Report From Mexico By David Kronfield December 22, 2003 After a hard day of body surfing, I was laying in bed channel surfing for an English speaking movie with Spanish subtitles. It's a great way to learn another language since you can listen to the dialogue & see how English idioms are translated into the Spanish you read as it appears on the bottom of the screen. Anyway, there on ESPN were my Sonics playing Phoenix in Arizona. I also caught the Miami-Louisville Bowl game, & a Dallas Cowboys game. They're big down there. In fact any region in the US like Arizona with a large Hispanic population is likely to have a Spanish language broadcast picked up by one of the Mexican networks. So that's how I got to watch Rashard Lewis miss two free throws as the game wound down in overtime followed up by dribbling the ball off his foot & out of bounds. I'm not sure what the excited telecaster was saying in Spanish, but if you can imagine Kevin Calabro saying "Nothing but FOOT," that was pretty much the drift. His sidekick couldn't resist laughing which is understandable in ANY language, as he chimed in "FUERA! Los Soles ganan; Los Soles ganan! The Suns win!” "Why did he do that?" my wife asked. “Because he doesn't dribble well." "Oh," she said. This guy is not an all-star, I'm sorry. All-stars don't necessarily show up for every game, but they don't blow it as blatantly as Lewis did. As many of us have said, Rashard is a good player, but he is NOT the go- to guy that the Sonics brass have attempted to make him into in Allen's absence. He's just the best weakside shooter we have, who on a more balanced team would spot up at the 3-point line, & wait for someone to kick him the ball for an open shot. But asking him to create for himself at crunch time is suicide as we all saw. Now I know everyone is all excited about "Ready Richie" after the predictable Denver win (did anyone REALLY think they'd sweep us?). But as RKH is fond of saying, isn't he just another "redundant" part on this poorly constructed Sonics team? Who in the name of God cares how many long range marksmen we have in the absence of an interior game? When Ray comes back, it's nice to know we'll have a virtual plethora of 3-point shooters which Nate can configure in myriad combinations. But I think it's long since proven obvious that these fun-to-watch guys will only win us games when they shoot around 50% as they did against the defensively challenged Denver Nuggets. Put them up against a more physically dominant team with an inside game & body checking guards like San Antonio, & we're toast. Even the Kings & the Mavs after whom we're modeled have just too much talent for us to compete against consistently. So we damn well better win the rest of our games against inferior teams if we're going to finish above .500. And we've thrown away our whole season's quota of losses to those kinds of teams already, sad to say. Actually, I AM seeing some improvement in this team with the emergence of Luke & Richie. But unfortunately as you all know, it's in the wrong area. Where we most need to see a light go on, only Calvin Booth is looking like a Motel 6 spokesperson. James & Potapenko look more reminiscent of a power outage every time I see them. And whoever thinks Radman is ever gonna be a Power Forward in the classic mold is deceiving himself. The guy does NOT understand how to play defense. "Don't look at ME, that was YOUR man. What do you mean switch? What do you mean help?" There's more to playing the game than shooting a low percentage jumper at every opportunity. Anyone think that might have something to do with why the coach of his national team was so upset with him this summer? But you know what? It's gonna be Christmas in a couple of days. So I'm gonna end my Grinch routine here by simply saying I can't see us winning more than three of the next eight games, & probably no more than two. Doesn't matter what the Kiddie Corps do. Doesn't matter if Allen comes back or not. Doesn't matter if the Star of Bethlehem shines directly on Key Arena. The level of competition is just too stiff. This is not to say the Sonics themselves are a bunch of stiffs. They're really a nice bunch of guys, & I hope Santa brings them some really neat stuff. But for me? I hope Santa & his reindeer run over Wally Walker. I don't wish him permanent bodily harm. Just maim him enough to force stashing him in the Mayo Clinic or somewhere; long enough for Sund to pull off a trade to bring us a genuine big man. Because if that doesn't happen soon people, I refer you to this line from the first paragraph of my last column: You can "say goodbye to .500 for the rest of the season." The Ray of Hope foundation is a charity, not a solution to what ails this team.   The legendary and infamous David Kronfield has been a SonicsCentral.com columnist since day one. David can be reached at heavyd@sonicscentral.com. Got an opinion on this column? Discuss it in the SonicsCentral message boards. The Curmudgeon's Corner Archive All opinions expressed in this column are solely the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of other columnists or the SonicsCentral.com staff.