Opponent: Los Angeles Lakers
When: 7 p.m.
Where: KeyArena, Seattle
TV: KING (Ch. 5)
Radio: KJR (950 AM)
Probable starters: For Seattle – forwards Vin Baker (6 feet, 11 inches) and Rashard Lewis (6-10), center Calvin Booth (6-11), guards Brent Barry (6-6) and Gary Payton (6-4). For Los Angeles – forwards Rick Fox (6-7) and Samaki Walker (6-9), center Shaquille O’Neal (7-1), guards Kobe Bryant (6-7) and Lindsey Hunter (6-2).
Next game: Milwaukee at Seattle, 6 p.m. Sunday.
Scouting report: With a 13-1 record, the Lakers are off to the best start in their long and distinguished history. The team’s sole loss was a 95-83 decision at Phoenix on Nov. 16. Since then, the Lakers have won six in a row.
Los Angeles, of course, is led by the best one-two tandem in basketball – guard Kobe Bryant and center Shaquille O’Neal. Bryant tops the team in scoring at 27.4 while averaging 6.7 assists and 5.9 rebounds a game. O’Neal is second in scoring at 25.9 and is first in rebounds at 11.4 and blocked shots at 2.93.
Bryant and O’Neal account for almost half (516 of 1,123) of the Lakers’ shot attempts this season.
Los Angeles is the league’s third-best scoring team (101.0) and third best field goal shooting team (46.7), while leading the NBA in opponents’ field goal percentage (.403).
Trivia question: Which former Laker holds the team record for most All-Star game appearances with Los Angeles?
Injury update: One of the Sonics is questionable to play in tonight’s game. That much we know.
What we don’t know is which Sonic.
Seattle coach Nate McMillan confirmed Thursday that one of his athletes may have to sit out against the Lakers. He would not identify the player – obviously a key figure, given McMillan’s hush-hush approach – “because I don’t want (the Lakers) to know.”
So-so start: Seattle’s 8-9 record isn’t all that bad, given the team’s youth and early-season injuries, McMillan said after the team’s Thursday practice.
“We could very easily have a winning record right now, if some breaks had gone our way or if we had been healthy,” McMillan said. “There have been a couple of games where we were blown out – the San Antonio game and both Utah games – but for the most part we went into each game expecting to win and basically giving ourselves an opportunity to win.”
What a difference a year makes: On Nov. 28, 2000, Paul Westphal was trying to figure out what he would do next, having been fired as head coach of the Sonics the day before.
On Nov. 28, 2001, Westphal coached Pepperdine University to an 85-78 win over No. 10 UCLA at Pauley Pavilion, the Bruins’ home court.
“I’m very, very proud of these guys,” Westphal told the Los Angeles Daily News newspaper. “UCLA is good, there’s no doubt about that. But we came in here and played hard and did the things we needed to do to win. It was a great effort.”
That’s a fact: Having won back-to-back NBA titles, the Lakers are attempting to become just the fifth team in history to win at least three in a row. The others are the 1952-54 Minneapolis Lakers, the 1959-66 Boston Celtics (a league record eight straight championships), the 1991-93 Chicago Bulls and the 1996-98 Bulls.
Trivia answer: Jerry West, with 14 All-Star appearances. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is second with 13 (plus another six with Milwaukee), Magic Johnson is third with 12, and Elgin Baylor is fourth with nine.
Rich Myhre
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