Game 1 Lesson: Seattle Able to Pick Longshots

Three-point shots are supposed to be the weapon of choice for the scrappy little team hoping to pull an upset, a slingshot to fell Goliath on the way to an NCAA championship.

A team with serious intentions of winning an NBA title does not pursue it by relying on such a finicky gimmick.

Only a team as crazy as the Seattle SuperSonics, who feature a point guard who posts up and a center who shoots three-point shots, would dare think about it.

Only the SuperSonics could get away with it.

They made the most three-point shots in the league this season, and led the NBA in three-point shooting percentage.

When their shooting went wayward in the first round against Minnesota, they didn’t lose their confidence and they didn’t lose their touch.

“We’ve been living by that all year,” the SuperSonics’ Gary Payton said. “If we’re going to live with it, we’re going to die with it. We ain’t gonna stop shooting ‘em. We’re not going to stop playing our game. If we stop playing our game, we should just go and give L.A. the series.”

By sticking with their forte, they took a 1-0 lead in the Western Conference semifinals and have won four of the five games between the teams this season.

Monday night they made 11 of 21 three-points shots, or 52%. That made them 44 for 96 in five games against the Lakers, 46%.

The Lakers actually have scored four more baskets than the SuperSonics in their matchups, but have given up 17 more three-point shots--51 points.

The Lakers can’t make it up on the offensive end by trying to beat the SuperSonics at their own game.

“We don’t want to look at it as a macho three-point situation, because I can guarantee you a sweep if we try to match them at the three-point line,” Laker Coach Del Harris said. “You’re taking a team that is the best in the league at it, and then going away from what made us one of the top teams in the league.”

The Lakers’ game plan centers on dumping the ball in to Shaquille O’Neal and letting him go to work. When the SuperSonics take that away with double and triple teams, then the Lakers can try a three.

But Plan B wasn’t working Monday night, at least not for Nick Van Exel, who went two for six from behind the arc, and Kobe Bryant, who missed both of his tries. It didn’t work the first two times the Lakers played Seattle in the regular season, when they made only eight of 49 three-point attempts.

If the Lakers are to close the three-point gap, they will have to do it on defense.

Seattle has several ways to free its shooters. Payton can penetrate, draw defenders and throw the ball outside.

They can run a pick-and-roll with Detlef Schrempf near the top of the key, trying to get the defense to switch and create a mismatch on Schrempf and forcing a double-team. They can post up Payton against a smaller point guard and draw a double team that way. (Vin Baker is their only other low-post threat, but the Lakers have been using single coverage against him.)

Harris watched a breakdown of Seattle’s made three-point shots in Game 1 and found that two came out of a low-post double team, three off Payton’s penetration and two more when Payton pulled up in transition. That leaves four times when the SuperSonics just fired on the Lakers and hit.

In fact, one case of the Lakers being in the right place actually resulted in one of the big momentum shifts in Seattle’s favor. With less than a minute remaining in the first half, Van Exel was close enough to Hersey Hawkins to tap his elbow when Hawkins went up for his shot. Hawkins made the three-point shot anyway, plus the free throw, and Seattle’s lead went from 10 to 14 points.

Things like that make you wonder if even your best efforts aren’t enough.

The Laker bus was about to pull out of KeyArena after practice Tuesday when Harris realized he had forgotten the notebook with his game plan. He ran back, grabbed the notebook off the courtside scorer’s table, and held it over his head.

“All the stuff that doesn’t work,” Harris said.

When it comes to Seattle’s three-point shooting, it might have more to do with the SuperSonics than the Lakers. Maybe the only thing the Lakers can do is hope the shots won’t go in. The SuperSonics can’t make 52% of them for the whole series, can they?

And what if the SuperSonics freeze and revert to the 36% three-point shooting they displayed against Minnesota?

“When we focus and concentrate and think about being a defensive team, then we can have a bad night shooting the basketball,” Coach George Karl said. “It’s the nights when we try to outshoot people and don’t play defense that we fail, we’re going to lose.”

The SuperSonics can affect the game defensively more than the Lakers can, because when they get hot there’s nothing that can stop them. That’s the bad news for L.A.

The good news is, this may be the only time when free throws aren’t the most important shooting statistic.