Olumide Oyedeji better take careful steps during Seattle's next practice. The little-used center is one of the only Sonics big men still healthy.

Center Jerome James came off the bench last night partly because of a minor injury. And emergency starter Antonio Harvey didn't last the first half last night before he, too, suffered an injury.

But even if those big men were feeling dandy, there's little they could have done against Nick Van Exel. An ice-cold start by the Denver guard ended with fire and fury, leading to Denver's 103-93 victory at KeyArena.

"We allowed those guys to hang around," groused Coach Nate McMillan, whose team dropped to 4-7. "And Nick finally got hot."

Taking ? and making ? shots with the highest degree of difficulty, Van Exel scored 38 points for Denver's first regular-season victory in Seattle since February 1993. The last time Denver defeated Seattle in the Emerald City was during the 1994 postseason series that lives in infamy for Sonics fans: the fifth, final game of the first round, which marked the first time an eighth-seeded team had defeated a top-seeded club.

"I knew we (won) a stretch of games here," said McMillan, who played for the Sonics the last time Denver won in Seattle. "But it's a different season. That doesn't mean anything. You have to play the game whether you've lost in the building or won in a building."