Yeah, the Sonic's announcers said that last night. Brings to mind fluffy bunnies, green meadows, and open skies, not Tyson slamming home three alley-oop jams in a five minute stretch or out-rebounding the three Sonics Big Men(16 total rebounds) by himself(17 rebounds).
Anyways, I told Ron I'd do a game recap, and that I'd try to do something similar to what he's produced for the last few games. Well, it didn't work out so hot. At halftime, I realized that I had only taken two notes through the first two quarters, and was instead using all my witticisms to make my buddy laugh as we watched. So yeah, I'm not as cool as Ron. You can punish me in the comment section.
So things that I noticed, fancy bullet-style:
- First, in case you didn't know, we won 107-93. It was never close.
- The Sonics defense sucks, but it's not that they don't know how to defend, they just have no interest in doing so. Several times in the first quarter, West got the ball, made a move to the basket, and the Sonics wing players immediately ran towards the offensive end of the court. BEFORE West had even scored. They weren't even trying. Embarassing.
- I feel bad for Kurt Thomas. The guy has always been a hard worker and a gamer. Now he's stuck on a team where he picks up fouls seemingly every minute because no one defends on the perimeter and he's left covering for their mistakes.
- Kevin Durant is a 6-9 Pargo right now. He loves that 20-foot jumpshot, but he sucks at hitting it. He was alright on his drives, and he needs to do them more, just like Pargo should. Speaking of Pargo, I think I'm now going to refer to 20-foot shots off the dribble that miss as "Pargos" from now on.
- I feel bad for Earl Watson. He was clearly instructed to pressure Chris Paul, and chased him all over the floor. But his big men wouldn't help on the pick and rolls and Watson got burned repeatedly. He'd be great on a good team. Like the Hornets.
- Our team took 5 free throws the whole game. The Sonics defense is disinterested and sucks, but holy crap, five fricking free throws? You can't blame that entirely on their lack of effort, and we certainly can't do that and win very often.
- I feel bad for Jeff Green. He's being asked to play power forward when he's really more of a small forward. "Hey Rook, you're 6-8 and 225 lbs. Go stop Tyson Chandler and David West." Yeah, his confidence will be sky high after this year.
- About midway through the third, after he'd been stuffed no less than 4 times by David West, Damien Wilkins got a questionable foul and his first free throw in five games. So I got 3 items here: First, the guy got stuffed 4 times by David West. Second, these are the first free throws in 5 games for a guy who is considered a "slasher". Third, he plays 30 minutes a game. One of these items does not belong. Can you guess which?
- I feel bad for Nick Collison. the guy would be a great role player for a good team. He's hard nosed, if a little slow, but he's having to do too much on this team. He'd be great behind West. With that I'm pretty much out of people to feel sorry for on the Sonics. The rest don't seem to care. I'll go all Hornets now.
- Morris Peterson shot 7-10 from deep and started the game 5-7. In response, the Sonics went into a zone. Zones are good for stopping penetration and post ups, but allow open three-point shots. Good plan.
- Here's my requisite 'The Bench Sucks' section. It took us 9 minutes to get from 22 points to 30 points. Who was playing then? The bench + David West. Defensively, they are fine, but man, hit a shot! The best tonight was probably Julian Wright. he didn't do a lot offensively, but he is a GREAT one on one defender.
- Paul? 21 points, 3 rebounds, 15 assists, 4 steals. I don't think I need to say anything else.
- David West? 17 points, 11 rebounds, 6 assists, 5 blocks, with several of those assists off some gorgeous cross-court passes to Peterson for open threes. Oh yeah, and one charge. He always gets one charge a game for lowering his shoulder. Last year, he spent half the year getting called for a travel after pump-faking and taking steps before he put it on the floor. He cleaned that up, so I expect these charges to get cleaned up mid-season too.
- Rasual Butler did alright. Bad first half, but he found his shot in the second half and helped out. I'd still prefer to see Peja out there.
That's about it. The Hornets face the Wolves at home on Saturday. It should be a spanking, but we've already lost to them once, so who knows.