SuperSonics Ride Special Edge

Usually the routine goes like this: The team that has had a long layoff comes into the first game of a new series looking flat, while the team that just finished playing a difficult series rides a wave of emotion for about a half, then grows tired and wilts under the pressure of the rested team.

That’s the way it went in Chicago on Sunday when the Bulls fell behind by 14 points before rallying to beat the Charlotte Hornets.

When the Lakers and SuperSonics met in Game 1 Monday night, there was a key difference: KeyArena.

Usually that rested team is a high seed, playing with home-court advantage. It can rely on its fans to provide a spark, to get it rolling and keep it rolling.

Not this time. When the Lakers made up their 14-point deficit in the third quarter, they didn’t have the crowd urging them on to the next level, which was to bury the SuperSonics when they had them down.

Instead the crowd was screaming in their faces, yelling “Beat L.A.”, refusing to let the SuperSonics fade away.

This was what losing the tiebreaker to Seattle meant, not the semantics of who had the right to call themselves the Pacific Division champions (and the SuperSonics, by the way, have already hung that banner in the rafters).

There’s a reason the SuperSonics won 35 of their 41 home games during the regular season, a record surpassed by only the Bulls and the Utah Jazz.

There’s probably some physics equation which can explain it, but in plain English, noise translated into hustle, which translated into points and a 106-92 SuperSonics victory.

KeyArena isn’t like some other new buildings around the NBA that are merely designed to hold the maximum number of luxury suites. It has only one level of suites, halfway up the arena, and its upper deck hangs over the floor. When they rebuilt this arena on the site of the old Seattle Center Coliseum--they christened the new version with a victory over the Lakers on Nov. 5, 1995--it might have been a good thing that they had a limited amount of space. The noise has nowhere to go. When the SuperSonics get it going, Utah’s Delta Center might be the only place louder.

“The building here is . . . one of the top two or three in basketball,” SuperSonic Coach George Karl said. “It has an electricity to it, but it also has, for a better word, a pizazz that I think is a little more almost college oriented.

“It seems in this building that the fans are closer to you, and that’s a great asset to have.”

Especially when you’re tired. The SuperSonics looked sluggish in the third quarter. Five games of fighting off the Minnesota Timberwolves--not to mention the expectations and speculation swirling around them--had caught up to them. Their offense slowed down, they weren’t scrambling. The Lakers beat them down court for two wide-open baskets as they came from nowhere to take the lead.

But the Lakers couldn’t take the crowd out of the game. Even when things weren’t going well for the home team, the 17,072 fans stayed in it.

They were determined to--as the promotional signs and T-shirts urged them--”Bring on the noise.” (Note to the SuperSonics’ marketing staffers: It’s either “Bring the noise” or “Bring in da noise.” “Bring on the noise” is not acceptable slang.) Even if their wording was wrong, it got the right results.

“Generally, I don’t hear crowds, but Seattle fans are really, really loud,” SuperSonic forward Jerome Kersey said. “And they help. When we get on rolls and we’re doing things that are good for our team, they really get behind us. We kind of feed off that.”

Apparently, Kersey had a four-course meal. He outhustled the Lakers on his 35-year-old legs, and had six points and four rebounds in the fourth quarter alone.

“He had big energy and 12 points,” Laker Coach Del Harris said, and it was hard to determine which mattered more. “I thought he was a big part of the win.”

He was a big part of Seattle’s 28-13 fourth-quarter scoring edge, and the Lakers could use him as Exhibit A for why the salary cap rules need to be reworked to allow teams to spend more money on veteran players. The Lakers could have offered him only 20% over the minimum salary last summer, while Seattle came with $500,000.

Kersey has been to two NBA finals, which is more than any Laker except Robert Horry has done. He knows what it takes to get there.

“It’s a thing of just going out and giving the team what you can, not trying to do anything special, just trying to do what you can for the team,” Kersey said.

Monday night, that included tipping in a missed layup by Greg Anthony, chasing down a ball that was headed out of bounds and throwing it to halfcourt (resulting in a foul against Shaquille O’Neal as he tried to grab it), and rebounding a missed shot by Gary Payton, giving the SuperSonics a chance for two Detlef Schrempf free throws that pushed their lead to seven with 2:52 left.

“When you see another guy working hard, if I see [Payton] out there or [Hersey Hawkins], it motivates me--especially when I’m coming off the bench,” Kersey said. “I say, hey, I know I can do that. It’s just working, from the whole time I was out there.”

The SuperSonics got a little help from everyone Monday, their main men, their old men, their bench men--and the crowd, their sixth man.