Karl who once put a time limit on this team’s success, saying in 1994 shortly after the team had acquired Kendall Gill that the team ought to win a title in the next three years.

Three years ended after Game 6 of the NBA Finals last year.

“When I made that comment, I believe that Michael Jordan was playing baseball,” Karl said.

But he doesn’t deny that the team’s time might be running out.

“I think we have taken it longer than people thought,” Karl said. “Now I think this team has another year or two of 50-55 wins in front of them. But you don’t want to get old, either.”

In his new book, “This Game’s The Best,” Karl was even more pessimistic about the future, saying the team as currently constructed had maybe only a year after this season of playing at its current level before rebuilding would be necessary.

Nate McMillan, the team’s 32-year-old spiritual leader, and Perkins may each retire after next season. Karl has said that he often figured that 34-year-old Detlef Schrempf, the team’s third offensive threat, would already be a key reserve by now rather than still being a starter. That figures to finally happen in a year or two.

And 36-year-old Terry Cummings, who will start at center tonight, was viewed as a stop-gap measure when he signed in January.

Worse than age is the team’s inflexibility under the salary cap after this season - all the Sonics will likely be able to do is re-sign their own free agents or sign others for the minimum - and few tradable commodities other than Payton and Kemp.

Karl’s contract will expire after next season, and he said again this week that he will re-evaluate his options then. There would appear almost no chance he wouldn’t be the team’s coach next season because he is guaranteed more than $3 million, money he wouldn’t want to walk away from or the Sonics wouldn’t want to pay him to not coach.

Karl became the coach midway through the 1991-92 season, and the Sonics have won 55 or more games in the five full seasons since then, the only team to do that. But they haven’t won a title.

“I dream about it,” Karl says. “I wake up in the middle of the night sweating about it. If I got it, it would be unbelievable. For about seven years now, in the CBA and in Europe and here, I’ve had teams that were close. … What’s the difference between a winner and a champion? Probably not much.”

The Sonics think they found out that difference last season, when they advanced to the NBA Finals, beating Houston and Utah along the way.

“The more you experience it, the more it comes to you in a natural manner rather than a thought process,” Karl said.

Sonics followers hope so.