As Usual, SuperSonics Leave a Gift

More than five minutes remained in Game 2 on Wednesday night and the Seattle fans were heading up the KeyArena aisles in such great numbers it was as if they’d heard there were half-priced double lattes at the concession stands.

Giving up so soon, SuperSonics fans?

They shouldn’t. And you shouldn’t count them out yet either, Laker lovers, even after that convincing 92-68 victory that evened the best-of-seven series at one game apiece.

These are the SuperSonics, this is what they do.

Give them a map and they’ll throw it away, then get lost. Give them a free meal and they’ll feed it to the dog. Give them a lead in a series and they’ll promptly hand it right back and set their fans to calling Dr. Frasier Crane.

Just don’t expect them to shoot 43.2% and make only 36.8% of their three-point shots too many nights.

“We definitely make it interesting,” said SuperSonic guard Hersey Hawkins. “We just had a bad shooting game. “We just had a bad shooting night tonight. I know we’re capable of making shots, and we will make shots.”

Said Coach George Karl: “It’s a challenge for us to respond and find a way to win a game in Los Angeles.”

That’s a necessity now, not a nice objective. The Lakers can’t get the Pacific Division title away from the SuperSonics. Now the Lakes have the only thing that mattered in the first place, homecourt advantage.

Normally the biggest adjustments in a series come between Games 1 and 2.

That puts the winning coach in a bit of a predicament. He doesn’t want to mess with the things that got him the victory in Game 1, so he has to wait and see how the losing team will alter its approach.

After watching the tapes from Game 1, here’s changes the Laker coaching staff recommended to the team: play harder.

That’s it. No secret strategies, no gimmicks. Bust your butt on defense and hustle to the rebounds and loose balls.

Looking at the respective benches, the best adjustment for the SuperSonics seemed to be adding Nate McMillan while the Lakers subtracted Kobe Bryant.

Bryant missed the game because of flu (playing while sick is another category in which Bryant has a long way to go before he can assume the title of Heir Jordan), but McMillan’s sore knee finally felt good enough for him to play.

Karl loves McMillan’s ability to contribute in so many different ways. But the only contributions McMillan has made lately are to his 401(k) fund, which the soon-to-be retiree will be using before too long if the SuperSonics keep this up.

The other older SuperSonics showed their age Wednesday.

Dale Ellis, 37, was 0 for 6 from the field. Jerome Kersey, 35, was two for seven. McMillan was 0 for 2 with no assists.

Detlef Schrempf, 35, was 0 for 6 and became a total afterthought.

That’s one of the puzzling things about the SuperSonics. Schrempf poses one of the toughest matchup problems in the NBA, yet they sometimes go long stretches without bothering to exploit it. Schrempf also forgot to exploit his height advantage over Rick Fox.

At 6-foot-10 he can post up swingmen, and he can also hit mid-range jumpers, fallaway jumpers and three-pointers.

Except he couldn’t hit anything in the first half Wednesday, missing all four shots. Instead of running plays to get him back on track, Seattle managed to find him for only one shot in the third quarter.

The SuperSonics have a reputation for blowing Game 2s, but like most of their playoff problems, that’s a first-round affliction. Seattle had won six of its past seven Game 2s outside of the first round, with the loss coming in Chicago.

What really does them in is their tendency to make everything dramatic.

There’s never a dull series with the SuperSonics. Since 1991 they have been involved in only one sweep--a second-round brooming of Houston in 1996--and they won two of those games by a total of seven points and won Game 4 in overtime.

No sweep this time. Just plenty of drama.

“Tonight, they made it a long series,” Karl said.

With the SuperSonics, there’s no such thing as short and sweet.