2007, January, week #2 and on: What has happened with the Sonics

SEATTLE - The lineup has taken yet another turn, another change. Any team that has an injury to a player trys to fill that missing part. At the start of the season it was Robert Swift.

The Sonics Bob Hill tried a variety of lineups to compensate for not having the guy that was to be the starting center. We saw (not in exact order, like you could tell) Sene, Petro, Wilcox, Collison, Wilcox, Sene, Wilcox again, the Greek dude (remember him?), Wilcox, and now Collison again. It looks like Hill has settled on Collison as center and Wilcox as Power Forward.

The Sonics players still don't know that throwing the ball into a post play will pull a double team off of a perimeter player. When a big man goes to double team Ray Allen (or any body else)), that doesn't mean that the other team has 6 players on the floor, it means that your center or power forward is lonely.

Now, maybe the Sonics players lack the fine art of throwing the ball into the post without forcing the post player to lose position just to catch the ball. Don't laugh, some players can't do this very well. r, maybe they don't trust what will happen to the ball once it is passed to the post player. Petro shoots the ball nearly every time, sure he scores, but that isn't the point (from the passer's perspective). It isn't enough to spread the defense sideline to sideline, you have to get them to commit to defending close to the basket and the 3 point line. The more you can get teams to jump to the post and back out to the 3 point line, the more likely they are to end up standing in between.

So, what did we see with Collison at center, and Wilcox at power forward?
When the big man would jump out on Ray, Ray would pass the ball to Collison. Collison would slip the screen and hit a wide open 12 foot shot, something he struggled with last year. The other defender under the basket soon had to rotate out on to defend Collison, this leaves a lane for somebody other than Allen to dive into the paint. Pretty soon this draws a crowd and you have to have some weakside mid-range game to keep the help defender away from clogging the paint (that's you Gelabale and Watson).

Hill posted up Wilcox more, and sent guys through the paint to either get a pass, or at least take their man out of the way.

All of this requires patience and persistence, they have shown that.

Blah, blah, blah, they spead the floor, set solid screens for the best shooter, and they passed the ball. This was, for some reason, new to them. But maybe it wasn't so much new to them as it was that they, them, the 5, were not the best fitting 5. Commend Hill for putting 5 guys on the floor that played well together. It's harder than it looks, ask the Griz, Knicks, and any team Nate McMillan coaches.