Amare - "We Might Not Have Taken Them as Seriously...

Some of Phoenix's lesser offensive production should be credited to Portland. So it's not clear how much better Phoenix can play against Portland. Using straight season averages isn't exactly accurate. Phoenix didn't play Portland every game during the season.

I think both teams can play better...Phoenix missed some shots, but so did Portland. Aldridge was missing shots he often hits. I wouldn't expect a similar cavalcade of errors by Portland to close games again.

Will each team play better? Not appreciably, IMO. I think the two teams are pretty evenly matched and what we saw in Game 1 will probably play out all series long (though not necessarily with Portland wins each time, of course ).

 

Clearly neither team was at their best. Aldridge couldn't hit from the perimeter. Rudy was missing wide open 3s. Camby blew an uncontested slam dunk. And as far as the Suns' 3 point shooting goes, the Blazers overall did a good job of closing on their perimeter players.

 

Outside of Miller, we were 13-21 at the FT line. That's not very characteristic of us either.

 

A team cannot rely on the three to win games. It seems like Phoenix is hanging all of their hopes on being able to hit three pointers and that's why they lost game one. I'm surprised Barkley isn't ranting about how Phoenix is a jump shooting team, and jump shooting teams don't go anywhere.

 

And all of those second-chance-points that Phoenix got. If we had actually boxed out and kept them from getting the 20+ second chance points, it would have been a blowout.

 

TV timeouts???? The only TV timeouts are the regular timeouts called by the teams, or the breaks between quarters and halves. Same as in the regular season. And game stoppages in general have nothing to do with preventing a running game. Once play resumes, the running team can go right back to running.

What stops a running game is good defense, which is the norm in the playoffs. There's more on the line in the post-season, so teams ramp up their intensity, and work extra hard to get rebounds or to get back and stop the fast break.

 

A lot of folks here are mentioning both sides didn't look their best. In the NBA playoffs, when teams can game plan for each other, watch a lot of film, and break stuff down, you can do a lot of damage from knowing your opponent. You will note that last night the Suns only got 5 fast break points. Half of their effective 3 point shooting is from pushing the ball and getting open transition 3's. The reason they didn't shoot well, was Portland didn't allow them to be in their comfort zone. Their 3's were half court execution 3's instead of transition open look 3's.

I could tell the game was in Portland pace by the 2nd quarter. If Phoenix doesn't do anything to increase that pace, I expect the same results Tuesday.

 

Wrong. There are TV timeouts during the playoffs that are set to happen at specific game stoppages during the game. I believe there is one per quarter.

 

Well, there are official timeouts that shift a stoppage of play to a full timeout after the 6:00 mark of every quarter, but that is during the regular season as well. There are no "TV Timeouts" in the NBA.

 

I think they're called "officials' timeouts," and they exist throughout the season, not just the playoffs. The teams are charged with the timeout, but they're called by the refs at certain points in each quarter if there have been no stoppages in play.

 

For the purposes of getting commercials in, for the network. So they are "TV timeouts," but they aren't specific to the playoffs.