The Suns and the Spurs walked in to an highly charged atmosphere at the US airways arena as the home fans were ready for this game in a state of extreme anger. The suspensions were still the biggest story in all of sports and I am sure it caused a huge blow to the collective civic psyche of Phoenix. The Suns came out and it was clear they were not going to lie down and just die in this one. They came out swinging and played real hard. They started Barbosa and except for Kurt Thomas on Duncan, they were real small. It was working fine in the first quarter as Shawn Marion went nuts. He always does well when he plays 4 instead of the 3 and he is defended by big, slow guys. This is exactly what happened as the Spurs bigs couldn't hang with him and he scored 20 in the first half. The Suns led by 11 after one and at the half and they were even ahead by 16 at one point in the second quarter.
The story of this game I thought was the Spurs scoring just 13 in the first quarter. Not sure if this was great defense by the Suns or was it just the Spurs didn't come out with any kind of edge and almost played with a sense of guilt over the suspensions. This is what gave the Suns a great shot in this game. Suns offense was struggling at times as expected without the finisher Amare, but they rode Marion and the horrible first quarter by the Spurs in to the half-time with a decent lead. But then the adjustments came. Pop went into Timmy every time in the third quarter and almost erased the 11 point lead in a few minutes as Timmy went nuts. Kurt was doing a great job on Timmy in the first half, but he was no match for Timmy in the third. The other adjustment for Pop was to go small and negate any mismatch Marion had against the Spurs bigs. Now Marion was a non-factor on offense.
I thought this was one of the best coached games I have seen in a long time. Mike D'Antoni hit back with his own adjustment as he suddenly started doubling Timmy halfway through the third. This derailed the Spurs on offense as the guards could not hit open shots on those kick-outs. Suns rotated well at times as well. This kept them in the lead though their offense was still struggling. The Spurs win on their defense and this game was no different. They tightened up the D and the Suns had a basic problem. What do they do on offense? The bread and butter for them is the pick-and-roll, but without Amare, it was just not as effective. Nash ran it time and again with Kurt and Kurt can't roll and finish quite like Amare. He can spot up and pop an open jumper, which he did several times, but you can't live off of Kurt Thomas jump shots. Ideally I would have liked them to run the pick-and-roll with Nash and Marion, but with Pop going small, there was no mismatch here. They would just switch and Bowen can stick with Marion and Finley would stick with Nash and even if Nash drove on Finn, there's Timmy waiting for him in the paint.
So the Suns had only one play in the half-court and that was the partially effective pick-and-roll with Kurt. And when things got switched up, it's not a great mismatch anyways because Nash can't do much against Timmy despite the speed advantage. It's just amazing how good Duncan is. Bill Simmons on ESPN once wrote that Kobe might be unstoppable and LeBron might be a lot of fun to watch and Wade scores in bunches, but nobody dominates every possession of a game like Tim Duncan. You see him in EVERY play, especially on the defensive end. I can't even tell you how many times Nash ran the pick-and-roll probed the paint, found nothing, dribbled out and set up the pick-and-roll again, only to find nothing again. The other big problem for the Suns is how the Brazilian Blur has been taken out of this series. Again, it's Timmy stopping him from getting to the rim on those drives. Every time Timmy goes to the bench, Spurs still play good D, but you can see Marion and LB get to the rim a lot easier. It's all about Duncan.
With all that said, the Suns fought hard in this game and would just not give up. For the first time, they tried to win a game purely on their defense because it was obvious they can't score a whole lot on offense. They defended hard and those double teams on Timmy worked. But Manu Ginobli was real good in this game. He hit some big shots and kept the Spurs in the game. He did throw away the ball twice and helped the Suns, but he shot real well and made some 3's that would have been bad shots if he missed. But he didn't. The Suns still hung in there and somehow managed to lead by 5 with 3 minutes to go and this is where things started unravelling. Spurs started hitting the open shots out of Timmy double-teams and the Suns offense had nowhere to go. Nash and gang tried and scratched and clawed, but it just was not there. Finally the Suns fans had to suffer the ignomity of seeing public enemy no-1 Bruce Bowen hit the game winning 3 with 30+ seconds to go. On further thought, as much as the Suns fans hate Bruce Bowen, he is just enemy no-3 after Robert Horry and David Stern after these suspensions.
