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Same old Suns remain over-reliant on Nash
Game time: Suns 103, Spurs 98
With Shaq on hand from the get-go and with Mike D'Antoni replaced by a defensive-minded coach in Terry Porter, Phoenix showed the Spurs something old, something new, something borrowed and nothing blue except the Suns' road uniforms.
Charley's NBA tour
FOXSports.com's Charley Rosen has been watching every team closely this season. Now he has a scouting report on each one.
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 Magic |
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 Suns |
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Here are the particulars:
Offense
The Suns unleashed only five in-a-hurry shots — one each by Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire and three by Leandro Barbosa. Other blasts from the past included the Suns' two money plays — isolations for Stoudemire off some kind of motion and screen/rolls-or-pops pairing Nash and Stoudemire. In fact, it was the superb coordination of Nash and Stoudemire in the waning minutes that accounted for the Suns' winning margin.
The Suns also borrowed a double-high-post alignment that D'Antoni frequently used. Nash always dribbled off of Stoudemire's screen, while Shaq made a forceful dive-cut into the pivot — and Stoudemire faded to the middle. This play was also effective, if rarely used.
A few handoff weaves that led to corner isos for either Barbosa or Stoudemire were also quite successful.
Instead of running pell-mell, the Suns were very selective (and very effective) in pushing the ball. No surprise that these opportunities were more frequent when Shaq was easing his old bones on the bench.
If Shaq often blasted his way from the top to the bottom of the offensive sets, he also demonstrated a fondness for a favorite old ploy, i.e., simply setting up on the left box. When he did this, there was absolutely no movement in the offense.
For the game, Shaq had only 12 touches in the low post and was far from being dominant there. The big fella seldom set sturdy screens, but he did run a pair of screen-and-rolls (where he slipped the screens) with Nash wherein his determined cuts produced a pair of easy buckets. Aside from his working in tandem with Nash, O'Neal did most of his damage on offense by hitting 5-of-8 from the stripe when the Spurs opted to play Hack-A-Shaq. It's significant, however, that in the endgame when the Suns took over the game, Shaq was on the bench.
Nash carried the ball into the paint only eight times, a far cry from last season when the middle was open and he had the ball on a string. As ever though, Nash's decision-making in screen-and-roll situations made the difference down the stretch.
The Suns also had great success curling Barbosa off of single-and/or-double weak-side screens.
Otherwise, Grant Hill was the designated scorer (mostly on isos) with the second unit — Barbosa, Boris Diaw, Robin Lopez and Goran Dragic (who never tried to penetrate and was somewhat shaky with the ball whenever Nash took a blow).
2009 NBA Finals
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Sunday's Game 5
- Lakers 99, Magic 86 (Lakers win 4-1)
FOXSports.com analysis
- Playoff results, schedule
- 2009 NBA Playoff Central
- Rosen: Why the Lakers won
- Behrendt: L.A's title sequence
- Rosenberg: Kobe not done yet
- Tomasson: Kobe proves critics wrong
- Feigen: Jackson in class of his own
Video
- Postgame: Lakers celebrate 15th title
- Postgame: Kobe leads Lakers to title
- Postgame: Magic discuss Finals loss
- Marques Johnson's NBA Finals recap
Photos
- NBA Finals, Game 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1
For Matt Barnes, every touch meant a shot.
Lopez was disinclined to even look at the basket.
Diaw was an afterthought.
Meanwhile, Nash remains the primary motor of the Suns' still potent offense and therefore, continues to be the team's most indispensable player.
Defense
With Manu Ginobili disabled, the Spurs' offense was carried by Tim Duncan and Tony Parker, who were unstoppable in splitting 64 points between them.
Duncan cleaned Shaq's clock whenever he turned, faced, then either shot or drove. Similarly, any screen-and-roll that involved Shaq always generated lots of space for Duncan to launch an unmolested jumper.
