Suns lost today at Dallas. It was a fascinating game as always, but the Suns dug too deep a hole to dig themselves out of. They were down by 17 early and fell behind 10, 12, 13 points many times in the game. Still it was impressive how they kept crawling their way back. They were down double digits even late in the 4-Th, but they came back from nowhere and the next thing you know, they are down 3 with 8 seconds to go. This offense is impressive for sure. It can score in bunches. But the Suns couldn't get that tying 3 pointer which would have sent the game to overtime under almost similar circumstances to the game last year which the Suns won in double OT. I would have loved to see the long faces of the Mavs and their fans if that had happened. Speaking of faces, I didn't see Cubes today. But unfortunately none of that happened and the Suns lost the game. In fact, Nash threw up an air-ball despite getting a decent look at a 3 off a good fake. That never happens for Nash especially against the Mavs.
The MP3 did have a great game with 21-18 and setup Amare for some monster dunks. Speaking of dunks, Grant Hill's flush on Diop was beyond awesome though he didn't have a great game. Blur and 3-D didn't have good games either and I thought these two guys killed the Suns today with critical, stupid mistakes. I am getting sick and tired of Diaw turning the ball over. He can't make this many mistakes for a guy with such a high basketball IQ. And Blur seems to have slowed down a bit lately after a great November. Amare and Marion had great games. Marion was all over the place and was awesome defending Nowitzki though the German was unstoppable today. Matrix's effort level was off the charts.
The problem with the Suns is consistency. As good as their offense is, it's really painful to watch their defense. There are stretches when you feel like not a single guy on the floor for the Suns can stop the guy he is guarding and this happens a lot when they play good teams. They are too soft inside and it's just frustrating to see their lack of D and also seeing them get killed on the boards. The Mavs got 19 offensive rebounds today. Pretty ugly numbers for a Suns fan and it's been the same story year after year for this team with respect to defense and rebounding. The only way the Suns can overcome all these deficiencies is through consistent effort on the defensive side. For some reason they can do that in spurts and not consistently. That has to change.
The Suns defense and their rebounding still is not at championship level, not even close. Unless they show the consistency, commitment and high effort levels at that end of the floor, they can't win the championship. The offense is fun to watch, but thats about it.
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