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|  | | Gary Payton isn't perfect, but he's been great in leading the Sonics back in this series. |
This is why we put up with egotistical tirades by millionaire children.
This is why we endure drawn-out contract negotiations that are based on
the last nickel, why we go back to buy a ticket after getting blown off for
an autograph, why we allow pestilence and greed and childishness and
immaturity and narcissism and downright, flat-out inhumanity to run off us
like yesterday's shower water without even a second thought.
This is why we buy season tickets, only to sit through 82 games of sludge
that make players look as interested as if they had challenged an
octogenarian to a game of one-on-one.
This is why we treat professional athletes like demi-Gods, bowing at their
large feet as if they just walked out of an all-night otherworldly party with
Zeus and the boys.
In Seattle, it's why we permit Gary Payton to unleash verbal tirades
against just about anybody he chooses; it's why we don't begrudge Vin Baker
absconding with an $87 million contract and then getting out of shape; it's
why we understand when Vernon Maxwell thrashes Horace Grant with a weight and
apologizes by buying him a cocktail.
In short, it's why we tolerate behavior that, were they our children,
would make us blush uncontrollably, possibly even Judas them and claim
ignorance about their parenthood.
We wait, sometimes endlessly, for games like the Seattle SuperSonics'
Game 4 playoff contest against the Utah Jazz Wednesday night, an affair so
complete with drama, entertainment, breathtaking plays, competitiveness and
sheer emotion, it made one go home and actually feel like they got more than
their money's worth -- which in today's fiscally inflated NBA is an almost
impossible reality to achieve.
Perhaps the thing that made the game all the more appealing is that it was
only a week ago that just about everybody in the basketball world had the
Sonics written off, broken up, disbanded and forgotten about as an experiment
with volatility gone bad.
And somehow, out of the depths of their own morass, the Sonics rose up and
for two consecutive games pistol-whipped the unsuspecting Jazz about the
heads like an old Western gone awry.
While the NBA and the NBC nitwits who have come up with this lunatic
playoff schedule have taken unmitigated criticism for their money-grubbing
ways, competition be damned, the Sonics have been the unwitting beneficiaries
of such indulgent stupidity.
When Utah whacked Seattle in the first two games of this series, the
Sonics were in more disarray than Hong Kong on Independence Day.
Their coach was being questioned openly by their players, their starting
lineup was not set, their substitution patterns were a mess, their coach was
fending off public criticism like midsummer Minnesota mosquitoes, their
effort and professionalism were called into question, their power forward was
an emotional mess and their star point guard was disgruntled -- well, OK, 10
times more than usual.
No way a one- or even two-day break could have smoothed over that train
wreck.
But the four-day break? The Sonics used it to get into a war with the
media, reunite, galvanize and actually take some time to watch some film and
implement an honest-to-goodness game plan to defend the pick-and-roll. And
before you knew it, this had become a series.
A great series.
Yes, the Sonics had answered their detractors before with big wins. But
soon thereafter, they retreated back into their shell of turmoil and
contempt, content with the knowledge that they could turn it on when they
wanted -- yet another frustration with today's overly gratified player.
Had they adopted that approach in Game 4, they would be sitting home now,
again blaming the media for their own ineptitude.
But this time, for the first time this season, the Sonics sucked it up,
bore down, stepped up and put their nose to the grindstone.
OK, what they really did is play like the should have been playing all
season.
And they put together a game that could rival any in excitement.
They held Utah to seven points in the second quarter -- five, incredibly,
by Scott Padgett -- which is the lowest total ever scored in a quarter in
playoff history.
They built a 17-point lead, which for the first time this season, hell,
for the first time in three seasons, prompted the laid-back Seattle crowd to
actually get raucous and rowdy, a throwback crowd to the one that made one
hold their ears in the 1996 Finals, perhaps the loudest crowd ever until the
Delta Center in 1997 and Arco Arena in the first round last year.
They watched as Utah raced back to within two.
And then they watched as Utah came unraveled, a sight akin to the Northern
Lights in Borneo.
Six technical fouls in all, including one on the mild-mannered Jeff
Hornacek. Jerry Sloan got tossed, which just might have saved his life,
because he may have had a heart attack had he stayed around much longer.
And then Karl Malone got chucked for his verbal confrontation with Payton.
Whatever Payton lacks in physical stature he makes up for in mouth, so the encounter was at least even.
"See you in Utah," Malone told Payton.
"I'm so scared," mocked Payton.
It escalated from there, to the point that Horace Grant actually asked,
"Is there anything rated beyond X. This was beyond X."
All it did was set up a showdown for Game 5 tonight, one rife with
anticipation.
"It's what kids dream about in their driveway," Westphal said. "It's the
most fun that this league has to offer."
And it's why we put up with all the other stuff.
Frank Hughes covers the NBA for the Tacoma (Wash.) News-Tribune. He is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. | |
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