Thus far, mission accomplished. We split in Phoenix. The series is 1-1. Hey, Suns fan, kiss my fanny. Deeply. We gritted out a win and then watched a once a season shooting performance by Phoenix that they will not repeat. OK, good for them. I'd rather lose a playoff game by 30 than a gut wrenching 1 pointer where you feel a game was given away. However, here are a few observations for things I'd do in game 3... 1) After a made basket, toss the ball to the ref, or pressure the inbounds pass... just keep the Suns from running up court for a couple of seconds and allow our defense to get set. 2) After a missed shot, pressure the Suns rebounder to, again, give us a couple of seconds. 3) We have to get substantially more physical against this team. The Suns, except Stoudamire, are are a group of dollar store ***gots prancing around with their jump shots. Sweep their legs, jam their asses into the court... If we establish a strong physical tone the refs may even adjust to it and let us push them around a bit. Bring in some subs to knock Nash and others down, hard, 6 or 7 times. By the 4th quarter those jumpers will not be falling as their legs, hips and backs will be throbbing. In fact, if I were Nate, every time Nash dribbles thru the key and doesn't get flattened, the closest player to him comes out. I think we'll win two in Portland and take a 3-1 lead. We're going to win this series.
No! Its all Nate McDillion and KPee's fault! How dare you suggest we win another game-we just got blown out due to bad coaching and bad GM skills...
For one thing I don't expect the Blazers to get out rebounded and give up quite so many transition points in the Rose Garden. If they can clean the glass and limit second chance opportunities on defense and devise some way to get Miller the ball before 12 seconds have run off the clock they'll be in a much better position to grab a couple of games. The bigger question markes are: How effective will Nic be with his shoulder (assuming he can play)? Will LaMarcus play with more aggression at home, and will the bench pull a disappearing act again or will they step up like they did in game 1.
Phoenix is the worst defensive team in the playoffs by quite a bit. Our team shot .382 collectively for the night. Phoenix had only 3 out of 82 games all year where they held the opponent to under 40% shooting. (One of those three games was against Portland, and we still won that one.) It was the bad shooting that really killed us. Talk about our defense all you want, but we had so many missed shots that led to transition baskets...it was just absurd. Phoenix played perfectly, and Camby, Aldridge and Miller played abysmally.
Great root post (repped) and great follow up posts with terrific points. We've played them five times and only lost control of the pace once. I don't expect it to happen again. I bet we'll see them come in to Portland overconfident again. And if we don't have Nico, they may have a reason. That being said, you can't let Louis Amundson punk you. Pendergraph or Howard need to earn a flagrant Collison-style.
Me, too. It makes no sense to get out rebounded by this team. As to Nic, I want to see him play, but I have a lot of confidence in Cunningham.
I do too. Every playoffs it seems there's a guy who comes out of nowhere off the bench and suddenly asserts himself. That guy can be Dante if he gets the minutes.
