A ‘Seattle Night’ Just A Nightmare For The Sonics

By all accounts, it was a Seattle kind of night.

Everything pointed to it for the defending Western Conference champ Sonics, who do not want to go down too hard, too fast and probably won’t.

The University of Washington Husky and newly signed Seahawks quarterback Warren Moon was in the house at KeyArena.

So was Bill Gates, whose net worth soared in a bull market week that proved so benevolent to the region’s legion of stock-holding Microsofties.

Yes, it was a Seattle kind of night-only the Sonics could not quite figure that out.

They played right into the hands of the Phoenix Suns. They dropped the ball and missed easy shots and let Rex Chapman and Phoenix make off with a 106-101 victory Firday night in Game 1 of the opening round series of the NBA playoffs.

“If we had stopped him, we would have won the game,” said a slightly ticked Gary Payton, who scored 23 points but had no final answer for one hot Sun.

“We put ourselves in this position. They did a great job of coming down here and getting a win. We have to first of all win on Sunday and then go down there and win. We’re getting killed on 3-pointers every day. It’s sad that we can’t adjust to that. He kept shooting and he kept killing us.”

It was a Seattle kind of night, except for one guy from Kentucky named Chapman, who launched 22 shots - 17 of them treys, nine of which sunk through the nets.

The Sonics couldn’t shut down Chapman. And they could not convert the easy buckets that were there for the taking.

Apparently, the presence of some Pearl Jammers and the pumped in strains of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain were not enough for the Sonics.

They could not take advantage of the fact that this is their time, this is their city and it seemed like it might be their night, too. It was the perfect time for the Sonics to show the world they weren’t going to waste time losing first-round games to a four-guard-driven opponent.

And to back up the Sonics, everyone was out in full support, except for Kenny G., who was conspicuously absent from the ringside seat he so glamorously occupied with Cindy Crawford during last year’s NBA Finals.

The road back there got a little longer Friday night - not that there wasn’t a mood and a mindset to get the Sonics off to a positive playoff start.

Heck, even as sharpshooter Champman was raining down and draining a tirade of treys, there was Seattle’s own Ken Griffey Jr. to provide a little homestyle inspiration in triplicate, too.

“Hit it here Junior” broke a major league baseball record for home runs in April on Friday night by belting three homers in Toronto. So when the KeyArena video masters decided to replay Griffey’s own three-dinger barrage to pump up the house, the place went appropriately nuts.

If Griffey can do it, you had to figure, so could the Sonics.

If the Mariners can do it, so can the Sonics, right?

So it was Griffey on the video screen, reminding the Sonics of the Seattle sports motto: “C’mon Sonics, refuse to lose,” Griffey said.

Funny thing was, the Sonics did refuse to lose.

Only Chapman refused even harder.

“I don’t know if he can shoot like that again,” Sam Perkins said about the Chapman hit parade.

“If he does, hats off to him. That far out, what can you do?”

There was energy and there was the frame of a sound game for the Sonics. It was just the finishing touches that were missing.

Their game plan is a good one, if the bombs are dropping.

After all, it was the Sonics who set the playoff record for treys last year against Houston. They have a few tricks up their sleeves. They just need to roll up those sleeves.