Olajuwon: They Have A Championship Team With Nightmares In Past, Even ‘Dream’s‘ A Believer

Their gimmick defense was suspect in a seven-game playoff series.

Their lack of a dominant center was supposed to cause them to fall short again.

Their critics weren’t sure if they had the outside shooting to beat the two-time defending champion Houston Rockets.

Someone even wondered if the Sonics were a better team without Shawn Kemp than with him.

Guess what. After back-to-back first-round pratfalls, the Seattle SuperSonics are in the NBA Western Conference title series after sweeping aside Hakeem Olajuwon and the Rockets.

Gary Payton and his teammates felt they had the weapons to beat Houston. But who would have imagined a sweep?

“They have a championship team and they can play at every level,” Olajuwon said Sunday after the Sonics won 114-107 in overtime in Houston.

Seattle’s trapping, double-teaming defense stymied the magnificent Olajuwon in its 4-0 sweep. The Rockets never quite figured out how to solve coach George Karl’s swarming double teams that Kenny Smith complained was nothing more than a zone in disguise.

As for the middle, in Sunday’s series decider, starting center Ervin Johnson played 13 minutes for Seattle and one of his backups, Frank Brickowski, played five. Sam Perkins, a forward playing the role of a backup center, was in the game for 40 minutes.

Perkins went 19 for 30 in the series.

“Name me the person in this league who can guard Sam Perkins,” Houston coach Rudy Tomjanovich said.

And what about the first-round jinx?

Upset by Denver in 1994 and by the Los Angeles Lakers in 1995, the Sonics were supposed to be in trouble after losing Game 2 of their first-round series to the Sacramento Kings.

Then they went to Sacramento and took two straight before moving on and eliminating the Rockets.

In Game 2 of the Houston series, the Sonics shot a dazzling 20 for 27 on 3-pointers, a playoff record. In Game 4, Kemp showed why he is a four-time All-Star with a 32-point, 15-rebound, three-blocked-shots performance, clearly outplaying Olajuwon.

Stung by the playoff loss at home to Sacramento by a media that kept reminding them they couldn’t get out of the opening round, the Sonics seemed like a team on a mission against the Rockets.

So how far can they go now? The Sonics may feel confident, but their not making any boasts.

“From losing in the first round, we have kept our mouths shut,” Karl said.

“I won’t be surprised if they win it all,” Olajuwon said.

The Sonics had a well-deserved day off Monday. They’ll begin practicing today for either the Utah Jazz or San Antonio Spurs. The Jazz lead the series 3-1 going into Game 5 in San Antonio tonight.

Seattle took three out of four from Utah during the season, winning the final meeting in Salt Lake City 100-91 on April 2. Because the Sonics won a franchise-best 64 games and Utah was 55-27, Seattle would have a homecourt advantage in a playoff series against the Jazz, a team the Sonics beat 3-2 in a best-of-five series three years ago, the last time they met in the playoffs.

Utah’s Karl Malone and John Stockton present huge obstacles.

“It would be a great matchup to go against Karl head-on and play Stockton and the rest of the team,” Kemp said. “But if it’s Utah, it’s not going to be easy.”

The Sonics’ series sweep over Houston may have saved Karl’s job, although general manager Wally Walker has said he’ll make up his mind about Karl after the playoffs.

Karl, who celebrated his 45th birthday Sunday, is earning $1.1 million in the final year of his contract. The Sonics have the option of renewing the contract for next season.

Notes

The Sonics were greeted by several hundred fans at Boeing Field when their charter flight landed Sunday night… . Tickets for Games 1 and 2 of the Western Conference finals in KeyArena sold out in less than 1 hour Monday morning… . When asked which team they prefer to play, the Sonics avoided disrespecting either one. As Kemp observed: “It would be great to play (Utah’s) Karl (Malone) and go head-to-head again. But it would be just as good playing (San Antonio’s) David Robinson.”