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| Wednesday, February 28 Payton, Sonics certainly not on same page By David Aldridge Special to ESPN.com |
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It is the night that Gotham Honors Patrick Ewing, and I could care less.
Well, that's not true. I care, more than a little. But I want to talk with Gary Payton, check his temperature, see where his head's at. It is, it appears, anywhere but the Emerald City. He ticks the names off for you. Portland. Sacramento. The Lakers. Any Western Conference contender will do. He would love to play for George Karl again, because Karl, he says, understands him. But the Bucks, unfortunately, play in Milwaukee. "I have to play these guys four times a year," he says. "Twice a year won't be enough for me." The fact that he's still with these guys, these Seattle SuperSonics, while he talks about wanting to play them tells you how deep the rift is between GP and the Sonics. And yet, he expresses no anger, no rancor. It is a matter-of-fact observation he makes, as bloodlessly as if he was noticing a mosquito bite on his arm. He thinks it is time for him to go, and he won't mind a bit when it happens. He thinks that the Sonics blamed Shawn Kemp when Seattle couldn't break through for a championship, and then they blamed Karl, and then they blamed Paul Westphal, and now it's his turn to be blamed, because he's the last guy in the room big enough to blame. "I didn't put this team together," he says. "I had nothing to do with assembling any of these guys in here. I haven't gotten in any trouble off the floor. You don't hear about me being at parties, going out and gettin' drunk. I'm doing the same things, saying the same things I was saying five years ago. I'm still averaging 20 points, 10 assists. I haven't slipped on the floor ... when we were winning ballgames, it was a joyful thing. There weren't any problems. But when we started losing, there's got to be a scapegoat. It's got to be our star player or it's got to be the coach. When the coach went down, it had to be the star player that got him."
There is, of course, another version of events. It was Kemp who demanded to be traded, for example. And it's Payton who's gotten into it in practice with Vin Baker, and ex-teammate Vernon Maxwell, and who went off on Westphal in that ill-fated huddle in Dallas. (But only because, GP points out, Westphal was leading the team down the same ruinous path he'd taken them a few days before against the Mavericks.) It's fair to say that Payton isn't crazy about team president Wally Walker. But Walker isn't going anywhere. He's going to be working alongside new owner Howard Schulz and he's got a piece of the team. And while Walker doesn't want to move Payton, he'll look at all things at the end of the season, just as Seattle did before the trading deadline. "At the end of the day, Gary's still one of the top players in the league," Walker says. "One of the best guards in the league. Very valuable to us. But there's always going to be questions. I understand that." The Sonics don't think Payton, in his heart of hearts, really wants to be traded. He has a true friendship with Baker, and he's gotten along very well with Ewing and David Wingate, Ewing's aide de camp. He has great respect for his former teammate and now-coach Nate McMillan. But he's 32 and he sees the writing on the wall and it doesn't spell c-h-a-m-p-s in Seattle, it does not.
So he'll be happy to go to Sacramento, but only if Chris Webber is there. And Payton thinks Webber would stay there if he knew Payton was coming. And he'd love to play with the Blazers, but the chances of the Sonics doing a deal with Bob Whitsitt are nonexistent. It will take a great deal for Seattle to move the Glove, but don't think that offer isn't out there. These last few weeks, this last likely futile stab at the postseason, and GP is outta Dodge. "I think it's just time for me to move on," Payton says. Quietly.
A different test
Slippery because not one reporter, unless given unlimited time and an unlimited travel budget, could possibly do the reporting required to come up with such a number. Slippery because you come perilously close to stereotyping when such an allegation is made. There are people who will always believe the worst about athletes in general, and NBA players in particular, because the vast majority of athletes are black and brown-skinned. And an African-American making those kinds of claims gives those people comfort. Slippery because if Oakley's claims are nothing more than rantings, they obliterate the other, very legitimate observations the 36-year-old has about the state of the game. Too many guys don't know their responsibilities on the court, Oakley believes.
"Not knowing what your job is on the court, not knowing the game, not understanding the game, you're just going for the dollars. It's not about respect, it's all about the dollars," he says. "Ain't no way everybody can be a (financial) success. After the last deal, there's a lock for what guys can make and what guys can't make. The dollars aren't going to be crazy dollars like it was in the past, like a (Kevin) Garnett contract, or a big balloon payment like they gave (Michael) Jordan." There are some who would say that the young guys, the Kobes and Vince Carters and Darius Mileses, aren't causing a bit of trouble off the floor. They're not the ones getting DUIs and domestic assault tickets. And that they're the ones people want to see nowadays. And there's some truth to that. But I don't think they love the game any more than Charles Oakley. And so it would be folly not to listen to what he's saying. It would be folly, because the league's test-once-before-the-season policy for veterans borders on the ludicrously easy to subvert. "I talk to different guys, but it's not a babysitting game," Oakley says. "I think that the league knows what's going on. It's no secret. I don't know if they're scared to make a move because they think it might get blown out of proportion. This ain't the first time somebody's said something about what's going on ... I've just been around, seen things, done this or that. I'm not the CEO or the chair or nothing. It was just a question out of the blue." Oakley maintains he doesn't care what the league thinks of his statements. "Hey, they can test me if they want," he says. "They're a little upset. But the truth hurts."
Around the league "Bob Bass (Charlotte's general manager) mentioned something about it (during the competition committee meetings) that I kind of liked, and I would expand on it a little bit," Wilkens said. "On the weakside, if someone says 'I'm going to take these offensive guys out and go up to the top of the circle,' I say you don't have to play them. The one thing I would do to protect everybody else offensively is that you can't go the three-second lane (on defense) unless you're double-teaming the ball. Now, referees don't have to think about it. They see you in there, and if you're doubling, you're illegal. They don't have to count (from) 2.9 (seconds). It makes our game look so ugly."
Twice, at the end of regulation and at the end of the first overtime, the Blazers had to hit three-pointers in the final seconds to force extra time. Twice, they did it, on improbable threes from Damon Stoudamire and Rasheed Wallace. The Blaze went up six early in the first overtime, only to have Eric Piatkowski go insane, scoring eight straight, including two 25-footers pulled out from under a hat. Great shotmaking, great drama. Jeff McInnis scored seven in the second OT. Corey Maggette hit several death-defying hanging shots. Even Michael Olowokandi joined in, with 24 points at the offensive end and giving 'Sheed a Spaulding on D. I keep telling you Clippers fans, hang in there with your guys. They're getting better. It's a mark of how much better that of their 40 losses through Wednesday, nine came in overtime, and 14 others have come by three points or less. "It's a catch-22," says coach Alvin Gentry. "It's real positive and real negative at the same time."
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