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-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.

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%

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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.