Suns vs Lakers Recap

Gentry has thrown in white flag early in the second half in both of our losses. I wonder if this is their strategy to keeping Nash and Hill on limited minutes? If the game feels within reach, keep them in there, no matter what the minutes incurred. On the flip side, if it seems out of reach, bench them and don’t look back. In both of our losses, the starters all played fewer than 25 minutes. I’m not sure if I agree or disagree with the strategy.

You covered most of the thoughts I had/was having while watching the game.

I thought from the start of the game the Suns looked uninspired. I also totally agreed that they were dead tired and running on fumes. Perhaps the result we say was a combination of the team not having the necessary focus/mindset, but more importantly of their bodies not being able to cash the check their minds were writing.

You said it plainly:

It was obvious that the Suns were tired. They didn’t run, they didn’t get back in transition. They shot 37% from the field.

If nothing else, shooting 37% against the Lakers in their building will doom you to failure. When a team has dead legs, what is the first sign? That’s right, the shooting percentage goes way down. They don’t get the lift on jumpers, they don’t explode on fastbreaks etrc..I think that is what we saw last night.

That being said, I will give the Lakers coaching staff some credit. They were ready for the high screen and roll, and they did the best job defending our attack of any opponent this season. But again, it is hard to know how much to take out of this due to our 7 games in 10 days and their 3 days rest.

Despite all this, there are some problems to look at. One of them I predicted, the other was predicted by Stan and a few others. The first one I mentioned is that JRich would probably be shut down by Kobe, and, he was: he shot 2-9 from the field and 0-5 behind the arc for a total of 5 pts! Unfortunately, my prediction that Kobe would shut him down was correct. We can’t have that kind of performance from him and expect to beat the Lakers, unless the other guys step up bigtime. Especially Amare. And STAT didn’t do it last night. As you mentioned Panama he was 2-12 from the field in the first half. He just couldn’t finish around the basket. Against the Lakers you have to finish at the basket!

The other glaring thing was that they killed us in the paint. Props to Stan on that one. He predicted it and was correct. Bynum was 13-18 with 26 pts and 15 rebounds. We simply can’t allow him to dominate like that. Will Lopez make a difference? We’d better hope so.

that the Suns would out-rebound and have few turnovers than the Lakers, I’d probably chalk it up in the W column for the Suns. Too bad about the 20% discrepancy in shooting percentages.

I was surprised about the fact that in overall rebounding we held our own. I think two things killed us in this game: 1) poor shooting % — related to dead legs 2) Laker points in the paint.

But does anyone else feel like our bench outplayed their bench as well? One of the other few bright spots to this game.

We scored 60 to their 45, both had 5 turnovers, we had 1 block to their 2, both had 2 steals. Their bench killed ours on assists, 17 to 6, but ours outrebounded theirs 35 to 17.

I realize also that our bench scored a lot more time than theirs, but doesn’t that make our guys’ numbers even better, considering their time was split vs Lakers starters and bench players?

didn’t our bench play alot more minutes than usual? I think they played the entire 4th quarter, right? That doesn’t negate some of the positives — I liked the effort from Dudley on defense and Lou was very aggressive on the boards — those are things that recent Suns teams haven’t had.

I should’ve said our bench played more minutes than theirs rather than scored a lot more time, ha.

Anyway, hard for me to be upset at this loss. I think a discrepancy between the teams in the paint is inevitable, but to such a large degree is misleading. I’m totally fine with chalking this up to the starters just being worn down from the insane schedule so far.

And they played significantly more than the Lakers bench too, which is why I think you have to be pleased with their play more than anything because that means they spent a good chunk of time against Lakers starters too. I don’t really feel like their play cost us the game so much as the poor performances from a number of the starters.

is here:

http://popcornmachine.net/cgi-bin/gameflow.cgi?date=20091112&game=PHOLAL

…I was ready for another L… but anytime we lose to the Lakers I feel like I want to poke my eyes out with dull butter knives.

I won’t say much more about this because it is a moot point and a pointless cry – But if Bryant is going to start playing more in the post this year, and the officials aren’t going to tone down the star treatment – I’m sure we will see a lot more techs and fights this year with any team the Lakers play this year.

