Players Want Karl To Be Quiet
Seattle coach George Karl said before the season he thought the Sonics should set a 10-victory goal for November. The Sonics won 13. Gary Payton said he thinks Karl should keep quiet from now on.
“Goal-setting is crazy,” Payton said. “Because what you do is you start thinking you got to win 10 ballgames and then once we let down things start falling apart. Let (Karl) keep putting that in his mind, don’t tell us. We told him about that. We want to just play basketball. And that’s it. I told him about that.
“Don’t put goals on us and put that in the paper because that makes us look bad if things go wrong and we have a big injury. You never know what happens. So don’t set goals. Just play basketball and hopefully we’ll keep winning.”
Sprewell aftermath
Latrell Sprewell’s attack of Golden State Warriors coach P.J. Carlesimo is unprecedented - almost.
Four years ago, Seattle SuperSonics director of player personnel Billy McKinney, then working for the Pistons, was assaulted by Alvin Robertson when McKinney went to tell Robertson he would be suspended for three days for insubordination. Robertson grabbed McKinney around the neck and began choking him.
In that instance, though, the league did nothing. Two weeks later the Pistons traded Robertson to the San Antonio Spurs.
McKinney, who is on a scouting trip for Seattle, refused to be interviewed on his thoughts about the Sprewell incident.
“He said everything he wanted to say at the time and he doesn’t feel he needs to revisit it, Sonics spokeswoman Cheri White-Hanson said.
It’s a bet
Jim McIlvaine has an ongoing bet with former Washington teammate Chris Webber.
When the two face each other, they place a $500 wager on which one has the better free-throw percentage during the game. Both are, shall we say, free throw-challenged.
In Washington on Tuesday, Webber hit both his foul shots. McIlvaine, who played only 10 minutes, got no free throws and finished without a point. He paid up after the game.
Pistons losing faith in Collins?
Detroit Pistons coach Doug Collins came about seven digits away from losing his job this week.
According to sources close to the Pistons, star forward Grant Hill was a layup away from calling owner Bill Davidson and asking for Collins to be fired. But in the end, Mr. Nice Guy opted not to let his fingers - and Collins - do the walking.
“That just isn’t me,” Hill said. “People expect me to be like Isiah Thomas. Well, I am not Isiah Thomas.”
Pistons players have been grumbling for a few weeks about Collins putting all the blame on them for their poor start. Things became heated when they lost to Vancouver at home last week.
At one point, during a timeout, Collins refused to draw up a play. He essentially told the team to run whatever they wanted because they hadn’t done what he asked all night, anyway.
Afterward, Hill said: “We have to make some changes. If not, we are going to have a bad year. Evidently, what we are doing isn’t working.”
Center Brian Williams, signed as a free agent this summer, wondered whether or not the players have completely tuned Collins out.
“Do we support him? Yes,” Williams said. “But that is a flexible question. Support is probably the wrong word. But the worst thing that can happen to a coach is for him to become like a refrigerator droning in the corner, so that whatever he says sounds like background static.”
Said Collins: “If I am the problem, I can be removed. I will never get in the way of the success of this franchise. As a coach, I am no different now than I was the last two years when we won 100 games. Did you ever stop to think that right now we are just not that good? Listen, you could bring Red Auerbach in here and nothing would be different.”
Things have cooled down since Hill decided against getting Collins fired and the Pistons won a triple-overtime game over Phoenix.
But Collins could be a five-game losing streak away from being a television analyst again.
Stay tuned.