<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">The <font color="#000000">Phoenix Suns</font> would love for America to believe that they were simply dizzy Wednesday night, dazed by a couple days of guesswork about which <font color="#000000">Kobe Bryant</font> they'd see. But that's not it. They look like a team preoccupied with something far more real and draining. Expectations. The Suns have seen their playoff bracket. They're well aware that neither of those 60-win Texas powers come into view until the conference finals. They know, most of all, that they're supposed to run freely and score liberally in first-round home games against a No. 7 seed. Instead . . . The search is on. Not for Forty Point Kobe, though. The search is on for the care-free Suns of yore, because these Suns give you the feeling -- even when you're not in the building with them -- that they're thinking about more than Bryant's Lakers. The Suns were so obviously dragged down by so many timid performances in Game 2 -- starting with <font color="#000000">Shawn Marion</font>, <font color="#000000">Tim Thomas</font> and <font color="#000000">Leandro Barbosa</font> -- that their coach was almost forced to take the unusual step of publicly acknowledging the "weight on our shoulders" after this 99-93 defeat. "It just seems like, 'Oh, G-d, if we don't get beyond the first round it's all been a failure,'" Mike D'Antoni said at his NBA TV postgame press briefing, volunteering his read on the Suns' body language. Putting the Suns in such a state in a span of two games -- <font color="#000000">Steve Nash</font>, remember, is about to be re-named MVP for what Phoenix achieved in the previous 82 games without the injured <font color="#000000">Amare Stoudemire</font> -- is quite an achievement. Even for proven champions like Bryant and Phil Jackson. </div> Daily Dime
