Classic PG duel at Meadowlands

I was lucky enough to watch the Suns-Nets game because it was on YES network here in NJ. I cannot do justice to the game if I try to do my own report on it (my way of shying away from work). So I'll direct you to a nice game report by Lang Whitaker at SLAM.

The highlights:
When the dust settled, the numbers were amazing:
• Phoenix 161, New Jersey 157
• Kidd finished with 38 points, 14 rebounds (all defensive rebounds) and 14 assists
• Nash had a career-high 42 points and 13 assists
• Shawn Marion played 49 minutes and scored 33 points
• Vince Carter had 31 points and 9 assists
• Boris Diaw had 16 points and 14 assists
• There were 34 lead changes
• The Suns hit 17 of 31 from three, and the Nets went 10 for 21
Box Score

Diaw hit both free throws, and the Suns fouled the Nets right away. Kidd hit both free throws to make it a three point game, and the Suns called their last timeout with 4.1 left. They came back to halfcourt, and after what seemed like 4.99999 seconds, Diaw threw it in to Nash, who came off a Kurt Thomas pick and drained a clutch three from the top of the key. Suns assistant Alvin Gentry hopped off the bench and screamed, “Yes sir motherf*ckers!”

And yeah, check the highlights out on nba.com. Pay attention to Vince's walk (around the 30 sec mark in the video) to the basket in the end of regulation time. OK.OK. Kurt Thomas' screen for Nash's game winning 3 ptr was not clean either...but what's more egregious -- a moving screen or a travel?

Suns-Hornets 92-83

Current record : 5-6
Box score
Highlights video

Last night's home win against the Hornets wasn't the most beautiful one the Suns have pulled off. We fan boys are never content. The Suns have now won four in a row and the past two teams they faced, came in with records of 7-3 and 8-3. Yet, many of us are complaining that the wins haven't been 'impressive'. For lack of a better name and poor imagination, I'll call it championship-hope-itis.

The win against the Hornets was orchestrated by playing good D - the Suns' biggest malady so far. I did not watch the game and its hard to believe, but hey, that's what every report is saying. Kurt Thomas must be the happiest with this win. After all, it was won playing hard-nosed D with ordinary offense, which is what his game is all about. Like I've said before, I'll take an ugly win any day.

The Suns out-rebounded the Hornets 41-40 but had poor O-rebounding. Tyson Chandler alone had more offensive boards than the entire Suns team. That, along with 20 turnovers probably explains the the low FG attempts. We took a paltry 70 shots compared to 85 by the Hornets. Thankfully, the good D helped us get some nice stops and keep their shooting percentage down to 40% (we shot 47%).

Raja Bell seems to be coming out of his shell, scoring 18 and 22 in his past two outings. Thats one of the biggest positives for the Suns. They really need good three point shooting to spread the floor and do their thing. Though it was an ordinary offensive night out for the Suns, they continued their hot shooting from downtown. They sank 10-22 (45%) last night and 13-29 (44.8%) against Golden State.

It was nice to see Boris Diaw take some time off from his croissant-eating binge to play some ball. He did alright -- not great. He shot 8-10, including one from three-point land. He also had 4 asts and 6 rbs. He made a sweet behind-the-back pass from the high post to Raja Bell who was at the left baseline. You've got to check it out.
The only blemish was his eight turnovers. Can't blame him -- its hard to concentrate on basketball when there are better things to do, like eating croissant.
OK. OK. I like Boris a lot -- mainly for his unselfishness and overall demeanor. But dude really needs to get back in shape, and he looks to be on the right path now.

Once more, Amare did not get to play the closing minutes of the game. In D'Antoni's (yeah, he won back his right to carry a D in his name with last night's showing) defense, Amare had a very ordinary showing, scoring nada in the game in 21 minutes. I'm sure Amare was just exhausted from the last few games. He'll turn it around against the Nets.