These days Shaq can adequately defend an opponent who comes straight at him. But any kind of spin or change of direction either leaves Shaq in the dust or forces him to foul. While Shaq did come down with 13 rebounds, only two of them were snatched in heavy traffic.
On two or three sequences, Stoudemire fronted Duncan in the low post, and the Spurs were unable to make a successful entry. For the most part, however, Stoudemire let Duncan catch the ball, and his catch-up defensive efforts were helpless and hapless.
Lopez was earnest but played defense like a rookie.
In sum, the Suns' interior defense remains vulnerable to opposing post-up players who have even a modicum of mobility.
Nor did the Suns' bigs do an adequate job rotating in response to Parker's relentless penetrations.
Indeed, the most aggressive interior defense was played by Diaw.
What else didn't the Suns do on defense?
All things considered, the Suns' defense is every bit as porous as it was during D'Antoni's tenure. Which means that they still have to rely on their offense (Nash and Stoudemire) to win games.
While it's certainly early in the season — too early for Porter's defensive schemes to be fully absorbed — the Suns lack the stoppers to be able to implement their new coach's game plan.
Despite this inspirational win over the short-handed Spurs, if Nash gets injured or wears down, the Suns will undoubtedly suffer a painful dose of the lottery blues.
Straight Shooting
Hallelujah! The exhibition ... I mean, the preseason ... games are over, and the real season is underway at long last!
And I'm proud of myself for not having watched a single minute of any of these bogus contests. Here's my reasoning as to why the number of these unreal games should be drastically reduced.
In fact, there's only one reason why the NBA's (and the NFL's) preseason schedule is so lengthy: The generation of virtually free money for the owners.
Vox Populi
I've been reading the book by you and Phil Jackson, More Than A Game, for like the fourth time, and I have two questions about the triangle offense: If you could choose any current NBA big man to play the triangle, who would it be? And, how would you defend the triangle? — Andrew, Melbourne, Australia|
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Forgetting about defense, I'd pick Yao Ming for the following reasons:
To defend the triangle, the wings must be crowded and denied. The center-release used to counter this strategy (whereby the center comes to the foul line, receives a pass from a guard, then looks to make a dummy pass to the backdoor-cutting wing) can itself be nullified by having the wing-denier maintain contact with his man. This is exactly what the Celtics were able to do.
Also, jumping into a matchup zone after the first pass has been completed will also stifle the triangle.
Travels with Charley
I was 15-years-old, a senior at Roosevelt High School (in the Bronx) and a proud first-time member of the varsity basketball team. We had just finished routing Grace Dodge Vocational High School in an afternoon home game, and I was even more ecstatic because I had come off the bench to score my first varsity points — five of them on a put-back layup, an elbow jumper and a free throw.
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Worth a thousand words:
FIVE POINTS!
I was so happy that, instead of taking the Third Avenue elevated train for the four stops from Fordham Road to the 174th Street station, I decided to undertake the two-mile journey by foot. Merrily I skipped through Little Italy and across Tremont Avenue.
FIVE POINTS!
I aimed to cut about 15 minutes off my travel time by taking a shortcut through the wide construction site that obliterated 177th Street through 175th Street in preparation for the Cross-Bronx Expressway.
It was dark and the dug-up landscape was beyond the reach of the bordering streetlights, but my neighborhood buddies and I had easily scampered across the same route during the daylight hours on weekends on our way to the movie theaters on Tremont. And besides, I was floating in my own delirious reverie.
FIVE POINTS!
I literally came back to earth when I tumbled into a freshly dug ditch. Fortunately, the ditch was only four-feet deep, and I escaped with only a deep cut just over my left eyebrow.
With blood gushing over my face, I managed to transverse the construction site with no further injury, whereupon I ran the ensuing 10 blocks to the emergency room at Bronx Hospital.
Turned out that I needed five stitches to close the wound.
In my dazed adolescent mind, the five stitches somehow equated with the five points.
And I would gladly have suffered 20 stitches to have scored 20 POINTS!
Alas, those were the only stitches and the only points I amassed for the rest of the season.
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