| That Crazy Bench Authored by Hunter Johannason - April 2, 2005 - 2:59 pm
| Current Featured Columns | | Merry Christmas, Raptors Fans The Raptors might not be playing good basketball right now, but there are plenty of things for Toronto fans to be thankful for this holiday season.
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When thinking of a title for this recap, I did my best to avoid such clichés as “Collison-Course” or “Did I Just See Nique Wilkins” or even “The Return Of The Peoples Pigtails.” The titles are a bit overplayed with the exception of “The Peoples Pigtails” of course, hard not to love that one. However, I am not sure how many times “Collision Course” has been used as a headline in Nick’s basketball tenure, but it must have been a lot, especially in Kansas. Besides, no one Sonic bench player deserves all the credit because collectively they all made it happen. Let’s not talk semantics here as Damien Wilkins is still a bench player regardless of him starting so I will count him as one.
Seattle struggled mightily versus an always tough Northwest rival, the Portland Trailblazers. The Sonics were without all-star Rashard Lewis and bench sharpshooter/newly discovered high-flyer Vladimir Radmanovic. No excuses though as the Portland Trailblazers are still reeling over the loss of Zach Randolph for the season, which has, ironically enough, led to the improved play of Shareef Abdur-Rahim who is guaranteed to get a nice contract from anyone else but Portland this summer.
Given these factors, the Sonics managed to pull off an 89-87 victory giving Seattle their 50th win (50-22) and all but assuring a clinch of the Northwest division. The usual-suspects had decent games, Ray Allen’s 19 coming off of a not so good 8-24 shooting while Reggie Evans finished with 13 rebounds, however, it was the Sonics’ bench (including Wilkins) that won this game. A combined 50 points and 21 rebounds came from the Sonics “other guys” with Wilkins leading the pack with 17 points and 4 rebounds. Nick Collison may have had his best game with the Sonics finishing with 14 points and 8 boards. Antonio Daniels chipped in his usual 12 points and let us not forget Danny Fortson who bruised his way to 6 rebounds in just 16 minutes.
I am happy; I like the Sonics chances this year. They are very deep and in different situations with different stars hurt this season, they still manage to find ways to win. This is good, this means they have a legitimate chance to advance deep into the playoffs. The Sonics machine continues to function at close to max-capacity even without vital pieces working properly. And we haven’t even seen much of the secret weapon, who knows when the Sonics might decide to “Flip” him on… (bad cliché inserted).
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