The Suns still had 2 looks at a game-tieing 3 that Marion and Nash missed. A tough loss for the Suns on this emotional day. Crushing defeat for some fans as the Suns played so well all night and actually built some momentum in the mid fourth quarter only to lose it at the very end. Marion, Bell and Nash, all played more than 45 minutes and may be they just got tired. May be they couldn't hit those 3's or rotate quick enough because of fatigue. Nash played real hard, but was just stymied by the Spurs D. I am his biggest fan, but I thought he made some critical mistakes in this game. His foul on Ginobli's 3 with 3 mins to go was a crusher. He jumped in to his body and it was not even a touch foul. Again, may be he was just tired. Nash probably also helped off of Bowen on that game winning 3. Though Nash got back to challenge it, Bowen had already made up his mind to shoot it, and it was too late. Steve Kerr on the TNT telecast kept making this point that the Suns cannot rotate off of Bowen at the corners and they should always leave him open at any other spot. But he was open in the corner in that play. Also Nash didn't take a good shot for 3 at the end as he tried to engineer a weird foul on Duncan. Let me stop as I might be nit-picking here.
Great effort wasted and now the Suns go on the road trailing 3-2. The concern now is, are they do tried now after this game? The suspensions are still the story in Phoenix and a fan-base is still agitated. Apparently old ladies were flipping Brent Barry off in the pre-game warmups. Awesome!
Teams 1 2 3 4
San Antonio 13 20 23 32 88
Phoenix 24 20 18 23 85
San Antonio
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Bruce Bowen 3-10 0-0 3-6 0-7 2 1 4 0 4 9
Tim Duncan 7-14 7-11 0-0 2-12 2 1 1 5 3 21
Fabricio Oberto 2-2 2-2 0-0 1-1 1 1 0 0 3 6
Michael Finley 4-10 3-4 2-6 0-3 1 0 0 0 0 13
Tony Parker 5-13 1-2 0-0 0-2 5 3 1 0 3 11
Francisco Elson 0-1 0-0 0-0 1-3 0 1 0 0 3 0
Manu Ginobili 7-15 9-9 3-8 1-10 3 5 2 1 4 26
Jacque Vaughn 1-4 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 2
Brent Barry 0-2 0-0 0-2 1-1 1 0 0 0 1 0
Matt Bonner 0-1 0-0 0-1 0-0 0 1 0 0 0 0
Melvin Ely - - - -
Jackie Butler - - - -
Robert Horry - - - -
Beno Udrih - - - -
James White - - - -
TOTALS 29-72 22-28 8-23 6-39 15 13 8 6 21 88
FG %:.403; FT %:.786; 3PT %:.348
Points of TO:16
Team rebounds:9
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:1
Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Raja Bell 4-11 0-0 2-5 0-4 0 4 0 0 5 10
Shawn Marion 9-16 4-4 2-4 4-17 1 2 1 1 4 24
Kurt Thomas 5-13 5-5 0-0 3-12 3 1 0 2 2 15
Leandro Barbosa 3-12 2-2 0-1 1-4 2 4 1 0 6 8
Steve Nash 6-19 4-4 3-7 1-2 12 3 1 0 2 19
James Jones 4-6 1-2 0-1 0-3 0 1 0 0 1 9
Pat Burke 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Jalen Rose - - - -
Jumaine Jones - - - -
Amare Stoudemire - - - -
Marcus Banks - - - -
Boris Diaw - - - -
Eric Piatkowski - - - -
Sean Marks - - - -
TOTALS 31-77 16-17 7-18 9-42 18 15 3 3 21 85
FG %:.403; FT %:.941; 3PT %:.389
Points of TO:8
Team rebounds:6
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0
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