Super Dreary Sonics
On Tuesday, Maria and Maura suddenly had four tickets to the Sonics game, so they invited me along. Jon was stuck at work, so I called around and got Courtney to tag along as well. Yup, I went to a game with three hot girls; I’m that much of a stud.
At any rate, the company was much better than the game. The first three-and-a-half quarters were disgusting to watch. The Sonics were flat on their feet, lacked hustle, and lacked direction. I’m really starting to dislike the new coach, Bob Weiss, who seems to lack any competetive fire and doesn’t seem to do a very good coaching job either. For example, his substitutions seem (to me at least) just motions. Its like he’s substituing because, thats what a coach supposed to do, not because it actaully makes sense. For example, when he brought in Potapenko to replace Petro (who was doing fine), Vitaly went on to brick two easy shots (one should have been a dunk!). Furthermore, I think he needs to use the bench as role players, and give them specific direction when they come in.
For example, when Weiss brought in Radmanovic, Vladimir didn’t really know what to do with himself. First, he needed to establish his inside game — to go hard to the basket the first three or four times he got the ball. He’s fast and he needs to get respect for his drive before he establishes his mid and long-range game. Instead, he wandered around the court, threw the ball away, and hesitated at every opporunity. And speaking of hesitation, Nick Collison missed a couple of shots early and then stopped taking them, effectively removing him as a threat.
As a coach, Weiss should have seen this and pulled him aside and told him, I want you to take the shot the next two tims you touch the ball. Collison is a good player with a strong mid-range game — there’s no reason for him to stop shooting after missing a couple. But instead of seeing him make any good decisions, I saw Weiss take a poorly-timed timeout, argue a call which the ref had clearly called properly (perhaps this was his atttempt to fire up the team?), and generally look unhappy and fat in the process. I want Nate back.
After the game, I ended up getting a ride bak to my truck with Courtney. Before, Maria and Maura had picked me up from the U-Disctrict in her very nice Impreza RS 2.5 — complete with leather! However, I left my backpack in Maria’s car. The girls dropped it off with Jon, and when I went to pick it up, we ended up talking for a long time about stuff that I mostly didn’t really care about. I finally just had to say, “talk later” and take off, since on Wednesday, I had a wonderful Math Midterm (#2!) to take. Well, long story short… I have no idea how I did, other than the fact that I’m pretty sure I missed at least a quarter of the points. ><