<div align="center"></div> <div align="center"><font color="orange">Phoenix Suns</font> VS <font color="red">Houston Rockets</font></div> When: Saturday April 9th, 10:00PM EST/8:00PM CT Where:America West Arena, Phoenix Local TV: FSNSW <div align="center">Predicted Starters <font color="orange">Suns</font> <font size="1"><font face="Arial"><font color="orange">Steve Nash, Quentin Richardson, Joe Johnson, Shawn Marion, Amare Stoudemire</font></font></font></div> <div align="center"><font color="red">Rockets</font> <font size="1"><font face="Arial"><font color="red">Bob Sura, David Wesley, Tracy McGrady, Clarence Weatherspoon, Yao Ming</font></font></font></div> <font size="-2"><font color="red"></font></font> Keys to The Game For Phoenix <ul> [*]Ball Movement. The Phoenix Suns are a very good passing team, led by the league leader in assists, Steve Nash, who is having a MVP-type season while leading the Suns to a top 3 record in the league. They need to move the ball and find the open man tonight against a tough Houston defense. [*]Perimeter Play. The Suns are one of the best three-point shooting teams in the NBA, with three-point contest champion Quentin Richardson, Joe Johnson, Jim Jackson, Nash and Walter McCarty, among others who are very good three point shooters. If their outside shot is on, there is no stopping Phoenix. [*]Marion Continues His All-Around Play. Shawn Marion has arguably been the Suns best player this season. Unlike Amare Stoudemire who is the focal point of the offense, Marion has managed to score 20 points without having more than 10 plays run for him during a game. He gets most of his points off offensive rebounds, open shots and fast breaks. There is no one better than Marion's finishing on the break. If Marion can get his normal 24/13 game, the Suns could win big. [/list] Keys To The Game For Houston <ul> [*]Defense. The Suns lead the league in scoring and they are guaranteed to put up 100 every game. What the Rockets would have to do is force the Suns to take bad shots while scoring those 100, and also keeping up with the Suns' highly entertaining and fast paced offense. [*]Yao/McGrady come up big. If Yao Ming comes up big tonight, it would give the Rockets an offensive boost as Amare Stoudemire is undersized on defense. Although Amare might be a problem for Yao to guard as well, Yao can at least neutralize his presence on the other end. McGrady needs to continue his form against the Lakers and Warriors and give the Suns 30+ points. If this duo can score 55 points or more, it'll be hard for the Suns to stop Houston. [*]Mid-range. last time out against the Suns at the Toyota Center, Ryan Bowen started at power forward to match Marion's quickness, but the Suns left him wide open on offense. Sadly, Bowen couldn't convert on his 15-footers. If Bowen, as well as Wesley, can regain their shooting touch, the Rockets would be much better off. [/list] Prediction Suns-102 Rockets-105
This game will show if the Rockets are hungry enough to hang with the elite in this matchup. We've been considered several weeks ago to be the team that no one wants to play in the playoffs, but since then, our team has dropped and is fighting for the sixth seed. In this game, everybody needs to step up on both sides of the court. That means tough defense to stop Phoenix's stellar offense and enough of our offense to keep up with them. McGrady and Yao need to be ready and focused for this game to push the tide in Houston's favor. Plus, role players like Wesley, Barry, Sura, James, Mutumbo and Bowen should do their part for the cause. Lets hope they do. By the way, Barry will be making is deput back from his injury days ago.
Great news on Barry. We've been lacking his three point shooting and ability to push the ball on the break, especially with Wesley in a shooting slump. Wesley should take advantage of this game to break out of that slump with the Suns very likely to double-team Yao a lot. Btw, interesting situation we have with Yao and Hunter here. Yao supposedly swore vengeance on Hunter's cheapshot last game. Let's see what he'll do.
Looks to be a good game tonight, what did Yao say about Hunter? anyway it's good to hear Barry is back, but the games before he got injured he was in a shooting slump, I hope him and David are all good today, we need them to be, and obviously Yao and T-Mac have to come up big, i'm excited about this game!
Good going sura, u missed 2 very clutch fieldgoals, and then u miss both of the crucial free throws. If we loose, its cause of you.
Great win by the rockets, even with sura screwing up, the suns also screwed up with that missed dunk. The team looks like it has gotten over that slump of loosing to the hornets and warriors. It should make us confident against the sonics. Great job by tmac, made some incredible shots. he is much better on the road, which is comforting. Yao was great on stoudamire for mos of the game, the 5 fouls really slowed him down though. Deke was able to hide that, we were actually better with him on the floor.
