t's a crying shame that I have not been blogging about my Phoenix Suns all season long! Being busy at work is no excuse:-) Anyways, they are 35-17 at the all-star break and are leading the Pacific by 4.5 games. They are considered as one of the major surprises of the season so far. Frankly, I don't agree entirely. Though my previous post in August might sound like I had given up on the season, the reality was that I was just upset at the way the Joe Johnson issue was handled at the time. After following the Suns all off-season on the message boards and even the Phoenix radio, I eventually understood that they were deeper and were better in certain aspects like defense, rebounding etc. By Oct, I had come around to expect great things from this team. So their success is not that much of a surprise to me at all.
Of course the big news was Amare's injury just before the season. In most people's mind, thats what was going to set the Suns back, not the strange off-season moves. I was crushed by that news too, but I was still hopeful because of the depth. Whats the depth all about if it can't make up for Amare's injury during the regular season? Playoffs are a different story altogether, but I didn't lose hope for the season. By that time, I was completely convinced that Raja Bell, Leandro Barbosa, Boris Diaw and James Jones were all going to bring something special to the table around Nash and this system. Mike D'Antoni's sytem is really a god-send. It can compensate for a lot of things given Nash's brilliance at running it to perfection. The front-office deserves a lot of credit too for hand-picking talent that fits the system. Except for the big guys, Kurt Thomas, Brian Grant and Pat Burke, they pick people that fit this system perfectly. So I was hoping for a good season, though most experts expected the Suns to be around 500 until Amare returned. My major concern was for Amare himself. He is the Suns future and if this injury derails his career, it would be a sad, sad day for the Suns and the NBA. He is one of NBA's bright young star with a unique combination of power and athleticism we have never seen before.
One concern I had was that I am a Suns fan(atic) and I was not sure if was being "irrationally exuberant". Then I saw game 1 against Dallas on TV and there were serious doubts. I was like, "may be the experts were right". Suns ran their offense and looked good, but they clearly had no interior presence and in the 4-th quarter, looked completely lost without Amare. They had nothing going on except Nash and the defense just zeroed on him and shut the Suns off. They suffer from this 4-th quarter disease to this day, but they looked really bad the first 10 games. They lost a lot of leads in the money quarter and were just 4-5 after 9 games losing a tonne of games at home. They looked ordinary, and very much like a 500 team without the flashy Amare. They were not even that fun to watch and were not selling out the home games.
One hope was that the new pieces had to blend and everybody had to learn how to execute without Amare. Nash-Amare pick and roll was too easy last year and they had to figure something out to replace that. Nash himself felt a lot of pressure in the 4-th quarter and had to settle for a lot of ill-advised 3's at the end of shot-clock due to a lack of alternative. I couldn't believe some idiots on the message boards already started talking about trading him away because, statistically, the Suns did worse with Nash on the floor compared to when he was on the bench. But as I was hoping, things started to get better. Leandro Barbosa and Eddie House brought some scoring help for Nash and Boris Diaw brought a whole lot of other skills to the party. They started winning and my boy Eddie House might have won a few games all by himself. That Sun Devil is a pure scorer if there ever was one! Mike D'Antoni deserves all the credit for bringing the best out of Boris Diaw and that move alone could win him the coach of the year again. The Suns might win all the 3 post-season awards (including MVP and exec of the year) again this season.
As always, we talk about the Suns and do not even mention Shawn Marion. He is just taken for granted all the time. Mark him down for 20-10 every night and forget about it. I am not sure where the Suns would be without him. I am glad that both he and Nash were all-stars again. The guy can't create his own shot and I can understand why he is not considered a super-star because of that, but he can do everything else on the court. He is a special kind of super-star in this league.
When Amare comes back, there might be a adjustment period, but I am again counting on this "system" to ease the pain. The only issue is going to be the minutes for the players, especially Boris Diaw, House and James Jones. I don't see a whole lot of adjustment otherwise. If Amare is even 80%, I am hoping for another Western conf finals appearance given how the playoff brackets are shaping up nicely. Lets keep our fingers crossed. Whatever happens, the Suns are always a lot of fun to watch.