He’s thrown elbows and headbutts and stiff-arms his whole career. Now if he spends most of the game below the free throw line and in the post and in the paint it’s only going to be more frequent and spark even more animosity. I understand that’s what his game plan is, to punk you. To try and be more physical than you. Kobe is a freak offensively anyways – he will score and put up the star numbers that Stern so desperately wants from his money makers no matter what.. HE DOESN’T NEED THE EXTRA HELP FROM THE OFFICIALS BY NOT CALLING HIS INJURIOUS FOULS AND ANTICS IN THE POST – OR HIS 10 SECOND LANE VIOLATIONS. He should have fouled out of the game by halftime.

With that – I’m proud of how tough JRich played Kobe. I was waiting for JRich to dropkick him… but I’m glad he didn’t.

I don’t really have a problem with this loss. It keeps us just under the radar enough to carry on getting wins without people piling pressure on about us being championship contenders.

Okay, so we got brutalised but it’s one game and it’s only 10 games into the year. We’ll get better and later on in the year, we’ll beat LA.

I’m done dwelling on this one. Let’s look forward to a (more) rested Suns team, hopefully with a little something to prove on Sunday.

I was at the game as well and I have to say that I disagree that the loss was a “humiliation”. I think we caught the Suns with tired legs on the 2nd night of a back-to-back and maybe just a tad too willing to let the fatigue and frustration take what little interest they had away.

That being said I think we also got a pretty good look at what will ultimately cost the Suns from having any sort of chance at going anywhere come playoff time. The Suns (much like the Rockets only with more talent) simply don’t have enough size and “physical-ness” to contend with the Lakers, Nuggets & Spurs of the world.

The bench guys are impressive with their energy and tenacity (Dudley was still going hard at Kobe on D late in the game even though kobe was chopping him up and the game was out of reach), Goran and Lou are solid and Clark looks like there might be something there.

Unfortunately (IMHO of course) even a hot shooting night won’t help in a 5-7 game series come playoff time. The Suns are going to need to make some sort of trade that will bring them a mobile, physical big man or two to be able to take that next step.

But, has anyone else noticed that in our first 6 back-to-backs of the season we will play or have played Orlando, Cleveland, Denver, and the Lakers twice? The four teams that were in the Conference finals last year. The one exception being the back-to-back we played with Washington and Philadelphia. I’m just sayin’ it seems, like more than a coincidence.

is litlle bit more adjustments and having plan b or c… yes, we run, OK… that is our style and we have to try to force it… but all the spurs’, celts’, lakers’, damn even the nuggets lately can adjust if their gameplan is not working… what I am saying is, for ex. start of 2nd half… we made few stops, scored nicely couple of times and then allowed 15-0 lakers run with some foolish turnovers and forced shots and sloppy defense… nash had two turnovers I believe that resulted in easy fastbreak points… yes, that was not crucial for this game, but I hope AG have that thought and will try to add that piece to our game… we have pretty good half court game, we can post Jrich, Amare, slow down a bit when we our running is slowed down and shots not going in…

sorry for my english but I hope you understood what I want to say… :-)

But apparently Grant Hill jumped up and cheered “No Free Tacos!” after Lou hit the taco winner for Suns fans and taco loser for Lakers fans. Well played, G-Money.

came on the second night of a double header, against a team with a quality, and massive (relatively speaking) center..
Two things are going to help here: Amare getting back into shape, and the return of Sideshow.

Doesn’t mean, of course, we’ll be able to handle the Lakers when Pau returns (although, if we play them having rested, I fancy our chances a lot more), but it should shore up a glaring hole in our team game, and allow us to do more of the things that would give the Lakers trouble.

I pointed this out before, and it bears repeating.. we did everything right, offensively, except put the ball in the net. Now, you could chalk that up to the Lakers defense (although we didn’t have as much trouble vs the Celtics who are better in that dept), but if we shoot at our average percentages, we win this game comfortably.

I’m not sure if there’s any solace to be had after such an asskicking, but what that means, is that our approach is basically sound. We just have to become a little tougher (and I hope that the fellas are feeling a little angry about this loss), a little tighter, and more consistent. In short, all those things Steve, Grant and Alvin talked about at the beginning of the season, and that gonna take time to happen.

I do want to thank Denver and Atlanta for evening the playing field again. The Suns are once again tied for the best record in the league, though the Lakers would technically hold the tiebreaker with us.

Losing this badly on the second night of back to back games in different cities is no excuse, right LA? Clearly this team must not be all they’ve been cracked up to be.

we are back in 1st place on the west LOL

pretty happy about that