So, how about those Suns?

Yeah, run-n-gun works. When you're playing teams that don't play defense.

The thing everybody's missed this year: Not only do the Spurs play incredible defense, they can freaking score.

In the east, I can't wait to see Miami actually have to play a decent team, instead of feasting on the weak the way they have. Talk about an easy draw....

I'm a fair weather basketball fan. I know Steve Nash won MVP and is with Phoenix -- are you saying they aren't any good? I was kind of thinking I might root for them.

www.cafepress.com/showtheworld

In my sarcastic way, I am saying that the Suns have run into the one thing they haven't faced in the playoffs this year: a team that can run and score with them, and play defense.

D'Antoni didn't deserve coach of the year, and Nash didn't deserve MVP. And I'll be ecstatic to see the Suns go fishing, because you have to play on both ends of the court to win a championship.

I forget the time period involved, but it's not like the Spurs can't score over 100 and aren't sucessful when they do.

43 points in the 4th quarter? Yikes.

is for this season.

Oh, that 43 points? The most the 'high-flying Suns' have scored in a quarter this season is 44.

Yeah, the Spurs play such boring basketball. :eyes:

Take that, stupid sports journalists.

D-Wade vs. the Prince, take the Prince. Every time.

If I was D'Antoni I would work on playing against Brett Barry.

Every time he's on the floor, I'd want the guy he's covering to attack him either on the post or driving past him.

He was given a free ride in game one, not having to play defense and taking set shots.

I think the Suns can punish the Spurs every time Barry is on the floor.

I don't expect him to score 21 again, so I don't think the series is close to over.

Also, Amare was in foul trouble. Maybe next game it's Duncan in foul trouble and everything is different.

Still, I won't be surprised if the Spurs win it all, but I think the Suns will put up a good fight.

if the defensive strategy is to key on a guy who comes off the bench, that makes me happy. :hi:

As for Amare's foul trouble, he managed to put up more numbers than anyone else.

Who did he not have to play defense against, anyway?

I just don't see the Suns pulling anything off. They can't change who they are, which is a team that simply can't play defense.

Oh, just saw the Joe Johnson is out for Game 2, as well. That's gonna hurt. Shame, I hate it when injuries impact a series.

I'm assuming he's the best defender they have on Ginobelli. Quentin Richardson sure looked like a statue out there.

It sure looked like Marion wasn't at his best either. f he's going to get killed off the boards by the Spurs two big guys, he's got to make them pay with his speed at the other end. It didn't happen in game one.

Marion was being guarded by Bruce Bowen. Duncan was initially on Q.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Q and Marion had horrible games, the guys guarding them are both first-team All Defense this season.

They'll likely key on Barry and doubling down on Duncan tonight. That means Ginobili will score approximately 8,342 points. :D

Still, the Suns are good for the NBA and for basketball, IMHO. They've made the game fun to watch again, even more so than recent Dallas and Sacramento teams.

that winning was fun. :D

People seem to miss that, as San Antonio has clearly showed, it's entirely possible to be a great defensive team and run up the score. That's fun to me. And it wins rings.

Remember, Chicago, for all the Jordan highlights, usually won through defense.

And has been just about the only team to win a championship with panache since the '80s, IMHO. The Lakers and Celtics of the '80s could play D, too, despite what many announcers conveniently forget. As for the Jordan Bulls, despite the highlights, I found them rather boring by comparison to the pre-Piston "Bad Boys" teams I just mentioned. I don't think the NBA's drop in popularity over the past several years can be dumped entirely upon Stern, after all. The product is lacking what it once had.

And, while folks can pick on the Suns, it seems odd to me. This is a team that was horrifically horrible last year, and it's now in the Western Conference finals. I'm not about to pick on that kind of improvement. The franchise is clearly headed in the right direction. San Antonio was already there.

