NBA's Phoenix Suns Go Down 0-2
Series Shifts to San Antonio as Suns look for answers.
What the Suns need to do in order to come back and win game three of their series with the San Antonio Spurs.
After a game one which lived up to seemingly unsurpassable hype, the NBA’s Phoenix Suns have found themselves with their backs up against the wall. The defending champion Spurs, on the other hand, have lived up to their reputation for executing relentlessly, both under pressure and coming from behind. The scary thing is that the Spurs haven’t played their best game yet. Fortunately for the Suns, they haven’t either, and now the series shifts to the desert valley for the next two games.
Game two may not have been a must-win for the Suns, but their loss, underlined by a second half collapse, has ensured that both games three and four are in that category. That’s the nature of a seven game series: down 3-1 going back to San Antonio the Suns are beyond long-shots, tied at 2-2 either team can move on.
More than one thing needs to happen for the Suns, however. On defence, they must solve the Tony Parker-Tim Duncan pick and roll, which exposed Shaq countless times in game two. Since Shaq has played excellent post defence on Duncan, Greg Popovich has gone away from his superstar in one on one situations. Late in game two saw Mike D’Antoni switch Boris Diaw onto Parker so that a switch wouldn’t result in a small guard like Steve Nash trying to stop Duncan. What the Suns coach can’t prevent with this strategy is Parker using his tough mid-range floater and streaky jump shot to score with Shaq playing eight feet off him to prevent the drive. Previously D’Anotoni had been matching Shaq’s minutes with Duncan’s – but look for him to adjust Shaq’s playing time to when Parker is on the floor.
On offence the Suns have been playing strikingly below their potential. The Steve Nash-Amare Stoudemire pick and roll has disappeared since they haven’t gone to it when Shaq has been out, and when Shaq is in he clogs the middle, preventing good spacing for Amare to roll to the hoop for easy points. Similarly disjointed has been the play of Leandro Barbosa, whom the Suns count on to inject a gunner’s mentality into the game off the bench. In game two, Barbosa missed all seven of his shots, this coming on the heels of him passing up an open game winner in game one, only to take a tough contested runner. Barbosa, as a young man, has always had confidence issues for the Suns, and they need him now more than ever. Finally, the Suns need to space the floor for their three-point shooters much better – something that previously was a defining strength of their offence. Instead of swinging to the open man in the corner, shooters like Raja Bell are hoisting contested three-pointers in the middle of the shot clock.
The Suns will go into game three as big underdogs and perhaps with the pressure of being labelled the best team off of them, they can perform to their potential. The Spurs will look to go on a run early and take out the Suns crowd as soon as possible. An X-factor will be the health of Grant Hill, who looked nothing like the effective and versatile role player the Suns had in the rotation all season. That situation may be lose-lose, the Suns will either play with a less effective Hill for much of the game, or will go to a bench that has shown no signs of life in the first two games of this series.
In what was labelled the best first round series in NBA history, game three is already a win or go home situation, and if the Suns lose, this clash of the titans, which started so loudly, will end with a whimper.
