| 18 March 2010
Hello folks! My name is Patrick Brown and I'll be contributing a few posts a week to SunsStufft from now on. Jamie is one of my neighbors and he and I often disagree, but we do love our Phoenix Suns.
If so, how can I make a such a title on my first entry? Especially when the Suns are still easily in the running for the fourth seed in the West. It goes back to something I have been saying all year and I'll get to that, but more recently it goes back to a conversation Jamie and I had Sunday night. Sorry, it took a few days for me to get writing privledges here or else I would have posted this on Tuesday just before Phoenix put up 152 points on Minnesota. I have to grin at that! It was a game that we needed. Perhaps not desperately, but when you lose games that you should win, you start NEEDing to win them later. A state of affairs I would prefer to avoid.
Back to business, after Sunday night's conversation, it seemed fortuitous that the very next day, Seth Pollack at Bright Side of the Suns posted a daily poll asking the very same question that I had posed to Jamie. Who would you rather see the Suns play in the first round? For the moment, please forgive my embarrassment at having to supply you with a full URL and not a link. I am still trying to figure out the system here and I can't seem to get the link button to apply the link! If I can manage to fix this, I will do so, until then feel free to laugh at me.
I'm going to assume you have already voted and are now back to read the rest of this post. If you haven't, Go Vote! I don't want to ruin the surprise.
Please Click "Read More" to continue reading--
Okay now that that is out of the way. I have to say I was surprised to see the team I chose, the Dallas Mavericks was in last place. By a rather large margin. It seems my fellow Suns fans disagree with me. What better way to start off my blogging here at SunsStufft than defend my position on the matter.
The moment the Suns fell out of first place in the West I kept telling Jamie that I want the Suns to seed either 2,3,6, or 7. Yes, I fear the Lakers that much. I don't feel we match up well against them. Even if we manage to shut down Kobe, the rest of the Lakers are bigger and more mature as a team. The only starting match up I think the Suns win is Nash over Fisher. I love the Suns second team, but the Lakers bench is arguably just as good or better. At the very least they have enough big guys to lean on STAT while keeping Lopez shut down. I'm pinning my hopes on some other team upsetting the Lakers and we get to play them in the Conference Finals.
With a good run at the end, the Suns could easily pick up the fourth seed, but I kind of hope they don't. Mostly because the playoffs are a season unto themselves and I don't want them to peak to soon. I'm fine with them cruising in where they are in the 6/7th seed like I wanted. This means they'll probably play Denver or Dallas in the first round.
According to the poll, most Suns fan want to play against the Nuggets. I can certainly see the allure. I wouldn't be disappointed to play them either. We've split two games in Denver. The loss being a six point 105-99 loss in December (*cough* The month where we didn't win a single game on the road). The next two games were both wins by 12 and 16 points. We'll see if the Suns can continue to do well against them in the penultimate season game in Phoenix on April 13th.
But that's on the surface. In reality, the first win in Denver was due to Carmelo Anthony not playing. The second win was due to the bench having one of their golden defensive nights and Anthony having a seriously off night. You can count on a player like Anthony having an off night, but not an off series. At the end of the day, I think the Suns have no answer for Anthony, they have no answer for STAT, Nash and Billups cancel out, and the fate of the series could be left in the hands of J-Rich's inconsistency or the bench stepping up like they do from time to time.
So why do I like Dallas better even though the Suns lost the season series two games to one? First, the home team won each game. So as far as I am concerned the two teams are evenish considering one of the losses was by a single point (Yet another December road loss). I must also stipulate that the win at home was another one of the bench's golden nights. The bench walked all over the Mavericks and STAT didn't even have to play in the fourth period. But in this case, I like the bench matchups against Dallas a lot better than I do against Denver. Barea is quick, but overall he's got nothing on Dragic and the Mavs don't have anyone coming off the bench who can shut down Amundson on a decent night.
Second, and this may be more important than the matchups, I think the Mavs are hot now, which means they will almost certainly be cooler in a months time. Peaking right at the end of the season is so important for doing well in the playoffs and most people barely consider it in their calculations. I'm betting the Mavs are peaking too soon.
Third, the Suns actually have some size on the Mavs. They have the opportunity to take some easy points in the paint, especially since Nowitzki doesn't always play his size. Speaking of size, is it me, or does Nash always play "bigger" against his friend Dirk? You can see the two certainly enjoy competing against each other, which just makes the rivalry that much better.
And finally, when things don't directly involve my own free will, I have a fate mentality. If the Suns are fated to get past the first round this year, I want them beating a rival like Dallas or San Antonio. And if they are fated to lose in the first round, I want it to be a rival because those games are just that much sweeter!
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