Here's something Bill Simmons wrote about that:

You can't compare this year's Suns team to last year's team – Amare Stoudemire missed half the season, they traded Stephon Marbury at the midway point for prospects and picks and they didn't have Quentin Richardson or their revamped bench. That's why the 2004 Suns won 29 games. You have to compare them to the 2003 team that won 44 games and gave the Spurs everything they could handle in Round 1.

Both teams had Marion, although he's much more effective as a power forward because it keeps him near the basket. Both teams had Stoudemire and Joe Johnson, although they're twice as good as they were in 2003. Only the 2005 team had Q, a dramatic upgrade over the 2003 platoon of Penny Hardaway and Casey Jacobsen. Nash was obviously a better fit than Marbury in 2003, but Marbury played his best basketball in 2003 (22.3 ppg, 8.1 apg, 44 percent from the floor). So take that 44-win team from two years ago, make Stoudemire and Johnson twice as good, give them Q, give them the brainstorm to play Stoudemire and Marion as their bigs, give them a better bench, let them keep Marbury … and they probably win 55-60 games in the West. They would have been at least as good as the Mavs, right? That's why the whole, "They won 33 more games because of Nash!" argument was so patently absurd.

Now throw this in: Everyone assumes that Nash was the sole reason the Suns can play this fast-break style. Actually, it's a group effort. You can't play that style without Stoudemire (at the five) and Marion (at the four) surviving defensively one position above their natural positions. You also need lights-out 3-point shooters at the two or three spots, as we found out in Game 4 of the Dallas series (when Dallas realized that they only needed to double-team Stoudemire and leave Johnson's replacement open at all times). And you need athletic players who can handle the ball (with Johnson being the most underrated guy in this department – few people realize how many little things he did for that team, although they're starting to figure it out now that he's gone). So to credit Nash alone for Phoenix's style is absurd. He's not playing any different than he did in Dallas. He just has a better supporting cast. In fact, Phoenix probably has four of the best 30 guys in the league, and Richardson is the best fifth starter other than Tayshaun Prince.

Again, how does this not factor into Nash's success? Just looking at this logically: He's a 30-year-old guy who made two All-Star teams in his entire career. At no point was he ever considered one of the best 20 guys in the league. Last summer, his team decided that he was replaceable enough that the most financially reckless owner in the league allowed him to leave with no compensation. So he signs with Phoenix and thrives offensively with a team more suited to his style, although it's not like the statistical leap was staggering or anything (he went from 14.5 to 15.5 ppg, 8.8 to 11.5 apg, 47 percent to 50 percent shooting, and his turnovers actually jumped from 209 to 245). Is that a career year, or a logical jump for someone who's playing with a better team?

Phoenix has four of the best 30 guys in the league. Dallas has one. Which team would you rather play for?

Not sure what you're arguing about at all. Heck, I'm not even sure what post your responding to anymore. The Suns made vast improvement, as I noted. You expect them to win it all one year after winning 29 games, regardless of the changes? If so, that's a bit odd, and it doesn't follow NBA history.

:shrug:

what it's clearly ssaying is that the improvement the Suns made isn't that big a deal, and wasn't due to Nash. It's more similar to the improvement the Spurs made when we drafted Duncan, when we did win the title.

The year before, we were missing most of the team due to injury, etc. So comparing the '99 team to the '98 team was bogus, it should have been compared to the '97 team, when everyone was healthy.

Just as, in this sense, the Suns shouldn't really be compared to last year's Suns, but the Suns of '03. Yes, they improved, but not a huge amount.

Even with that argument, as off-balance as it is, considering the huge changes, we're talking about an 18-game improvment over 2002-3.

Why does it sound like you're jealous of Phoenix for getting some attention for once? Seems odd to me.

Not jealous a bit.

But it was, in reality, an 18 game improvement. That's darned good, but not earth-shattering.

From a neutral observer's standpoint, this series is producing some phenomenal basketball. Their concepts of team play are so much more appealing than the "let's take turns playing one-on-one" team play that's been plaguing the league.