It's almost the first of December? Are you kidding me?
For the last day of November Sonicscentral.com brings you Attack of the Columnists, those paragons of Seattle journalism who weigh in once a month on all things Supersonics and then sink back into warm fluff pieces about lovable Mariner players and how their kids are doing in high school sports.
Steve Kelley starts the day off with his patented annual "I hate the Sonics" rant. All I have to say is, is it really that hard to be Steve Kelley? I like the deja-Westphal dig though. That's nice.
I prefer Art Thiel's piece, which can be found here. Art puts the blame where it belongs -- the players on the floor -- instead of going for some revisionist Kelley-style canonization of Nate McMillan's mediocre tenure.
Percy Allen has a very nice interview with Nick Collison in today's Times that's chock full of good stuff as usual.
"Attacking the rim, I think that's something teams will try to do, but defensively on the perimeter we can stop guys from trying to get into the lane," Collison said. "In the post, we can stop guys by digging down. It's a team effort. If we do a good job, it's not just an open basket.
"If we don't do a good job, then yeah, it's kind of like a bull's-eye. We know we have to do a much better job of defending as a team, not just in the post but everywhere."
Sounds great Nick, now go do it!
Sund preaches consistency and patience in Gary Washburn's P-I article. Okay Rick, but please don't insult my intelligence by referring to Jerome James as "a key piece" of last year's team. Buried lower in the column is a tidbit about Flip Murray being back in Weiss' good graces. Stay tuned to tonight's rotation for more details ...
I'm going to give Frank Hughes some props for today's article on Brunson. I didn't know that the team could actually cut Brunson and pursue a free agent. He could (let me emphasize could, I don't know for sure) have a similar contract to the one that Pervis Ellison signed a few years ago where the contract doesn't become fully guaranteed until Jan 1. Weiss says the team hasn't discussed cutting Brunson -- yet.
Saving the best for last, here's the real McCoy from Kevin Pelton. If only Steve Kelley had read this before writing his column. Sigh.