The Suns beat the Nets by a pretty comfortable margin, Amare was a beast today hardly mising from the field while going 14-20 and showing why he was chosen Nike Baller of the Week. He scored 32 points and grabbed 11 rebounds. Marion had an off nigh going 5-16 from the field, but when you win who cares. He had a good all round game though, 12 points, 9 boards and 6 dimes. Johnson played good scoring 17 and grabbing 7 boards, he didn't see the charity stripe today though. Barbosa kept his nice shooting going, and Vouskhl was a beast on the board. The Suns won a nice one today and should look to keep it going. Box Score
Amare was just unstoppable, they did everything short of double teaming him, and he just went right past Martin, Collins, Scalabrine, everybody. I'm not sure why they didn't respect him more, even after he dropped like 3 buckets in a row, they still weren't agressively double teaming him. LATE LATE in the game they decided to, but then Voskul starting to get open baskets due to the double. K-Mart didn't quite show up... Stoudemire does like normal and just muscles and plays hard, it was too much for K-Mart, he struggled defensively against him, and when he did play offense he was too tired. His few buckets were easy wide open dunks. I have NO IDEA why D'Antoni left Marion and Stoudemire in until the buzzer... why not take 'em out for Zarko and Lampe? The game was well in-hand, and they did give each a few minutes in the 1st half... but when the game is over I'd rather see the guys who don't get minutes, get some. It not only gives them minutes and experience, it keeps Shawn and Amare from being injured! Back to Amare... he becomes the first Suns since Barkley to score 20 points in 10 straight games, and first since Marbury (this year) to score 30 in back-to-back games. 4 of his last 5 games he's had a double-double, and he's averaging 27 PPG, 10.6 RPG, 1.3 BPG, and shoots 54.4% since the All-Star game.
Great game. Amare sure made Martin worked hard and it clearly showed. Although KMart still got a double double, the rest of the crew were non-existent. Especially Kittles who suddenly turned cold after scoring 30+ points in the last game. Great win.
It would also allow the crowd to show appreciation and give them cheers, who knows what he was thinking. I'd really like to see Lampe get in during garbage time b/c as garbage as it might be its still good experience for him. Lampe had a block What I still wonder is what happened to Carbakapa's minutes, he wa in the rotatio before he got injured, but since he came back he hasn't been getting minutes.
Got to love league pass Amare completly destroyed Martin on the offensive end and in general. No one could stop him, too slow to even react to his moves inside. Got to love what this guy is doing and he is only in his 2nd season. I feel he will be a better verison of Shawn Kemp in his prime.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting AllNet:</div><div class="quote_post">I feel he will be a better verison of Shawn Kemp in his prime.</div> I'm sure. Parts of Shaq's power+ Parts of Dream's finnesse= Amare KMart couldn't stop him. No one could stop him. It could be because they're playing back to back games in two different time zones. That is after playing in the highs of Denver. They just weren't able to get their break going.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting InNETSweTrust:</div><div class="quote_post">They just weren't able to get their break going.</div> When asked about their transition game, K-Mart was quoted, "It was sitting on the sidelines in a suit." -- it's obvious Jason Kidd's absense was a factor in the game, but that had nothing do with Amare taking over the game... perhaps with Kidd the Nets would have scored more fast point buckets, and maybe even won the game... but Amare would have had the same success, Jason wasn't gonna guard him Also back-to-back games is no excuse, Phoenix played in Denver in Nov, the next day beat DALLAS!! The only thing New Jersey can blame is Jason Kidd for not playing... though even if he played I still don't see how Amare was gonna be stopped -- the Nets might have won, but Amare still would have had his numbers (if not more, seeing as Kidd's shooting percentage is lower than the lame FG% they had last night would have gotten him more rebounds!)
A guy did a study on back to back games, and the real reason teams lose more isn't b/c its 2 games in 2 days, but because normally (70% of the time I think) your second game on a back to back is a road game. He saw that when teams had the 2nd game at home, they won just as they usually would, but when it was away they lost as usual, its not an excuse at all. <u>Article</u> This is an article I found. Do teams really play worse in the second game of back to back games? I'm sure everyone has seen this stat at some point during the NBA season. Some televised game will show a graphic displaying a team's record in the second game of back to back games on consecutive days. The announcer will invariably comment on how tough it is to win the second game and he will probably even attribute this to fatigue. It's clear from the graphic that the team has a worse record in that second game than their overall record, but are they really losing more often than normal? As you are about to see, this is clearly a case of someone not looking at the entire picture before drawing a conclusion on a misleading statistic. One thing that is never mentioned when showing the second game record is that 65% of all second games are played on the road. This is because NBA teams almost never play home/home back to back games on consecutive days. In fact, it has only happened on 23 occassions since the beginning of the 2001 season. That's just 2.5% of all back to back sets. You'll see from the table below that the most common back to back set is the road/road set. <div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><br/>Back to Back Set% of Occur. <br/>home/road 32.0 <br/>road/home 28.3 <br/>road/road 37.2 <br/>home/home2.5 <br/></div> This table shows that the majority of second games, 69% to be exact, are played on the road and every NBA team plays worse on the road than they do at home. Over the same time span, the road team has won just 40% of all NBA games. So based on this, the average NBA team with a .500 overall record will probably only have a .470 win percentage in the second game of back to back games simply because most of those games are on the road and no other reason. But we need to look even further. We need to see what the winning percentages are for each set of a back to back. The following table shows those numbers <div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><br/>Back to Back SetWin % <br/>home/road37.3 <br/>road/home60.5 <br/>road/road32.9 <br/>home/home52.2 <br/></div> As we can see, teams playing at home in the second game of a back to back set win at almost the exact same rate that they do during all of their home games. But teams playing that second game on the road do act a little different. Teams playing the back end of a home/road set tend to play slightly worse (37.3% vs. 40%) but its not much of a difference and may be attributed to a low sample size. On the other hand, teams playing the second game of a road/road set do have a much more difficult time. This may be the only instance where a "fatigue" factor actually comes into play, or it may just be that road trips are a grind mentally. In any case, the only time when an NBA team will play a little worse is in the second game of a back to back set when both of those games come on the road. Since that scenario is also the most common, it will have the greatest effect on the second game record of back to back games, and consequently the second game win percentage for an average NBA team will be around 45%. In the end, NBA teams really don't play any worse in the second game of back to back sets, but it appears that they do because the majority of those games are on the road. So the next time you hear that announcer mention the "fatigue" factor for a team playing in the second game of a back to back set, you can just shake your head, hit the mute button, and enjoy the rest of the game. (unless its a road-road back to back series)
