What looked like the best day in the 3 year run of this era's Phoenix Suns, now is in danger of becoming their worst day. If you are a Suns fan like me, you should be shaking at your knees now because of the Horry incident. It was late in the game and the game was pretty much over except for the customary "foul and extend the game" strategy when Robert Horry body-checked Nash into the stands instead of just grabbing him for one of those typical fouls. Nash was driving hard and fast and he went flying into the side-boards. Raj Bell immediately jumped into Horry's face and the situation was diffused fairly quickly with Horry's ejection. But the real problem was, Amare was on the bench at that time and he and Boris Diaw made a move towards the "crime scene" and actually stepped on the court. The crime itself happened just up the Suns sideline, but both these guys stepped on the court as they walked towards the scene. The Suns coaches were just a second late in restraining them. If the NBA sticks to the letter of the law, these 2 should be suspended.
That makes it a real sad day for a Suns fan. Finally, the Suns break through against the Spurs and are now in a 3-game series with 2 games at home. No guarantee for a series win, but they have never had this kind of a performance against this Spurs team. And I strongly believe this is the de-facto NBA finals. These are the 2 best teams in the NBA and the only way either of them lose to either Utah or Detroit will be because they are mentally and physically exhausted in this series. So if the Suns win this one, they may have the best look at a ring in 3 years, actually 14 years since the 1993 finals. Check that - make it 40 years. Suns are actually going through a mini-curse with no championships in 40 years. Now, we have to deal with this suspension? Are you kidding me? There's already talk about how they may be forced to break this team up next year due to luxury tax constraints and now this?
The only hope I have is, the incident was along the sidelines and I would say Amare and Boris just walked up the Suns bench and just stepped on the court because there's no space on the sideline anyways. I don't think anybody will buy Amare and coaches excuse that he was just running to sub in to the game! Charles already said on TNT that he tried the same excuse when he was going to be suspended and it didn't work. The rule is fool-proof, but is also definitely foolish. How can Suns pay such a high, potentially history altering penalty for what Robert Horry did? That too when Amare and Boris were restrained long before they got anywhere near the crime-scene. Makes no sense. Say it ain't so Commish! Say it ain't so.
As for the game itself, it was one of the finest nights in recent Suns playoffs history. Nash came back strong from the poor shooting night and he was his usual self. Amare stayed out of foul trouble, at least until late in the game. The Suns were still struggling with the pace as the Spurs didn't let them run and didn't let them shoot the 3's. The Spurs actually took and made more 3's in this game. Suns scored just 40 points in the first half and it looked like the series was over. It looked like the Suns cannot de-code this Spurs team, not with this cast. The third quarter was even worse as the Spurs scored at will and took a comfortable lead, though not a big one. They got a lot of open threes and the Suns just couldn't rotate fast enough to prevent anything. Finley and Brent Barry were killing them. The only good news was, the Suns also scored 32 in the quarter and that was good news.
The fourth quarter was no different as the Spurs kept playing their style and the Suns stayed close, but couldn't tie and take the lead. Then Timmy and Amare got in to foul trouble. Suddenly the Suns defense started playing desperate and they toughened up right in front of our eyes in the second half of the 4-Th quarter. They got some stops and they even ran off of those stops and got easy baskets. Nash had 2 horrible, back-to-back turnovers and it seemed like it was just not the Suns night. But the defense was there and Spurs did not capitalize at the other end. Thats when Nash came back with made 2 spectacular behind-the-back passes for Amare finishes in the lane. Once again the MP3 comes through big. Of course the 5 fouls on Timmy forced him to defend very tentatively and Amare took full advantage. Suddenly Suns were leading and the Spurs still could not score. The quarter ended with a 32-18 edge for the Suns and they won it in style at the end.
This was a tough, hard-nosed, championship caliber win on the road at a tough place against a veteran opponent. The Suns spoke about toughening up mentally and physically and they backed up all that talk by doing just that in the 4-Th quarter. Steve Kerr was alluding to it even in the third quarter as he suggested this could be a defining stretch for this Suns team. If they had lost a low-scoring, slow-paced, defensive game against the Spurs again, even ardent Suns fans might have started questioning everything about this team, their coach and his style of play. Now those questions are on cold-storage, at least for another 2 days. The only question now is will Amare get suspended? I have always hated Horry since the day he threw the towel at the then Suns coach Danny Ainge's face. Now I just hate him even more.
Teams 1 2 3 4
Phoenix 24 16 32 32 104
San Antonio 22 23 35 18 98
Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Shawn Marion 4-8 3-4 1-2 2-12 0 1 2 2 2 12
Kurt Thomas 5-10 4-4 0-0 2-5 1 0 0 2 3 14
Amare Stoudemire 9-18 8-8 0-0 3-9 0 3 3 1 5 26
Raja Bell 5-11 0-0 2-4 1-4 1 1 0 0 0 12
Steve Nash 8-12 6-8 2-3 0-2 15 8 0 0 2 24
Leandro Barbosa 4-13 2-5 0-4 1-7 0 2 0 0 5 10
Boris Diaw 2-6 0-0 0-1 2-3 2 1 1 0 0 4
James Jones 1-1 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 2
Jalen Rose - - - -
Pat Burke - - - -
Jumaine Jones - - - -
Marcus Banks - - - -
Eric Piatkowski - - - -
Sean Marks - - - -
TOTALS 38-79 23-29 5-14 11-42 19 16 6 5 17 104
FG %:.481; FT %:.793; 3PT %:.357
Points of TO:17
Team rebounds:12
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:1
San Antonio
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Bruce Bowen 1-3 0-0 1-1 0-0 2 0 2 0 3 3
Tim Duncan 9-14 3-4 0-0 3-11 2 6 0 3 5 21
Fabricio Oberto 3-4 0-0 0-0 1-3 0 0 0 0 3 6
Michael Finley 5-12 3-3 4-10 0-5 1 1 0 0 2 17
Tony Parker 9-19 5-5 0-1 1-6 7 5 2 0 4 23
Robert Horry 0-1 0-0 0-0 0-1 5 1 0 3 1 0
Manu Ginobili 3-14 2-2 2-7 0-4 4 0 3 0 3 10
Brent Barry 5-8 0-0 2-4 0-1 2 1 0 1 2 12
Jacque Vaughn 2-4 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 2 1 0 1 4
Francisco Elson 1-1 0-0 0-0 1-1 0 0 1 0 2 2
Matt Bonner 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Melvin Ely - - - -
Jackie Butler - - - -
Beno Udrih - - - -
James White - - - -
TOTALS 38-80 13-14 9-23 6-32 23 16 9 7 26 98
FG %:.475; FT %:.929; 3PT %:.391
Points of TO:15
Team rebounds:4
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0
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