| 09 May 2010
Such is the difference between the old Suns and the new Suns. Back in the day, Nash would take an elbow, a knee, a hip, whatever, come out bloodied and have to quickly get patched up so that he could get back in the game before the rest of the team completely loses their focus without him.
What about now? Nash takes an elbow to the eye from Duncan, clearly accidental. Simply the result of a play maker like Nash always having his hand reaching for a piece of the pie, lest he get left without. This time, such ambitiousness gets him sent to the locker room with over six minutes to go in the third period to collect a quick half dozen stitches. He comes back with more than two minutes to go in the period and what is the first thing he does. He sits on the bench with some ice on his eye and calmly waits for the period to end. He's used to sitting out 6-7 minutes per half. What difference does it make if it's the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth period?
The answer is...
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None.
No one batted an eye when Steve Nash left the court, because we all knew Goran Dragic, hero of game three would be coming in to replace him.
In the end, the Phoenix Suns simply had too many weapons for the San Antonio Spurs to keep up. The Spurs focused on shutting down Nash and Amare, and either solo or in pairs, Hill, Richardson, Dudley, Barbosa, and Dragic stepped up. The Spurs shut down the Sun's transition game, and the Suns picked them apart from behind the arc. To paraphrase Ginobli, for the Spurs to beat the Suns, they would have to play the perfect game, and the Spurs didn't have it in them.
The two biggest factors that cost the Spurs: Lousy free throw shooting and not enough players capable of hitting the three-ball consistently. Game four was the Spurs best showing at the charity stripe hitting 75%. Not much more can be said about that, unless you really want to rub the Spurs' noses in it. Like Duncan hitting 50% for the series, but I digress. Throughout the four games Phoenix nearly doubled San Antonio's output beyond the arc as they collected 41 three pointers to San Antonio's 23. How is Bonner to keep up with Richardson, Dudley, Frye, Dragic, and Nash (when he's not too busy racking up the assists)?
After watching an era of the Suns where as Steve Nash goes, so goes the whole team. It is refreshing to watch a team that, admittedly, still relies on Nash to create plays, but is capable of holding it together without him. This is my favorite all time Suns team. Not just because they're playing great, but because they play great together. When you have a group of starters that sit on the bench cheering the second team because they're wasting the oppositions starters, as our bench has been prone to do this season, you can't help but cheer along with them.
Regardless, of how long it takes the Lakers to finish off the Jazz, the conference finals won't be starting for at least 7-8 days. Darn TV contracts needing to have everything scheduled so far in advance and all. I don't expect the Jazz to last beyond game 5. I think there back was broken once they lost game three by a point. So I don't think either team is going to have an advantage in terms of downtime. Both franchises should be well rested come game one.
I'm getting antsy already.
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