Whoa, Nellie!
November 27th, 2007, 1:23 am · 1 Comment · posted by jerrybrown
Don Nelson couldn’t help himself, he had to gloat a little bit when he talked about how the Suns removed some of their greyhounds and went with big men Brian Skinner and Amare Stoudemire to combat his running and gunning Warriors.
“We looked like the Phoenix Suns out there,” he said, smiling. “We made the Phoenix Suns go big … can you believe that?”
And while it’s true the Suns don’t like to switch what they do, that doesn’t mean they won’t have a different approach handy the next time they meet up with Golden State. “They were really good. It was tough going for us,” guard Steve Nash said. “There was a lack of decisiveness a lack of movement. But give them credit, they made a lot of tough shots. We have to look a little closer at our strategy when we play them … There are things we can do, we’ll learn from this.”
Several Suns felt that they didn’t have enough energy, that the fact they had run across a team willing to match their style led to them backing down from full throttle. “The game was fast, but we still weren’t fast enough,” guard Leandro Barbosa said. “We can play faster than that, but we played as fast as they wanted to.”
So the Suns will try to reload at home against two teams they have already beaten on the road this season – Houston and Orlando. The Rockets will have Tracy McGrady this time, but the Suns still match up well against Yao Ming and company and have handled Dwight Howard and the Magic well recently also.
The good news for the Suns: The rest of the Western Conference powers didn’t fare any better on Monday — in fact, their loss might be the least unsightly. The Spurs were drubbed just up the road in Sacramento, while Utah lost to the lowly Knicks in New York. Dallas was whipped at home by Gilbert Arenas-less Washington, and New Orleans lost at home to … yikes … Minnesota!
LB limping
With Raja Bell still fighting back from injuries, Barbosa admitted he’s been fighting a sprained ankle of his own for two weeks. He said he hurt the right ankle against the Knicks on Nov. 13 but knew the team needed him to keep playing with Bell already down.
“There are some things on the court that I can’t do right now, things I want to do, but I want to keep playing,” Barbosa said. “It’s still hurting, but I can can still play OK.”
November 27th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
It was my first Phoenix (and NBA) game. Imagine being a lone Phoenix fan amid a sea of wild Warriors fans. I thought the Suns played reasonably well. Some of the turnovers were not just one player’s responsibility (notably some of Nash’s turnovers). But it’s not fun losing in Oakland. Although I dislike Dallas, I could feel their pain when they lost their series here. Nevertheless, it’s good to finally see Nash, STAT, Marion, Raja, Barbosa…..