We just match up extremely well with Phoenix. Batum and Webster play great defense on the wing. Andre can abuse Nash. Camby and Aldridge can outplay Phoenix's frontline.
Charles Barkley just said "The Suns are CLEARLY a more talented team...."......Hasn't been too clear in the last 4 meetings...2 of which were without OUR BEST PLAYER.
Charles is a moron and still thinks we are a jump shooting team, where he didn't give Miller any credit on how the Suns got schooled by him (31 points) and the 7 blocks that the Blazers have. Hes a dooche with no commentary skills whatsoever.
He also said homw not evene "a single person in Portland thinks the Blazers can win"... What a fat piece of horse shit...
I also think Gentry just isn't a great coach. If he was smart he would have left Barbosa in for 30+ minutes.
At the same time though, Barbosa is decent at creating his own shot and by himself can turn it into and up and down game. I fear him. Miller 'owned' everyone tonight
The Suns are a better 3-point shooting team. That's the only advantage I can see. They sure as hell can't rebound and bang inside.
If we get into a shooting contest with them, we lose. The Blazers will win if they can get themselves to the free throw line. It puts their players in foul trouble, slows down the tempo of the game, makes it so that we don't have to have as many field goals, stops the fast breaks, and makes the Suns play a slow down game themselves (repeat). As long as Bayless continued to go inside, he was going to get playing time. One more of those jacks he took in the middle of the second half and he would have had his butt removed by Nate. Bayless settled down and got himself inside. We had about 15 more free throw attempts than they had despite Rudy's 5 he gave up to Richardson in about 14 seconds there in the 4th Quarter. That will be the same gameplan for Game 2. The Suns will try to fastbreak more. The best way to do that is to get Camby out of the game, so I think they'll attack Camby and try to get him in foul trouble themselves.
If Phoenix hits the threes that they had tonight, we lose. That's the downside of having a perimeter-based team, but I don't know that we match up against them particularly well. Just better than we do against several other top West teams. As for Barkley: he is SO focused on the Suns being a very hot team that he's not paying attention to how often Portland has been winning. Fortunately his opinion is irrelevant, right? Ed O.
But if we box out like I know we can, they don't get the tons of second-chance points that they had. It was the second-chance points that kept them in the game.
