| 09 May 2010
(Photo by D. Clarke Evans/NBAE via Getty Images)
Phoenix Suns 107, San Antonio Spurs 101
There are times when I've sat around with my friends and wondered aloud if I could beat a pro player with one arm tied behind their back. My confidence in that hypothetical and dubious bragging right lost some steam today. If Steve Nash can pop jumpers with only one eye open, he could still run circles around me with any other appendage restrained. Nash and the Phoenix Suns didn't need perfect vision to stay focused, disposing of the San Antonio Spurs in Game 4, 107-101. Now they can set their sights on the Western Conference Finals.
Nash was nailed in the eye by an errant Tim Duncan elbow and got the worse for it, getting six stitches and looking like Lil' Mac from Mike Tyson's Punch-out. Someone check him for cheat codes under his jersey. How else could you explain his resiliency, scoring 10 points after suffering the injury?
Amar'e Stoudemire got back in the mix, working the pick-and-roll with Nash in visit back to Game 2. His 29 points was a game high but you still want to see him grab more than five rebounds. Think that will be a challenge against Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum? Yeah, us too.
The Spurs played off emotion in the first quarter to secure an early lead but as Tim Duncan would say, they were simply outplayed. To beat Phoenix they literally needed five to six players to go off. It wasn't enough for Tony Parker, Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili to contribute. That's a large task to ask of any team, particularly one relying on aging vets like Timmy, Manu, and Antonio McDyess. It also doesn't help when your ability to extend the defense through perimeter shooting is non-existent. Maybe San Antonio was just worn out.
Jared Dudley is the Suns' Energizer Bunny. He gets dirty on defense and takes three-point shots like he's the second coming of Larry Bird. I'm not saying he is even close to as good as Larry Legend but he has the same confidence that the shot is going in every time. Any team would be lucky to have him on their bench.
It's always hard to watch a Game 4 where one team is down 0-3. There has never been an NBA team that has overcome that deficit. After the Spurs blew an eighteen-point lead in Game 3 it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that they were going down. If not in Game 4, then in Game 5. It's like watching a war movie where there is a token African-American. You know he's taking a dirt nap at the hands of Charlie before the third act. It sucks but it's true. I dare anyone to debunk that theory. It's like trying to prove that the health care bill doesn't divide the American public. Hmm. Don Cheadle technically was a "War Machine" in Iron Man 2 and he didn't die but that's a stretch. At least we will see him again in an extended series. This version of the Spurs? I'm not so sure about that.
Why the Suns won
The difference between this Suns team and their latter editions from the 2000's is that this one can take a punch, or elbow for that matter, and punch back. San Antonio did everything in their power to knock Phoenix down but they kept standing. Consider them the Mickey of "Snatch" and San Antonio played the role of Gorgeous George. "You want to stay down," the Spurs kept saying with each run but the pikey doesn't play that. For anyone who has seen "Snatch", they know that Mickey suffers a huge casualty but finally gets his revenge against his sworn enemy. It must feel so sweet for Nash and A'mare, who were defeated time and time again by San Antonio, to finally fill that team with bullets.
Why the Spurs lost
Manu Ginobili picked a bad time to slump but you can't expect him to play great every time. The Spurs sure could have used someone else to pick up the slack. Richard Jefferson? Jefferson? Jefferson? Bueller?
We thought the Spurs had figured out how to defend the pick-and-roll after getting slapped by it in Game 2. Yeah, maybe not. There is a point when you have to just concede victory. That point comes when a one-eyed point guard is lighting you up. Nothing about this series made sense to the Spurs. They were beaten by a young bench of second-tier, at least in respectability, bench players. Their interior defense disappeared, partially because the Suns had Jason Richardson, Channing Frye and others to soften them by nailing threes.Every time they started to get a rhythm, Phoenix changed the beat. When that happens you end up looking less like Michael Jackson and more like Napoleon Dynamite. Let's keep these movie metaphors going!
Looking ahead
The San Antonio Spurs entered this series with as many believers as people who thought Iron Man 2 would be a good film. How could a cast of Manu, Parker, Duncan and a confident bench lose to the Suns, right? Well, how could a cast of Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke and Gwyneth Paltrow drop lines about hemmorhoids in the most anticipated film of the year? I can't understand it but it happened. Now we're left asking what comes next. For Iron Man, I guess we will journey into Tony Stark's alcoholism and watch him battle another robot. The Spurs are more difficult to figure out. The Richard Jefferson experiment was a failure. This team doesn't have enough to make a deep playoff run. But what else can they do?
The Suns have the depth to contend against Los Angeles, who we have to assume will be in the Western Conference Finals, but do they have the size up front? Pau Gasol will have his hands all over the series and the Lakers have already received their obligatory "Remember the 2009 Houston Rockets second round series" wake-up call from Oklahoma City. They will all be on point now that they're one series away from another NBA Finals appearance. You know Kobe Bryant wants a fifth ring so badly. It would surpass Shaquille O'Neals number of championships and also give foolish Lakers fans fuel to light up the "Kobe is better than Michael Jordan" talk. It would be understandable to think Los Angeles will run through Phoenix but everything I have assumed about this Suns team has been wrong. We certainly didn't see a sweep of the Spurs coming from them. A series defeat of L.A. would finally give the Suns the respect they've been craving since Charles Barkley, Kevin Johnson and the 92-93 gang were trying to take the crown from His Airness. Stranger things have happened.
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