James Jones laid a monstrously big egg yesterday, after winning back the coach's confidence when he hit a few treys against GSW. That kid is a big head-case and really needs to string a few games together to feel good about himself.

The Nets and Trailblazers are up next. Hope we get the wins to get past the .500 mark.

Suns vs. Hornets

I'm not watching the Suns-Hornets game but hear that in spite of the lead, the Suns look ordinary out there. They have answered every mini run by the Hornets to keep the 10 point lead in the second half.

The score is now 80-68 Suns with 5:25 to go in the last period.

My prediction for the game on a message board I frequent was 108-100 Suns, with Barbosa being the leading Suns scorer. But Barbosa is out of this game with a sprained left ankle.

Suns-Warriors 113-110

Steve Nash shook off back spasms that forced him to sit out the last two games, to will the Suns to a victory over the super-hot Warriors. Nash had 7 assists in the first nine minutes of the first quarter, as he led the team to a 31-27 lead. The rest of the team responded by showing him how much they need him when they failed to score for the next six minutes Nash was on the bench. The Warriors (who were without their best player Baron Davis) had a 43-31 lead when Nash took the floor to finish the half. The first half ended with the Suns trailing 52-57. Nash already had a double double.

The Suns players were feeling it this night, as they did a good job of sinking open jumper after open jumper. Monta Ellis was huge for the Warriors, wreaking havoc with his jumpers and repeated forays to the hoop. He had 15 first half points. If he continues to get this kind of playing time, he could be one of the front runners for the 'Most Improved Player' award.

Phoenix erased the lead with a crisp third quarter where they outscored the opponents 37-27. In true Suns style, they let the Warriors back in, early in the fourth quarter and the game was a tightrope walk from here on. Raja Bell's jumper started falling in the fourth quarter and he scored 17 points in the period. Barbosa, who's missed crunch time layups in almost all of the last few games bricked both his free throws at the 1:30 mark in the final quarter, when the Suns were ahead 108-107.

There were a rash of lane violations in the last period and the Suns were fortunate to benefit from one such call against the Warriors in the dying moments of the game. With the score tied at 110 each and just four seconds left, Steve Nash buried a 3 point shot to clinch the game for the Suns.

Sure, I'll take an ugly win over a beautiful loss (which is all the Suns have been doing so far) any day. But the Suns have a lot of issues to sort out before they can stretch out and enjoy this win.

The most important lessons:
(1)We need to play some respectable defense. We've lost way too many double digit leads late in games. Your jumpers are not going to fall all the time and when that happens to all players on the team at once, we need to shore up the defense to keep the lead.
(2)Give Amare the ball : our biggest malady so far, has been the inability to close out games. translation - horrible clutch shooting. Amare's one guy in this team who can score every time he gets the ball. Surprisingly, we haven't run the pick and roll with him and Nash, as often as one would've hoped. Further there seems to be an unwillingness on the part of teammates to defer to Amare.
But yeah, Amare is just working his way back into the team and needs to earn his teammates' trust in game situations. I believe this is an issue that will get ironed out over the course of the season.
(3)Give Marion electric shocks every time he launches a jumper. He's been chucking an outrageous six 3 point shots a game so far. That's an insane amount for someone who has a jumper uglier than Sam Cassell.

The string of horribly officiated games for the Suns continued. Against Jazz, Barbosa got called for a phantom 3 pt foul on Okur the other day, while no foul was called when he got hacked on his drive to attempt a potential game winning layup. The Suns got the short end of the stick once more, this time against the Warriors.

Last point to remember : we pulled off the win against a Warriors team that did not have their leader Baron Davis, who has been playing out of his mind so far this season. Take this win as an OK one. Not as big turning point in the season. Not yet.

Suns are now 4-6 and occupy the basement of the Pacific Division.

Jack McCallum left a comment!

I wrote about the book on the Suns by Jack McCallum in my post entitled "Seven Seconds or Less" on Nov 7th.

