Sonics Notebook - Mar. 7
Kevin Pelton, SUPERSONICS.COM | Mar. 7, 2005
The Sonics were without three players for Monday's practice at The Furtado Center.
Antonio Daniels and
Rashard Lewis both sat out because of their left knees, while rookie forward
Nick Collison missed practice to get fitted for a facemask after breaking his nose in Sunday's 110-99 loss to the Phoenix Suns.
Collison is listed as a game-time decision for tomorrow's matchup against the Houston Rockets at KeyArena (7:00 p.m., FSN, 
), but Sonics Coach 
Nate McMillan sounded today as if he expected Collison to be available.
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"He just walked right out. He went in and told me he was going to come back out. I think they made him sit."
Otto Greule Jr./NBAE/Getty
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"We'll see how he feels, what he looks like out there," said McMillan. "We may throw him out there; if not, we'll look at
Vitaly (Potapenko)."
Collison broke his nose on a play during the second quarter when he drew a foul while attempting to block Phoenix center Steven Hunter's shot. Neither McMillan nor most of the media chatting with him noticed that Collison was hit or injured, but other players reported Hunter's arm came down on Collison's nose after the two collided. Even Collison himself was rather low-key afterwards.
"He just walked right out," said McMillan. "He went in and told me he was going to come back out. I think they (the Sonics medical staff and trainer Mike Shimensky) made him sit."
Collison is scheduled to have the nose re-set on Wednesday.
Daniels and Lewis have both been dealing with nagging knee injuries, tendinitis in Lewis' case. Lewis has missed several practices to reduce the stress on his knee, and Daniels also sat out last Thursday, but both players continue to play through any pain.
McMillan is looking to reduce Lewis' minutes, the reason he's recently substituted 
Vladimir Radmanovic into the game in the first and third quarters for Lewis instead of one of the Sonics big men.
"I want to try to get him down from 40 (minutes per game) to about 38, 37," McMillan said. "I thought that I could get him out early as opposed to getting him out late - get him out about the five-, four-minute mark (of the first or third quarters), mainly to try to watch his minutes."
Despite the Sonics season-worst 3-for-27 (11.1%) shooting from 3-point range, McMillan didn't think his team had relied too heavily on the 3 against the Suns. McMillan said he counted three quick shots and one or two contested shots, but felt the rest of the Sonics attempts were good looks.
"If you look at the tape and you look at the shots, you say, 'We've made these shots before,'" McMillan said. "It's one of those nights. It looks bad to shoot 11% from the 3-point line, but if you look at it on tape and you see the looks and the guys who were taking those shots and they had room to see the basket, to get a good look at the basket, you have to say it's a night you didn't shoot the ball well."
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