| 18 November 2009
We took a few days off to slave away in the vineyards of the working world and now we are back to celebrate two hard fought Suns victories. The latest is a come from behind thriller in which our guys once again screwed those nasty Vegas oddsmakers by beating the Houston Rockets 111 - 105 despite the Suns being a 3.5 point underdog.
Sluggish scorers in the early going, the Suns trailed by twelve points at the end of the first quarter as they hit just 40% from the field - well off their season pace of nearly 49%. Our team's early performance was weighed down by Steve Nash's 0-3 from the field. Channing Frye and Jason Richardson added to that drag on the high-flying Suns as they both proved to be lukewarm at best hitting only one-third of their attempts.
But leave it to our man Amar'e to be the force that jump started the comeback. And he did it in the second quarter.
Please click "Read More" to continue reading--
After hitting half of his four shots in the opening quarter, Amar'e tore through nine points in the second quarter including a dunk that put the Suns up 51 - 49 with less than 3 minutes left in the half. STAT followed that up with another score from the field and hitting a freethrow. That's five points in less than a minute as the Suns pulled even with the scrappy Houston team.
Houston recovered to go up 55- 52 at the half but the handwriting was already on the wall - our Suns had decided to not back down. This Rockets game wasn't going to be a repeat of the Orlando Magic.We weren't throwing in the towel.
Amar'e went on to lead the Suns scoring with 23 points in 38 minutes on the court and - yes - we are busy building that monument to the one known as STAT. Unfortunately he may not make the All-Star team this year because the really smart people who design the electronic ballot put him on it as a center - not in the forward position he actually plays - but that won't deter us from pushing him for the Hall-of-Fame even now.
For all you rebound hogs out there - Amar'e also grabbed six boards - just one shy of Grant Hill's team leading lucky 7.
And you have to admire how the whole team did a real Phoenix as they rose from the ashes of a double digit deficit and started hitting buckets from the field with precision. It wasn't quite raining points but the Suns pushed their early field goal percentage from 40% to 51.9% by the final buzzer.
The big turn around was done without those long ball 3-point shots as the Suns dropped down to just 28.6% from beyond the arc - their worst performance from that distance so far this season. But they hit better than 60% from 2-point range.
A big contributor to that impressive number was Jarron Collins who was perfect in hitting each of his three shots from the floor in a very efficient 12:38 minutes on the court. Hopefully we'll see some more of this addition to the Suns arsenal.
Suns fans - let's spend tonight basking in the glory of this Rockets victory and making it to mid-November with the best record in the NBA. And we'll be saying something to that small - but dedicated - army of Goran Dragic fans later this evening. Keep your pwoder dry.
See ya'.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