Well, guess what? Mc-frikkin-Callum read this blog this morning and left a comment.OK, OK. It must've been his agent, but who cares -- the comment was left in the name McCallum. I know for a fact that its not a hoax because I looked through my site stats and right about the time that he left a comment, there were a few hits from Time Inc's domain -- they own Simon and Schuster, which is the company thats publishing the book.

Here's the link to the comment. This is what he had to say:

Hey, thanks for the advance pub on my book.
I'll be in the Valley of the Sun on Dec. 2, a Saturday, signing copies at the Barnes & Noble on 90th St. in Scottsdale. It goes from 2 to 3:30 p.m.
"Seven Seconds or Less" makes a great Christmas gift. (Then again, so does a tie.)
Please stop by, preferably with the twenty-four bucks, but, even without it, we can talk anyway.

Jack McCallum

No problem Jack! Small problem -- I live in central NJ. You gonna be doing book signings somewhere around here?

Woot!

Nutslap the Suns players

This is what Coach Antoni needs to do with each of the Suns players on the eve of the next game. This just might help get them pumped up and take their anger out on the opposition. But knowing the Suns, they might cry for while and continue playing 'like cupcakes'.



M

Suns vs Clippers - Nice Comeback

Finally a win. I was tired of the string of preseason losses followed by the LA fiasco. It was time to play Suns basketball and the entire team showed up. Two-time MVP Steve Nash had a solid game, finishing with 20 pts, 11 assts.

The Clippers started the game off real quick, surging to a 10-3 lead. The Suns responded well to make a 6-0 run. It was nice to see some hustle after that slow-as-molasses showing against the Lakers. Amare checked in at 7:30 and proved to be the difference (who would have thought!). He got some early touches and converted on each of his first four shots in the Q. He started with two reverse layups, followed up with a banked jumper and closed the quarter with a turnaround jumper. The two reverse layups would've been monster slams two yrs back but who the hell cares, so long as he's scoring! I should add it was nice to see some soft touch from Black Jesus.

The Suns packed the paint making it tough for the Clippers to score inside and finished the quarter with a 24-20 lead. Kurt Thomas did a fairly decent job on Brand early on but IIRC, he did not jump once during the game (OK I was exaggerating, but show me some hops - you're a freakin' NBA baller!).

Super-Small Ball
D'Antoni had ridiculously some lineups in the game at times. At one point in the first quarter, he played a 3 guard lineup - Banks, Nash, Barbosa - along with Amare and Marion. Yes - Banks and Nash played together. I'd imagine it was to get Banks some time alongside Nash to let him see first-hand how the maestro runs the show. Banks had a pretty ordinary outing as a PG last night but scored efficiently finishing with 13 points on 4-6 shooting. Not bad, considering how he struggled in the preseason. Banks had only 1 assist in 15 mins on the floor but Barbosa made up for that with 4 assists. I guess, Barbosa just needs to be told he isn't the backup PG and he'll do a good job of dishing!

Kurt's night out
Kurt Thomas had a horrible night after the refs started to go after him for so much as breathing Brand's air. He got called for laying in a shot even as Brand almost fouled him. Just a few secs later, he got called again for grabbing a loose ball ahead of Brand. This time KT totally lost it and slammed the ball to the floor, getting called for a T. Can't blame him for that! He fouled out of the game in the 4th Q, having played just 12 mins in the game.
The bright side : We got out-rebounded just by eight, 44-52 in a game w/o much help from KT.

Nash's huge and goofy second half
Stevie had a monster second half, as he decided to take over the game. He had 17 pts and 8 assts in just the second half. Sometime in the 4th Q, the refs made an incorrect call as the ball went out of bounds through Brand's legs (brushing them on the way), as Marion and Brand battled for possession. In trying to remonstrate with the officials Nash did possibly the weirdest, goofiest of his career. The following account doesn't do justice to how outrageously funny his performance was:
Nash had this look like he was saying 'ooohhhhhhhhhhh' and pointing his hands in one direction, squatting like he's defending moving sideways all the while -- only he was doing this after the ball went out and was facing the sideline as he did this.
Even the commentators couldn't hold back their laughter as they played the clip over and over.

