Seattle ? Ray Allen doesn’t enjoy playing struggling teams. He defeated one Friday night, but that didn’t mean he liked it.
“They’re very dangerous because they can hit you and go on a roll,” Allen said after scoring 22 points to lead the Seattle SuperSonics to a 103-84 victory over Golden State, the Warriors’ eighth consecutive loss.
“They want to beat a good team, they want to beat a team that has a pretty good record,” he said. “They use that as their motivation.”
While the Sonics improved their record to 26-9, the Warriors dropped to 11-26 under first-year coach Mike Montgomery, who enjoyed a 30-2 record at Stanford last season.
Sonics coach Nate McMillan feels sorry for what Montgomery, 57, is going through in his rookie NBA season.
“I talked to Mike before the game,” he said. “He’s learning about the NBA, the adjustments you have to make. Basically, this is a year of just experimenting to see what he can do and what he likes.”
Seattle got 19 points from Antonio Daniels, who made his first start of the season in place of the ailing Rashard Lewis. Ronald Murray had a season-high 17 points, while Danny Fortson added 13 points and 11 rebounds for the Sonics.
Golden State has its longest losing skid since dropping nine in a row last season.
“I think we got tired in the second half,” Montgomery said. “Our bench let us down tonight. We have to play with a certain level of intensity and when we don’t, it’s not going to happen for us.”
Speedy Claxton led the Warriors with a season-high 27 points, one shy of his career high. Troy Murphy had 20 points and 13 rebounds.
The Sonics, who lost three of four games to the Warriors last season, played without starting forward Lewis, their No. 2 scorer averaging 20.6 points per game, because of tendinitis in his left knee. Lewis missed his first game of the season.
McMillan used Daniels, a point guard, to replace Lewis and moved Allen to forward.
“Our depth is one of the strengths of this team,” Daniels said. “We have different weapons and we can come at you at different ways.”
After a tie at 52 at halftime and a lethargic start to the third quarter, the Sonics began to pull away in the final six minutes of the period. They outscored the Warriors 16-6 in the last 5:36 of the quarter for an 81-71 lead, with Daniels scoring eight of the points.
In the fourth quarter, the Sonics took a 16-point lead with 3:38 left, 96-80, as Murray had four baskets, including a baseline drive for a layup with 4:26 to go.
The Sonics stiffened up their defense in the second half, limiting the Warriors to 32 points, 20 less than the first half.
“In the second half, we were able to get control of the game because of the defense,” McMillan said. “We had a number of guys knock down some shots and I think that starts from the defensive end of the floor.”
Mike Dunleavy scored the Warriors’ first eight points on layups and had a dozen points in the first quarter. He wound up with 14 for the night.
He said the Sonics won the game and Golden State didn’t lose it.
“They have some guys in there that go into the game to get rebounds and play defense,” Dunleavy said. “You know, scrap, crawl, grab and all that. They do a really good job of that.”
