Sonic Bloom

No, seriously, what are you guys doing here?

Having dropped steadily since the days of Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp and George Karl to No. 12 in the NBA’s Western Conference, no one was surprised when the SuperSonics lost their opener by 30 points to the Clippers and began deciding who would be part of the rebuilding program and who wouldn’t.

Since seven players had expiring contracts, including their star, Ray Allen, not to mention Coach Nate McMillan, they had a lot to talk about.

The surprise is everything since. As a team official noted recently, “We weren’t prepared for this.”

Seattle comes into tonight’s game against the Lakers at 28-11, No. 3 in the West, on a 59-victory pace. It’s a cautionary tale because by the usual logic, it couldn’t happen. They lost Brent Barry, made no major acquisitions, drafted a high school kid named Robert Swift who doesn’t play, and here they are.

“Sometimes things line up,” Allen says. “They create a perfect storm, and there’s nothing you can do about it. A lot of things just came together at that right intersection and caused an explosion and you got a bad situation.

“Vice versa, great things happen on the other end of the spectrum where everybody’s at their peak, playing their best basketball.

“It puts us all in a great situation, but there’s no explanation for it. It’s just the simple fact that you have a special situation that you have to understand and take good care of.”

This is still the West, with five teams on a 55-win pace or better. The SuperSonics have flattened out since starting 23-6, going 5-5.

Negotiations were recently opened with Allen, but each side is frozen at its figure, Allen reportedly seeking a $90-million deal and the team offering $58.5 million.

Allen is now asked how he’d like to play in whatever city the SuperSonics visit and hasn’t found one yet he doesn’t like.

“You don’t really have anything to rest your hopes on for the future,” Allen says on behalf of Seattle’s free agents. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. I think it’s more nerve-racking than anything because at any point ... you don’t know, anytime they can come up 30 minutes before the game and say, ‘We’re moving you because we don’t know if we can get you back here next year.’ ”

Not that the SuperSonics are complaining. After what they’ve been through, these are the good times.

Well, It Was Fun While It Lasted

Against all odds, the SuperSonics ruled in the mid-’90s when Trader Bob Whitsitt, the general manager, hired Karl out of exile in Spain and they made the 1996 NBA Finals against the Chicago Bulls.

Even then, they were combustible. During the playoffs, center Frank Brickowski said the tightly wrapped Karl’s voice was so high, only dogs could hear him.

The owner, advertising magnate Barry Ackerley, didn’t like being disagreed with, banished critical writers to the farthest reaches of KeyArena and fired Whitsitt, confiscating his fax machine and finally padlocking his office to get him off the premises.

Payton and Kemp, who were 27 and 26, respectively, in the 1996 Finals, were supposed to be the next coming of John Stockton and Karl Malone, who were then 34 and 33 but would still be together six seasons after the SuperSonic duo split up.

In the fall of 1997, Kemp had been traded after a string of mysterious absences. He then ate himself out of the league, ballooning to more than 300 pounds.

In return, the SuperSonics got Vin Baker, the son of a minister, who started hanging out with Payton but couldn’t stand the pace. Payton continued to thrive, but Baker declined swiftly. He was traded in 2002 and was in rehab for alcoholism in 2003.

Karl was allowed to leave when his contract ran out in 1999. Seattle didn’t get out of the first round of the playoffs after 1998 and got in only twice.

In 2001, Ackerley sold out to Howard Schultz, the Starbucks magnate who turned a beverage into a lifestyle while insisting that Americans learn Italian for the privilege of paying $3.50 for a cup of coffee. That looked like child’s play, compared with the task of turning the SuperSonics around.

Schultz wooed Jason Kidd, then with the Phoenix Suns, inviting him to tour the Starbucks offices, hoping to sign him with the money they could save by letting Payton go in 2003. However, by then Kidd was looking comfortable in New Jersey and Seattle decided to get something for Payton, trading him for Allen.

By last season, they were a collection of three-point-shooting softies. Their promising big men, Rashard Lewis and Vladimir Radmanovic, each 6 feet 10, preferred to sit on the arc and fire threes too.

They had a committee at center, headed by Jerome James, best known for responding to McMillan’s concern about selfishness by asserting, “I just worry about Jerome.”

There seemed no way back. Barry, prized for his versatility and three-point shooting, signed with San Antonio last summer. Half the roster was approaching free agency, but no one received an extension.