Marion goes berserk with his blocks
Marion played the second half like a mad man. He was excellent on defense and scored like he always does, finishing with 27/10. At the 10:30 mark in the 3rd Q, he blocked Kaveman Kaman (couldn't resist that, sorry) two times successively as Kaman tried in vain to make his shot. The defensive work from Marion was easily the second biggest highlight of the night, coming a close second to Nash's theatrics.

Brand contained (so to speak)
EB had scored 30+ points against the Suns in the past 9 games. Last night he was "contained" to to 28 points, thanks to some decent defense.

Positives from the game

• Banks had a decent shooting night
• James Jones finally connected on a 3 pointer
• We shot 52% from the field
• We held the Clips to 42% shooting
• We outscored the Clips in the paint (!) 48-30
• Won despite horrendous 3 pt shooting : 27%

M

Suns vs Lakers highlight video

Amare's monster dunk against the Lakers



If you missed the Suns game against the Lakers, you might want to check this out.

Suns vs Lakers - sluggish start

Blast! That was a pretty lousy game to start the season. Nash led the Suns out of the gate to play a killer first quarter when they scored 41 points on 17/22 (77%) shooting. The ball movement was great, the defense (esp at the low post) was impressive - it was Suns' basketball at its best. Steve Nash had 7 assists in the first quarter alone. Amare showed a few flashes of his old self with a monster slam. This was the last we'd see of the Suns for the rest of the game.

The following picture sums up the rest of the game better than anything else. The Lakers had the Suns by the balls.



Lakers take over
To the Lakers' credit, they took over the game starting the second period. They pounded the ball in for easy layups, grappled for rebounds and played like their lives depended on every possession. Lamar Odom seems to reserve himself for the Suns. I don't know if its his rivalry with Marion, who was drafted the same year as him or just plain hatred for the Suns. He turns into a monster at the boards, unleashes his arsenal in the low post and puts the icing on the top with a flurry of three pointers every time he plays the Suns.

Bynum
But Andrew Bynum? This 19 yr old kid was starting for the first time in his career and the Suns let him run all over them. He spent the whole of last season getting tutored by Kareem Abdul Jabbar and boy, has he picked up fast. He showed poise at the basket, never gave up and completely dominated the defensive boards. He finished with impressive numbers - 18/9.

Asleep at the boards
Rebounding was completely absent from the Suns. There was zero interior presence on both ends and they finished the game getting out-rebounded 35-51. I wonder if the Suns had any second chance points as they stayed out of the paint like it was a snake pit or something. Nothing says 'the Suns are losing' better than watch Marion jack up his ugly jumpers from three point land. He was content camping out, waiting for the ball instead of crashing the boards for offensive rebounds.

The biggest disappointment was Boris Diaw who looked listless throughout the 29 minutes he played. He was slow-as-molasses and looked uninterested in what was going on around him. He has a reputation of being an easy going guy but its time he started playing with a fire befitting the $9M paycheck he takes home.

The Clippers visit the Suns tonight. Hope the Suns put up a better showing.

M

Raja Bell chronicles the pre-season

Raja Bell talks to Sam Alipour about the Suns' training camp and pre-season. Raja is one of the more well-spoken, articulate guys around and the entire piece is an excellent read. (espn)

M

Pre-season impressions

KT - lean, mean fighting machine

Kurt Thomas has been one of the brightest spots on an otherwise ordinary preseason for the Suns. Last night he turned in 20 points, 9 rebounds in just 24 minutes on the floor. He was pretty out of shape and clearly couldn't keep up with the frantic pace of the Suns during his comeback attempt in the playoffs last season. This time, however, he's in excellent shape to lead the Suns back to being one the premier defenses in the league.

