Ruben Patterson (after a shoddy game against Vancouver) came off the bench like a bomb, throwing his body around and nailing a lot of impossible shots in heavy traffic. Patrick Ewing played his ass off; Shammond Williams sank a pair of gigantic three-pointers late in the game. It was a textbook win, perfectly executed and fantastically uplifting. One can only hope it was as fun as it looked.
It was, moreover, a very democratic effort: A total of five players scored in double-digits, and yet only Gary Payton pegged above 20 points (he had 25, along with 13 assists). In today's NBA... hell, in any day's NBA, this is a righteous formula for success, and it's exactly the kind of egalitarian scoring distribution--so very reminiscent of the Coach Karl era--that Nate McMillan must dream about. And so, beyond the buzzing spiritual inspiration that crackles like electricity through those smart Armani suits, and beyond his indelible know-how regarding the mechanics of the organization, we might finally be seeing the successful implementation of McMillan's far-reaching philosophy.
"One of the primary motivations to coach for anyone who loves the game should be the belief that you play this game a certain way," writes former University of Notre Dame head coach "Digger" Phelps in Basketball for Dummies (the BEST all-around book on basketball I've ever read). "Then show your players how to demonstrate that style of play." We've always known McMillan has strong ideas about how the game should be played; the question, regarding his taking over as coach, was whether those ideas would take hold with the often recalcitrant Sonics. Their Miami game was a good indication that McMillan's plan is beginning to take root. Now to see whether it will be further fertilized by a string of solid, confidence-inducing wins.
Believe it or not, we're almost a third of the way through the regular season. It may be felicitous, if a bit silly, to look at the Sonics' schedule as a sort of athletic triptych (and pray it's not Hieronymus Bosch-like), dividing the season roughly into three segments: It can be said, regarding the recent manifestation of McMillan's coaching philosophy, that the team is right on schedule. So far, so good, considering their early difficulties. During the coming middle panel of the triptych, going into the All-Star break and beyond, Seattle must gain ground; they face an endless stream of teams against whom they're fairly evenly matched, and they desperately need NOT to chump. This stretch could determine whether they sneak into the playoffs this year.
After this, things get brutal. March, in particular, looks like a bloody minefield: Cleveland (twice), Minnesota (twice), San Antonio, Utah, Los Angeles, Portland, Philadelphia, Phoenix. It's going to take all they have to come out of this in one piece.
