Sonics Get Personnel Man To Give Gm Walker Assist

Compared to his last two stops as an NBA front-office executive, Billy McKinney calls his new job with the Seattle SuperSonics “a breath of fresh air.”

McKinney, named Monday as vice president of basketball operations for Seattle, worked previously for the expansion Minnesota Timberwolves (1988-91) and the rebuilding, over-the-hill Detroit Pistons (1992-95).

“Instead of going to games wondering how close the games are going to be, you know the Sonics have a good chance of winning every time you play,” McKinney said.

“Some of my closest friends, when informed of my move here, have said after what you’ve been through, you deserve this.”

Sonics president/general manager Wally Walker said McKinney’s talent evaluation skills will focus primarily on college players, replacing consultant Rick Sund, who spent little time in the team’s Seattle office.

McKinney gives Walker the full-time, in-office staff person with personnel expertise he wanted, someone he can turn to for an opinion on a potential trade. The job title McKinney carries is new to the Seattle organizational chart.

“This really doesn’t have direct impact on my job,” Walker said. “I’ll lean heavily on him for college scouting. He also has a much better knowledge of the (NBA’s) Eastern Conference. We only see those teams twice a year.”

Considering the talent on the Sonics roster, McKinney said the team that has won 60 games in each of the last three seasons needs more fine tuning than a major overhaul.

“Watching this team from afar,” McKinney said, “as a team grows into greatness it sometimes stumbles along the way early. When you look at a lot of championship teams, particularly the one I came from, the Pistons, they had to bump their heads several times before they finally discovered the will to win and learned how to win big games.

“As I’ve looked at this team (Seattle), they’ve stumbled the last couple years, but that’s part of the growing and learning process where a team matures into champions.”

McKinney danced around expressing an opinion on where the Sonics might need help, responding only “you can never have enough quality big people. This is not a good roster, it’s an excellent roster. It has a lot of depth at a lot of different positions.

“With a team that’s had so much success over the last couple years, you just fine-tune things. You don’t have to make major changes.”

When he joined the Pistons three seasons ago, McKinney said the team was “undefined. When you have to rebuild after a championship team, they don’t adjust to the rebuilding effort as easily as you’d like them to. That place was going nowhere fast.”