In Coach D'Antoni's words, "He's way ahead (of last year)". I wonder if Jenny Craig had a role in whipping KT into shape...
What was that...bad joke? Hell no! Did you know that Jenny Craig is part owner of the Suns team?? So every time you buy Suns' tickets you're putting a few pennies in Kirstie Alley's pocket.

Amare update

Amare Stoudemire played close to 20 minutes in last night's preseason loss to Seattle. He finished with 13/5 -- not bad considering how far along D'Antoni thinks he is in his comeback - halfway. When asked about Amare, this is what he had to say

"Basketball wise, he's still about halfway there. He's got a lot of rust."

IMO, its gonna be at least 2-3 months before we can expect to see the Amare of old. For now, the Suns will look to work him into the lineup with 10-15 mins a game at the start of the season. And yes, he's not going to start for a while now. Before you guys begin to freak out, you need to realize that the Suns are solid enough to put together an impressive regular season record. Amare's presence is of paramount importance only in the playoffs, when teams have time to plan for the Suns and start pounding us at the post. Till such time, Amare purely needs to work on meshing well with the team and ridding himself off the rust he's accumulated.
The Suns will work out just fine this season.

For now, the positives about Amare:

• He's being aggressive at the post. (yes, there are going to be off days like last night when he was tentative).
• He's trying to play good defense from time to time.
  

It's just the preseason!

Suns' fans also need to stop taking preseason games so seriously. The coach and the team experiment a lot in these games and one shouldn't put much stock into the game results.
Case in point: A rather intriguing defensive match up we used in the previous game against the Lakers -- Marion on Bynum, KT on Odom


My concerns

-Banks' inability so far, to man the point effectively. I feel he will get better as the season wears on...but what scares me is

-D'Antoni's impatience with reserve players and his proclivity to run Nash into the ground because his backups aren't half as effective as him. This, IMO is D'Antoni's biggest weakness as a coach. He needs to show more faith in his bench and be more committed to resting Nash. Damn! Nash is 32 and our window of opportunity for a championship lasts only as long as Nash is on the team. Preserve the MVP!

-the team's shooting. We've been abysmal from downtown and need to improve our shooting. Part of the reason could be the new ball (blast!). The vets like Bell, Nash etc. will get used to it. James Jones was 3-5 from the three point line last night, so he's OK.
Banks and Jumaine Jones are the ones who really need to get their act together.

Injury update

• Barbosa sat out last night's preseason game against Seattle with a right big toe sprain
• Piatkowski made a comeback after missing five preseason games with an ankle sprain
• Sean Marks is out with a left elbow sprain

M

Looking back at the 04-06 Suns

An awesome montage of the past 2 Suns seasons. Watch it if you like being reminded of the vintage Amare - the freakish dunks and that rejection of Timmy 'Duh'ncan. Look out at the 2:10 mark - Marion darts across the court in a millisecond to throw down a jam; that's immediately followed by Amare's block.



M

Suns beat Kings, Cassell caught gyrating, Kidd thinks ball is sticky

Allllright! The Suns steamrollered the Kings 111-94 in their pre-season meeting a few minutes back.

Game highlights

• Steve Nash - he's not the 2 time MVP for nothing. He had 6 assists in the first 9 mins of the game.
• Nash finished with a brilliant scoreline on 100% FG shooting.
• 27 mins 6-6 2-2 3-3 13 asts 2 stls 17 pts
• Suns scored just 10 points in 2nd quarter
• Suns then came back to score 43 points in the 3rd qtr
• Shawn Marion - 20 points, 8 rebs
• James Jones rediscovered some of his shooting touch, scoring 15 pts on 5-11 shooting and making 3-7 from 3 pt land
  

Highlights from the Clippers vs Lakers game

• Clippers won 91-90

• Reggie Miller, Cheryl Miller, Steve Kerr - 3 of the 4 who tested the new ball (Mark Jackson was the 4th) were at the game. So they were confronted about the lousy job they'd done of testing the ball.

