The Suns won the series, and they deserved to. They played harder than we did. Outside of some dirty play by Amare, they played great. Here's some things I learned about the suns: Nash is still an effective player, but the whole team needs to cover for him defensively. He's not great anymore. Stoudamire is a dirty player but stopping him requires a team effort. Gentry is a whiner, the suns got the benefit of most of the calls. I don't think these two things are unrelated - probably good strategy. However, it sucks that the refs let that happen. Jason Richardson can really shoot, and he played like he wanted to win this series more than anyone else on either team. He's been dominated by Roy. Sensing an opportunity to attack a weakened Roy, he dominated him. I was right about Frye all along, as I suspected. He showed mediocre, but improving, mobility near the end of last season. Basically, it took him a year to recover from his preseason injury. He shouldn't have tried so hard to come back early from it. He's an NBA player again, good for him. The Suns bench is underrated (at least by me). What did I learn about the Blazers? Either Rudy plays free and easy, or he sucks - hard. Roy was heroic, but a shadow of his former self. Bayless should not be given up on so quickly. LMA can shoot well far from the basket, but chooses to do so too often, which results in him not getting many offensive rebounds. (Wait, I knew this before the series!). He will make an excellent 3rd option for the blazers, but is a mediocre 1st option. This is still a GREAT team without Joel and Oden. However, without them we need EVERYONE else to be healthy. Against a fantastic suns team, Roy, Camby, and Batum were playing injured. Noble and heroic, but we're not going to win a series against any of the top 6 teams in the west under those conditions. Again, congrats Suns, you played great taking care of business.
The Suns took advantage of a wounded team, which is what they needed to do to advance. They're my second favorite NBA team, so if we had to lose, I'm glad it was to them. Just imagine the cheap shots the Spurs would be taking at Batum's shoulder or Roy's knee if we would have advanced.
Agree on almost all counts. The Suns definitely were the better team, no doubt about it. What hurts is that they actually WANTED this series more than our guys. How many times did we see Amundsun sneak in and grab a rebound one of our guys should have had? How many times did we get beat by the pick and roll? How many loose balls did the Suns beat us to? The Suns won this series on the hustle points, and that really hurts. And by the way, I don't think Stoudamire is a dirty player. If he was on our team, knocking people around and driving to the basket like a maniac, we would LOVE it. Don't kid yourselves.
Some props to us from Nash and Dudley. the_real_nash: RT @JaredDudley619: Shout out the Portland fans.It was so loud in there.They cheered there team on literally till end.I respect that.(ditto) didn't know where else to add this, so this seemed good enough.
What's sad as hell is that Nate's offense is so bad, we basically made the Suns look like shutdown defenders. There is nothing that we do, that even remotely puts another team on its heels, but yeah, congrats to Gentry and Suns for knowing how to exploit and neuter the Blazers Blech.
That's been my complaint with the series. We really did make them look like a good defensive team. They have no shot blockers in the middle, and yet we failed to attack them inside for long stretches, instead settling for jumper after jumper. Part of that is offense, part is on our players. But it sucks. And you'd like to say bencha guy, but for who?
That's a really fantastic point that I hadn't considered. We'd almost certainly get smoked in that series, as banged up as we are. If one of those two sustained career-harming damage in that series just so we could get swept, I'd feel a lot worse than I do right now.
Truth be told, this could have been the best 40 out of 70 games and Phoenix still wins this series easily. They're just the better team! (...at least for this year )
Easy there. If Nate's offense was so bad we wouldn't have won so many games at the end of the season.
Congratulations to Grant Hill. I was a huge fan of him back in the day but thought nowadays his age would severely limit him. He played great this series on both sides of the ball.
