Game 3 - Drag

I did not watch the entire game, but it looked a lot like game 2 continued. Again, they were a play or two away from tying the game or going ahead and putting some pressure on the Lakers, but just kept falling short. Once again their lack of size was completely exploited. Every trip down the floor was 2 or 3 shots for the Lakers. Down the stretch, they just dominated the boards. They ended the game with a ridiculous 52-33 rebound differential and a 16-3 offensive rebound advantage. No wonder the Lakers won the game. Philip is truly coaching his team to victory here. Kobe again had a sub-par game. Not only is he playing a secondary role, he is also struggling. He did not have a good game even when did shoot and tried to score. But it didn't matter because Philip has them going inside and all 5 starters were in double figures. Even worse, all the 3 front court players including Luke Walton had double-doubles!

So what do Suns do now? Game 4 is must-win, but how do they win it? Clearly the playoff pressure is causing them to miss shots. They actually tried very hard to play up-tempo. Nash was running like crazy in this one because they thought they really lost game 2 by not running. I was amazed at the energy and effort the Nash put in to this game. He is just amazing. But they are missing shots and the Lakers are over-powering them. This is where I think Mike D'Antoni can be stubborn sometimes. He is wedded to the style and is not flexible enough to try something else. Brian Grant and/or Pat Burke are still not seeing any time. May be they can get a rebound or 2. It should be pretty deflating for this team to not secure defensive boards after all the scrambling and double-teaming they do on defense. Mike D'Antoni just cannot lose the offensive rebounding battle 16-3.

Phil's "inside man" strategy is really brilliant. It hurts the Suns in 3 ways. One, they get in foul trouble. Diaw, Marion and Thomas have all had trouble staying on the floor in this series. Secondly, it puts the Laker bigs in spots to get offensive boards even when they miss. Thirdly, it slows down the fast-break because it's easier to take off of missed jump shots. It's easier to rebound jump shots too. Now all of the Suns bigs are pulled in to the paint and players like Marion just can't take off early. If Kobe is shooting 17 footers, 3 or 4 of the Suns players don't do anyhing on defense. They can just get the rebound and run. But now they are all having to work because the ball is moving around and the Lakers enjoy a size advantage at all 5 spots on the floor.

It'll be very interesting to see how the Suns turn this around.

Teams 1 2 3 4
Los Angeles 24 29 21 25 99
Phoenix 22 16 29 26 93

Los Angeles
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Lamar Odom 9-12 0-0 3-5 1-7 5 4 2 1 3 21
Luke Walton 3-8 2-2 0-1 0-4 1 2 1 0 4 8
Kwame Brown 4-8 4-7 0-0 1-2 0 3 0 2 1 12
Kobe Bryant 12-24 4-6 1-1 0-10 5 4 1 0 4 29
Smush Parker 3-6 2-2 0-1 1-4 3 3 3 0 4 8
Sasha Vujacic 3-6 2-2 3-4 0-2 2 0 0 0 1 11
Devean George 1-4 0-0 1-3 0-6 1 0 0 1 2 3
Brian Cook 2-4 0-0 1-1 1-2 2 1 0 0 4 5
Jim Jackson 1-3 0-0 0-0 1-2 1 0 1 0 1 2
Aaron McKie - - - -
Chris Mihm - - - -
Andrew Bynum - - - -
Ronny Turiaf - - - -
TOTALS 38-75 14-19 9-16 5-39 20 17 8 4 24 99

FG %:.507; FT %:.737; 3PT %:.563
Points of TO:20
Team rebounds:7
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

PhoenixSHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Tim Thomas 4-12 0-0 3-8 1-9 1 0 0 1 3 11
Shawn Marion 5-15 2-2 1-4 2-9 0 1 1 0 1 13
Boris Diaw 5-10 3-3 0-0 0-4 2 4 0 1 3 13
Raja Bell 8-15 4-4 3-5 0-3 3 0 1 1 6 23
Steve Nash 10-17 7-7 2-7 2-7 9 6 1 0 4 29
Leandrinho Barbosa 0-5 0-0 0-2 1-2 4 2 1 1 2 0
Eddie House 1-3 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 1 0 1 3 2
James Jones 0-1 2-2 0-1 0-1 0 0 0 1 1 2
Brian Grant 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 2 0
Pat Burke - - - -
Kurt Thomas - - - -
Amare Stoudemire - - - -
Nikoloz Tskitishvili - - - -
TOTALS 33-78 18-18 9-27 6-35 19 14 4 6 25 93

FG %:.423; FT %:1.000; 3PT %:.333
Points of TO:16
Team rebounds:6
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:1

Game 2 - Bummer

Kobe and Phillip stuck to their game plan of going inside. It almost worked in game 1 and it completely worked in game 2. Kobe had a better game. Efficient and made most of his shots. He still did not hog the ball like he is used to. The Suns couldn't defend, rebound or run. They fell big early. They were down 15 at the half. They got back admirably. But they should could not get over the hump. They got within 3 points a couple of times, but just could not hit that tying big shot. They were right there, but they either missed a 3 or turned the ball over or couldn't secure the defensive rebound.

I am finally a believer in the "Big Chief Triangle". His strategy of going inside and exploiting the Suns is just paying off beautifully. Everybody was hoping that Kobe would go crazy and that would be the only way the Lakers win the series. Kobe routinely scored 40+ against the Suns during the regular season and the Lakers routinely lost. So Phil came up with a different strategy and this is messing up the Suns completely. Both their offense and defense is a mess and are having a lot of problems rebounding. Of course the other part of this is that Phil has the stature to come up with something like this and convince Kobe to follow it. A lesser coach probably can't communicate and implement it even if they were smart enough to come up with this strategy. That's where the rings and the reputation helps big.Mike D'Antoni says they lost because they didn't run like they should. I think it's not that simple. They couldn't run because of all the things Lakers did. I think D'Antoni sometimes is obsessed and very adamant about the run-n-gun. I am afraid they have bigger problem in this series than just being able to run-n-gun-n-win. Hope the Suns figure something out soon on the road.

Los Angeles 24 29 21 25 99
Phoenix 22 16 29 26 93

Los Angeles
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Lamar Odom 9-12 0-0 3-5 1-7 5 4 2 1 3 21
Luke Walton 3-8 2-2 0-1 0-4 1 2 1 0 4 8
Kwame Brown 4-8 4-7 0-0 1-2 0 3 0 2 1 12
Kobe Bryant 12-24 4-6 1-1 0-10 5 4 1 0 4 29
Smush Parker 3-6 2-2 0-1 1-4 3 3 3 0 4 8
Sasha Vujacic 3-6 2-2 3-4 0-2 2 0 0 0 1 11
Devean George 1-4 0-0 1-3 0-6 1 0 0 1 2 3
Brian Cook 2-4 0-0 1-1 1-2 2 1 0 0 4 5
Jim Jackson 1-3 0-0 0-0 1-2 1 0 1 0 1 2
Aaron McKie - - - -
Chris Mihm - - - -
Andrew Bynum - - - -
Ronny Turiaf - - - -
TOTALS 38-75 14-19 9-16 5-39 20 17 8 4 24 99

FG %:.507; FT %:.737; 3PT %:.563Points of TO:20

Team rebounds:7
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

PhoenixSHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Tim Thomas 4-12 0-0 3-8 1-9 1 0 0 1 3 11
Shawn Marion 5-15 2-2 1-4 2-9 0 1 1 0 1 13
Boris Diaw 5-10 3-3 0-0 0-4 2 4 0 1 3 13
Raja Bell 8-15 4-4 3-5 0-3 3 0 1 1 6 23
Steve Nash 10-17 7-7 2-7 2-7 9 6 1 0 4 29
Leandrinho Barbosa 0-5 0-0 0-2 1-2 4 2 1 1 2 0
Eddie House 1-3 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 1 0 1 3 2
James Jones 0-1 2-2 0-1 0-1 0 0 0 1 1 2
Brian Grant 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 2 0
Pat Burke - - - -
Kurt Thomas - - -
-Amare Stoudemire - - - -
Nikoloz Tskitishvili - - - -
TOTALS 33-78 18-18 9-27 6-35 19 14 4 6 25 93