Allen didn’t seem to mind, since prospects locally looked dim and he would be the plum of the 2005 free-agent class if it came to that.

McMillan, who had no such assurance, told insiders that if he couldn’t make this work after five years, he was ready for what came next too.

“Last year, we talked about developing players, giving our young guys an opportunity,” McMillan says. “We had so many young guys, Luke Ridnour, Nick Collison, our draft choices. Radmanovic was in his third year.

“We were coming out of the Gary Payton era, but I felt I couldn’t coach that way. I can’t give anything to anyone. You have to earn your playing time.

“I think it’s a fair way to play. If you’re not going to defend and if you’re not going to be unselfish, you’re not going to be on the floor. Being young, or a free agent, or having a big contract will not be a factor. That’s the way I started out coaching, and that’s what I wanted to get back to....

“We didn’t see anything out there that made sense in the off-season. We were bringing back the same team and the thing was -- play. That’s fine. If we couldn’t play well enough, I wouldn’t be here and that was fine with me. If we can’t play well enough, somebody else needs to be here.”

It didn’t look promising. All three SuperSonic beat writers picked them last in the new Northwest Division and No. 14 or 15 in the 15-team West.

Just Looking for a Home

McMillan likes to point out that this really isn’t the same team. Collison sat out his rookie season, so it’s like having a new player. Ridnour started so late, he might as well have sat out the whole season.

Then there’s Danny Fortson, their big free agent, although his signing didn’t set off wild rejoicing in the Northwest.

Fortson was a rebounding machine, but as a 6-foot-7, 260-pound power forward, he was like a sumo wrestler trying to play giraffes and hadn’t found a niche with his first four teams in seven seasons.

This, of course, was getting tiring.

“You work hard over the summertimes,” Fortson says. “Then things aren’t going good for you, then you get benched for no reason.... It’s no fun.”

Wherever he went, something happened and he wasn’t always quiet about it.

He broke in as a No. 1 pick at Denver in 1997, averaged 11.6 rebounds in his second season, putting him fourth in the league, but was traded to Boston.

He lasted 55 games in Boston, where Coach Rick Pitino didn’t think much of him. Unfortunately, Pitino dumped Fortson just before resigning, himself.

“I would’ve had a shot if I stuck around, but, you know, my luck ain’t always good,” Fortson says.

He sat out most of the 2000-01 season because of a stress fracture in his foot but in 2001-02 was the league’s No. 4 rebounder again at 11.7 a game in Golden State. One more season and he was out of there too.

“Golden State was cool,” Fortson says. “But then, at the middle of that year, they realized they weren’t going to the playoffs, so they sat me down, wanted to go younger.”

He was 27. Then he went to the Dallas Mavericks, who were in a state of flux and may not even have realized he was there.

“The bad thing about that was, in the beginning, it was going good,” Fortson says. “ And then all of a sudden, Antoine Walker shows up and that’s the end of me.”

Seattle signed him last summer and, lo and behold, found a spot for him, rotating him with another squat power forward, Reggie Evans, and Collison.

Now Evans, Fortson and Collison combine for 18 rebounds a game. Seattle, which was outrebounded by three a game last season, which put it 26th in the league, is at plus-three, which puts it fifth.

“The end of this story is, be patient, be working,” Fortson says.

This story isn’t over, but it’s the happiest one the SuperSonics have known in years. They’ve always had pitfalls; now with a deep, young team, they have possibilities too.

No one predicted it, but here it is. As the great pundit Chuck Berry noted, it goes to show you never can tell.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Super Seven

A look at the averages for the top seven Seattle SuperSonics:

*--* Player G MPG FG% 3PT% FT% Reb. A Pts. Ray Allen 39 40.4 424 370 894 4.20 4.1 23.8 Rashard Lewis 37 38.8 474 405 744 5.60 1.0 20.8 Vladimir Radmanovic 39 30.4 435 404 769 5.10 1.3 12.7 Antonio Daniels 37 28.2 445 367 788 2.20 4.7 12.0 Luke Ridnour 39 31.2 405 408 922 2.60 6.3 9.7 Danny Fortson 37 18.3 549 000 866 6.30 0.2 9.2 Reggie Evans 36 23.3 522 000 514 8.40 0.6 5.4

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