Great win today for the Suns against the hated Spurs. This game reminded me of the Spurs win against the Lakers on Sunday where they won in-spite of not playing too well. Suns did the same thing today. They didn't play too well. They scored just 16 points in the first quarter! They did get it going in the second quarter. But won despite not being on top of their game and put the game away in the fourth quarter. The game was a lot closer than what the final score suggests and the Spurs probably faded in the fourth quarter because they were playing on back-to-back nights. Also, Ginobli kneed Amare in his "unmentionables" and Amare got up to fight him for a bit before the pain kicked in and he had to curl up for a while. It kind of looked dirty though everybody have their knees extended when they go for the lay-up or dunk. I think they do it more as a protection mechanism to save themselves, may be to protect their "unmentionables"! But in this case, it looked like Ginobli had it extended a little bit too much. The crowd booed Ginobli every time he touched the ball after that. This incident might have also sparked the Suns in the fourth.
All in all a great victory for the Suns on a day they didn't have Bell for most of the day and they couldn't stop Ginobli or Parker who had 32 and 20 respectively. They also couldn't hit the 3 at their usual clip without Raja. They hit 6/16. Of course the Spurs D had a lot to do with the Suns off-night too. As always their D was top notch. They choked off Nash for the most part by switching on all pick-and-rolls and putting Timmy on him. But this also put Tony Parker on Amare and Nash used Amare effectively a few times. But then the Spurs also sent another man if Nash tried to drive on Timmy. When the Suns went to Amare on Parker, Timmy immediately switched back to double him and actually got a couple of blocks on him at the rim. Spurs are so fundamentally strong and play such good team D, it's a treat to watch. But the Suns played good D in this one too especially in the fourth. Amare dominated the boards. He had a magnificent game with 24 points and 23 boards. This is the type of game Amare was born to play! If the Suns get this from him every night, they may be darn near unbeatable! This victory was pretty much Amare's.
The Cavs went in to Miami and got busted up by D-Wade. He had 41-4-5 with 12 turnovers. Thats too many turnovers, but he won the game single-handedly for them at the end. LeBron was not that good in this one with 17-6-9 but he came back from injury and played in this one just like Shaq. Shaq had a good game with 16-8 in this one.
San Antonio @ Phoenix - 87-103
Cleveland @ Miami - 89-92
Interesting games on the board for Feb 2-nd (Friday)
LA Lakers @ Indiana - Another test on the road for the Lakers against a team thats good at home.
New Jersey @ Orlando - Two mediocre L-Eastern teams facing off on a day with very few good games on the board.
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