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
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