i am really really frustated by our lack of ability to kill the game. i lost count of how many times we blew out our double digit lead in the fourth quarter. We just dont have the mentality and heart to kill the game down the stretch. As long as Rockets doesn't change this mentality, i will never feel secured even if they have a double digit lead after 3rd. and also, yao ming really had a bad game, amare really owned him
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting magnomonkey:</div><div class="quote_post">THANK YOU HUNTER!!! Yao Gets his revenge! </div> Yup. Yao got an elbow on hunter (most likely for his revenge) during the early 2nd quarter i believe and it got him the 3rd foul. I think he tried to do it in a subtle way but still got caught by the referee. Got into more foul trouble later on the game. But revenge is revenge. Well, there's your Yao mean streak for ya. If he did hard, probably could have escalated into violence, but i doubt Yao would caught that kind of commotion to get him suspended. lol
Yes! we won 98-97, Steven Hunter missed a dunk at the end that cost the Suns the match! Yao did get his revenge with a little elbow to Hunter which got him his third foul, but Deke was tearing it , playing 23 minutes with Yao Ming in foul trouble, had 12 points and 13 rebounds for us he also had 2 blocks. T-Mac was on fire tonight he scored 34 points in our win.. `We've got to play better, man, we've got to play better,'' said Tracy McGrady, who scored 34 points. ``Once they put that pressure on us, we kind of folded a little bit, and thank God we had a cushion.'' We wouldn't of needed that cushion had we not had two 24 second shot clock violations in the last minute, both times Sura had the ball in his hands but couldn't draw iron on the shot. When there was 7.8 seconds left in the game Sura had another chance, to make our lead a tad bit more comfortable, but he missed them both. ``I don't get paid enough to take shots like that,'' Sura said. ``He does.'' Was what Sura jokingly said about Mcgrady having the ball at the finsh. We have finally clinched the playoff berth, we have six games left to determine what seed we get now. Lets go Rockets!
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting devin:</div><div class="quote_post">Yup. Yao got an elbow on hunter (most likely for his revenge) during the early 2nd quarter i believe and it got him the 3rd foul. I think he tried to do it in a subtle way but still got caught by the referee. Got into more foul trouble later on the game. But revenge is revenge. Well, there's your Yao mean streak for ya. If he did hard, probably could have escalated into violence, but i doubt Yao would caught that kind of commotion to get him suspended. lol</div> Even so, that elbow looked quite suspicious to be called a foul. The refereeing this game was terrible, first that JB three that they ruled a two, at least two of Yao's fouls, and a push off by Amare on Deke on a shot that they ruled a Rocket foul. Nonetheless, we still ended up with the win. The best revenge we got on Hunter was none other than that badly missed putback dunk that would've won the game. As for Yao, he didn't really have a real bad game IMO, with the foul trouble and whatnot. He also didn't get enough shot attempts. I thought he did a good job on Amare. Sura's late game play was quite damaging, but I don't blame him for those two shot clock violations. Both times, T-Mac had held the ball up and passed it to Sura with about 3 seconds left at the three point line, and he had no option but to drive it in and attempt a prayer. Sura's last two free throws were really bad though, it would have been better in Yao's or T-Mac's hands.
Pretty good game for Houston although I agree with whatever, Houston can't close out games. Whether we have a single digit or double digit lead, Rockets always seem to lose fire by around the end of the third quarter and starting letting the other team to come back. Their defense just started to weaken and couldn't do much else on offense to even things out. Honestly, Phoenix should have won this game, I mean really, who misses a put back dunk. Hunter had a perfect rebound, uncontested, but well, he missed. Anyways, McGrady had an incredible game, basically putting Houston on his back while a lot of the role players had pretty nice games as well. However, Yao was kept in foul trouble a lot, and in my opinion, didn't do too good of a job offensively and defensively. Sometimes he would shy away in the wrong moment while other times just picking up stupid fouls. Hopefully he mentally prepares himself for the next game. By the way, does anyone else notice that some of the players have horrible in game decisions- like jacking up a three on a fastbreak or settling for a jumper when they could have easily drove in?
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting AznxBaller:</div><div class="quote_post">By the way, does anyone else notice that some of the players have horrible in game decisions- like jacking up a three on a fastbreak or settling for a jumper when they could have easily drove in?</div> yes i agree. There was once i remember yesterday when mutombo stripped the ball from amare and pass it to t-mac for a fast break. It was a 3 on 1 situation with the ball in t-mac's hand, wesley to the right and padgett (i forgot, probably JB) to the left. Instead of driving to the lane to draw the defender out or even attcking the hoop hoping to get a three point play, t-mac passed it to wesley for a long two (it's not even a three).. and guess what, he missed.. but well, what can we say, we are not a good fastbreak team anyway, fastbreak is not JVG type of play
I really dont mind of Jon Barry takes a three on a fastbreak cuz hes been making them all year, he was just off last night. But everyone else should get to the basket.
If Barry makes those pull-up threes, no one would complain. Although he wasn't making them last night, he has made enough this season to probably deserve to be cut some slack.
however sloppy the end was... you have got to admit a win is a win and against the team in the top of our conference, this is a great confidence builder, down by a two digit lead and leading by 14 is a big accomplishment and against a fastbreaking team in which we had trouble containing them in teh first half but held them in the second half.
It's one of those heart-beating games again. The Rockets were just lucky to get out with the win. Is that a divine intervention on the missed put back by Hunter? Hunter was shocked and could not believe it. He even told the reporters that he usually makes that shot 9 out of 10. Too bad he got the worst. When Sura missed those 2 FTs that could have given us at least a comfortable lead, I was just hoping and praying that the Suns would missed on their shots. This would bring some confidence on the Rockets. As the Rockets gain a playoff spot I hope they will continue to hold on the 6th spot. It will be a do or die between the Rockets and Nuggets for that spot. Though I have another thing in mind if the Sonics lose all of their remaining games and the Nuggets win all of their remaining game, the Nuggets will gain the number 3 spot. The Sonics need to win 1 more game to clinch the 3 spot but with five tries already and all came to a loss they would be hardpressed to win. The Rockets should not be overconfident tomorrow against the Sonics.