FG %:.423; FT %:1.000; 3PT %:.333

Points of TO:16
Team rebounds:6
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:1

Game 1 - Scary

The playoffs started against the Lakers. At one point I thought this would be a sweep. But the Lakers have gotten better over the last month of the season and the Suns had slipped a little bit. Phil seemed to have turned around Both Kwame and Lamar and Luke Walton is playing out of his mind. So a few "experts" are picking an upset. I think this will be a interesting series, but I think the Suns win easy, may be even sweep.

But game 1 was scary. The Suns' run-and-gun was slowed down a bit. Looks like the playoffs pressure came early this season. Usually this style is tough to pull off in the pressure-cooker environment of the playoffs, but that pressure kicks in the later rounds of the playoffs, especially if you are a top seed. But the Suns struggled a bit already. The Lakers decided to go inside and exploit the Suns' lack of size. That almost worked. Kobe had a sub-par game. He seemed to have committed to the idea of going inside, but couldn't turn it up in the 4-th quarter when he wanted to. I think he is so used to shooting throughout the game that he can't just turn it on in the 4-th quarter. He struggled and the Suns pulled out a close win. There was missed foul call on Kobe with less than 20 secs to go. That would have cut the lead to 1, but the game was probably over anyways.

The Suns did not play their style and scored just 36 points in Q2 and Q3. Clearly the playoff is a different animal. They won this one, but it was too close for comfort.

Teams 1 2 3 4
Los Angeles 29 21 25 27 102
Phoenix 39 19 17 32 107

Los Angeles
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Lamar Odom 8-15 4-8 1-4 3-14 3 4 0 1 3 21
Luke Walton 9-16 0-0 1-2 2-6 2 0 2 1 3 19
Kwame Brown 5-12 4-5 0-0 3-6 0 1 0 0 3 14
Kobe Bryant 7-21 7-8 1-6 1-6 5 3 0 1 3 22
Smush Parker 5-13 4-4 1-5 3-6 1 1 2 0 4 15
Brian Cook 2-7 2-2 0-2 1-5 2 0 0 0 2 6
Devean George 0-1 0-0 0-0 0-2 0 0 0 0 3 0
Sasha Vujacic 1-3 0-0 1-2 1-1 0 0 0 0 2 3
Jim Jackson 1-2 0-0 0-0 1-1 0 1 0 1 2 2
Aaron McKie - - - -
Chris Mihm - - - -
Andrew Bynum - - - -
Ronny Turiaf - - - -
TOTALS 38-90 21-27 5-21 15-47 13 10 4 4 25 102

FG %:.422; FT %:.778; 3PT %:.238
Points of TO:9
Team rebounds:13
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Tim Thomas 8-10 2-3 4-5 0-15 0 3 2 1 5 22
Shawn Marion 8-15 2-2 1-3 1-7 2 1 2 1 4 19
Boris Diaw 6-16 3-4 0-1 3-6 4 2 1 0 4 15
Raja Bell 1-7 5-6 1-3 0-3 2 0 1 0 5 8
Steve Nash 5-12 8-8 2-5 1-2 10 2 0 0 1 20
Leandro Barbosa 3-7 8-8 1-2 0-1 1 0 0 1 3 15
James Jones 0-1 4-4 0-1 0-1 0 0 0 0 0 4
Eddie House 2-5 0-0 0-0 0-1 0 1 0 0 1 4
Brian Grant 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pat Burke - - - -
Kurt Thomas - - - -
Amare Stoudemire - - - -
Nikoloz Tskitishvili - - - -
TOTALS 33-73 32-35 9-20 5-36 19 9 6 3 23 107

FG %:.452; FT %:.914; 3PT %:.450
Points of TO:8
Team rebounds:5
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0