SEATTLE — Paul Westphal didn't want to play the "What was different?" game with the media after his Sonics downed the Utah Jazz on Saturday, 89-78.
Clearly cranky after a week in which his team took a lot of hits from the Seattle media, Westphal deflected all questions aimed at determining what his team did this time that they didn't do in two lackluster losses in Salt Lake.
"The game went our way tonight," he said. "We did the same things we've been doing. We just did it better."
Asked why his team's play improved, Westphal said, "Because that's the way basketball is sometimes . . . . Maybe they (the Jazz) weren't trying very hard."
No, not very enlightening, but about what you'd expect from a guy who had his firing demanded by one Seattle columnist, and who was almost universally criticized by other local media types.
Westphal clearly has a chip on his shoulder, and for one game, at least, his team seems to have picked up on it.
"He told everybody to forget what had been written about certain guys, and we adopted that attitude," said center Horace Grant. "We knew we had to come out and leave it on the floor or we'd be packing our bags for vacation."
"Everybody was talking bad about us, so this was a great win for us," said forward Ruben Patterson.
It was an especially great win for Patterson, though he shied away from talking much about his role. In Game 2 he was inexplicably left on the bench for the entire first half, after being an important part of the Sonics' rotation all season. But in practice this week he showed a lot of energy, and that, perhaps coupled with the fact other combinations weren't working, earned him minutes again. Early in the game he got the crowd going by diving for a loose ball, a play his teammates noticed, too.
"That was kind of a microcosm — and that's four syllables — of the way we need to play," said guard Brent Barry. "We didn't execute great offensively, we didn't shoot the ball well, but boy, did we play with some energy."
As Barry pointed out, the Sonics didn't play a spectacularly effective game. They shot a mere 41.4 percent from the floor, and they committed 18 turnovers. But they outrebounded the Jazz by eight, blocked four more shots than Utah and held the Jazz to 40.5 percent shooting.
"You need a lot of things to be successful against the Jazz," Westphal said. "We got a lot better play from just about everybody, and the Jazz weren't as sharp as they were, and that was the difference in the game."
One thing that helped the Sonics, besides the improved energy, were some lineup wrinkles. Westphal started Brent Barry at big guard instead of Shammond Williams, and while Barry didn't have a big game statistically, the Sonics seemed a little more organized at the start with him in the game. And Westphal sometimes played a bigger lineup with Rashard Lewis at big guard, which resulted in some second shots for the Sonics.
"Rashard and Ruben out there together was a great combination," said guard Gary Payton. "I think we need to use that combination more. We need to put pressure on (Jeff) Hornacek and John (Stockton)."
Payton thought the key to the game was the Sonics' defense.
"We did a good job of trying to disrupt their offense," he said, noting that a large part of that disruption involved being willing to trade blow-for-blow with Utah. "If they hit us, we hit them. That's basically what we did."
That's an improvement over hitting each other, which the Sonics have been more prone to do of late. Westphal said he hopes the upcoming week — the teams have three days off now before Game 4 on Wednesday — will be more peaceful.
"The (past) week was no fun," he said. "We're in the middle of a fight and we had to deal with this other stuff. But I guess that's part of it in the NBA."
You can reach Rich Evans by e-mail at rich@desnews.com