<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Brian Grant was in no rush to hit the showers after Wednesday's regular-season finale. Sitting in a corner of the locker room in Portland, Ore., with ice on his knees, he interrupted his own serious thought with a smile. "It's nice to be talking about the playoffs," said Grant, who missed out on the postseason last season with the Lakers. This time, the Lakers are back and so is Grant as part of the Suns, who begin a first-round, best-of-seven series at home Sunday with Los Angeles. They seemed to want to face each other. "You don't want anybody, but you have to play somebody," Suns coach Mike D'Antoni said. "It's tough, but we'll have home-court advantage and we'll play our style of basketball." The fodder is circulating that the Suns are ripe for an upset or a steep challenge. Phoenix has thrived off such doubt the past two seasons. "It can't hurt, but our team can't buy into it either," guard Steve Nash said. "You hear it so often and you might finally think, 'They're right.' " The Suns, who did not practice Thursday, immediately had Kobe Bryant on the lips Wednesday as some talked about containing Bryant and helping on him. But for a third straight day, Lakers coach Phil Jackson emphasized that Los Angeles can't afford to lean on his scoring. "It's not going to be about Kobe getting 40 points a night," Jackson told Los Angeles reporters Wednesday. "It's going to be about how are we going to use all the talents to do what we have to do to take a team apart."</div> Source
