Sonics’ Mcilvaine Prepares For Monday’s Big Addition To His Home Team

It’s countdown time for Seattle SuperSonics center Jim McIlvaine.

McIlvaine and his wife, Kim, are going to induce the birth of their son on Monday, which will give McIlvaine the opportunity to be there for the birth and to spend a few days with his family before the Sonics play again Wednesday.

“It kind of blows my mind that I’m going to be a father,” McIlvaine said before Friday night’s game in Utah. “I think about it and I know it’s coming, but I guess for a lot of men, until they actually see it, it is hard for them to comprehend.”

Kim was ready to give birth either Thursday or Friday, which would have meant that McIlvaine would have missed a game. But the doctors told the McIlvaines that they could hold off until Monday with bed rest.

The McIlvaines have been preparing for this for some time. They took a weeklong Lamaze course at a retreat on Bainbridge Island. And Kim has been asking Jim to prepare for their son’s arrival.

“She wanted me to write him a letter so I wrote him a letter,” McIlvaine said. “I pretty much just repeated everything my dad’s always told me, all those kinds of things. She is making this scrapbook of all that type of thing. And I’m picking up some music that I feel is going to be very important, have him be exposed to at a very early age.”

What, exactly, does McIlvaine want to introduce to his son so early?

“I got the Beach Boys Pet Sounds box set,” he said. “One of the best rock albums of all time.”

McIlvaine also said that life’s major events provide a sense of what is important and what are secondary issues.

“In its own sense, (basketball) is the most important thing,” he said. “When I am focused on basketball that is the most important thing. It’s frustrating not to be able to play. I know I am capable of playing, so you go out everyday and you try to work at it and you try to treat your body the best you can until it gets better and you can do more things.

“But in an overall sense, since I’ve been married, everything has been a lot clearer to me as far as the importance in life. That’s not to downplay basketball. It’s done a lot for me and it is important. But there are obviously more important things.”

McIlvaine said the ankle he injured in the preseason is not healing properly and he will have the Sonics doctors look at it tomorrow, either through an X-ray or an MRI. “It’s not getting better,” McIlvaine said.