• - Reggie and Steve both sidestepped the question by saying they only dribbled the ball a little and mainly shot it around for a brief while
• - Steve Kerr had a good suggestion though : there is a problem only when you're sweating, so take it easy and try not to break a sweat

• Sam Cassell was pulled aside by a referee for excessive hollering and warned. It was during a timeout, so the conversation was quite audible.

• ref to Sam Cassell : If we're talking like this, its OK. We won't tolerate it when you wave your hands or gyrate
  
• Steve Kerr and Reggie Miller gave the ref a tough time, joking about his use of the word 'gyration' in this context
  
• Cheryl Miller later spoke to Sam and asked him what he though of the word 'gyration', to which Sam replied

  "I've never heard of that word. I've lived in the East Coast and am in the West Coast now. I haven't heard that word, ever! Not in English..maybe its Russian or something"
  

I say, admit it Cassell : you're an ALIEN. That's why you've never heard that word!

• Seeing a jersey with the name Evans on the floor for the Lakers, Kaman probably deemed it safer to sit out preferring to save his family jewels. Poor chap is so traumatized by the Reggie Evans incident. It never gets old - watch it here. btw, the guy on the floor was Maurice Evans :)
  

Other news:

• How desperate are the Golden State Warriors to do well this season? Don Nelson has been promised $1 mil if GSW make the playoffs , $1 mil if they get to the conference semifinals , $0.5 mil if they get to the conference Finals , $1 mil if they get to the NBA Finals
  

Good luck with that, Warriors.

• Jason Kidd on the new ball:
• He complained that the new ball sticks to the rim.
  

• He even offered a conspiracy theory:

The NBA is probably trying to legalize knocking the ball off the rim, like in international basketball. The ball sticking to the rim will make that easier

• Bulls beat the Spurs 99-67!

• The Spurs scored just 8 points in the 3rd quarter

M

Sign Diaw already!

OK y'all! Thanks for stopping by.

I've decided to start this blog off by addressing Boris Diaw's contract negotiations. At the moment that remains one of the biggest questions surrounding the Suns, that the management has direct control over. The elephant in the room is clearly Amare, with his sine wave like fitness curve over the past few weeks...but with the amount of uncertainty over his knee, the easiest thing for a Suns fan to do is to look at what IS in our (management's) control.

There was semi-good news this morning on the Boris Diaw situation. Mike Tulumello of the East Valley Tribune reported that the Suns like their chances of re-signing Diaw .

In a nutshell, Diaw has till Oct 31, 2006 to sign a deal with the Suns, otherwise he becomes a restricted free agent next summer. Diaw has been a complete gentleman about this whole negotiation process and considering his demeanor on court, it doesn't come as a surprise. He's a real humble, laid-back dude both on and off the court. Its funny that one can say that 2006's Most Improved Player is laid-back on court, but that's the truth. He never looks flustered on court, never seems to be rushing things but he gets the job done!

The Suns management have been saying the stock phrases they've always used to feed the media during contract negotiations:

David Griffin, the Suns’ vice president of basketball operations

"I would think there’s a good chance to get something done"

"Re-signing Boris is a priority"

Boris, on the other hand didn't sound as optimistic. Asked about his chances of signing in the next two weeks, he said

"It’s 50-50"

Alright now Griffin, will you sign him already? Apparently, the two sides are $10 mil apart on a 5 year contract. The Suns want him for 5/40, and the bargaining goes on..

This off-season has been one of weird/outrageous signings.....I'm sorry, it was just this one signing -- that of Nene by the Denver Nuggets for $60 mil over 6 years that has sent the whole salary scale out of whack. Thanks a lot Denver!

But as Suns fans, we're just holding out hope that someone in the management grows a brain and signs Boris before its too late.

M