Hit a lot of nails on the head.

I look forward to a team thats going to go home, get a practice in and be ready to play Sunday.

I will be there to scream at them from the start, I too am getting tired of the slow starts and come from behind games. I am running out of antacids!

And I think you hit the nail on the head. The Suns did overlook the Hornets tonight. I think alot of us did. I did. I felt this game would be closer than the 20 pt blowout in Phoenix last week, but, I also thought the Suns would manage to win this game by 8 to 10 pts — a relatively comfortable win if you will.

But, as you say, in the NBA you can never afford to take an opponent lightly. You have to come out every game with focus and intensity, and if you don’t you’ll get beat. The good thing is that each and every team will have games like this. It is not like the Suns showed a unique weakness of character. Rather, they fell victim to a common ailment : overconfidence and lack of focus. The Lakers lost a game to Houston last week for the same reason. The key is how they bounce back. And hopefully the next game they play against an undermanned and/or inferior opponent will not illicit the same on court response.

I’ll make it short. I watched the game and the guys just didn’t box out. You can’t expect to out rebound an opponent with athleticism alone.

Always seems to kill the Suns. But I think Darren Collison was a big factor yesterday. He displayed some of the moxie that impressed me when he was with UCLA. The biggest thing is that two players, Richardson and Grant Hill, looked off of their games yesterday. That and if the Suns were paying attention, they would have noticed that nobody was guarding Amare much, and if they would have fed the beast, he could have gotten 40 points.I think even though the Suns are emphasizing the team game and balanced scoring, they still need to be aware when Amare has a mismatch. Okafor is simply too slow to keep up with him, and West had a horrible game.

The Hornets may be down, but they’re not out and they’re still an NBA team with NBA caliber players. They can ball and they had to play their best game to beat us by just 7 points.

The Hornets were jacked up like Arnold on roids. They just got embarrassed by us last week, and wanted to prove themselves, playing on their home court, with the boost of a new coach and a change in attitude. It was Thursday night on TNT, national television, and they knew it and wanted to prove themselves on the big stage. They were ready for the challenge of playing us without Paul, and we underestimated them.

I’m not worried about the Suns. If they are who I think they are, they’ll rebound and play great again. This loss won’t break them. We’ve been rebounding very well in our wins, and if we want to win more games, we need to continue to rebound well. Frye had an off night, as did Stat who seemed to get blocked and stripped every time he approached the rim.

Big deal. Bottom line for me is that this game doesn’t tell us anything except that we can’t win every time we get off to a slow start. This was eventual. Who really thought we’d only ever lose to top tier teams on the second night of a back to back? This won’t be the only game we drop against “bad” teams this season, but except for the first 2 minutes or so when the Hornets ran it up to 15-2, I didn’t see the Suns give up. We just got out played. It happens.

Detroit will tell us everything.

Agree with many comments above, and I mentioned a few in the preview:

-Peja a Suns killer
-Stat not protecting the ball and often just not catching a feed here and there.

I was right with those predictions, but wrong about virtually everything else:

The Suns didn’t school anyone-Hornets were playing loose, with nothing to lose. West wasn’t a factor, but Thornton and Brown were playing like it was a pickup game-relaxed and confident. The offensive rebounds we gave up? Embarrassing.

With a road game, anything can happen. And it did, the best team didn’t win and records meant nothing. In a sense though, I’m kind of happy this happened. We’d be crazy not to be happy with our start, but like a 20 point lead in the first quarter, players have a tendency to relax. Even though we have a veteran team, subconsciously I’m sure they didn’t come into this game with the correct mind set, that the Hornets were dangerous. It’s a lesson learned, even for the elders on this squad. It was bound to happen. Optimistically speaking I think this blunder of a game re-focuses the Suns. I expect them to come out and play tough against the Hawks.

and these slow starts are killing us! What do we have to do to overcome them?

On another note – reading all of your comments about how Lou wasn’t used, I agree completely and I’d add Earl Clark to that discussion. Check out this discussion from a friend at planetorange.

but aren’t we jumping the gun a bit on Amare…he’s played well this year so far. Last night seems to have been exception. One game…

I have always been skeptical about him being a max player and hitching our wagon to him but I’ve not had reason to fault him his season for effort

Far from being Amare hate, I’m curious as to why he seems more tentative.

Look, I love Amare as a player. He’s me 2nd favorite Sun after Nash.

But I think we need him to be ferocious if we are to truly compete with the likes of the Lakers. I am not hating on Amare, and, I didn’t get the feeling that others were either. We’re just wondering what is up with him.

disagreements arise at btots much more often after a loss than a win

keep winning, SUNS! it will make us happier :)

I am not concerned about this loss at all. Really you cannot win every single game and as much as I would like to see the team win an ass load of games it just will not happen. I think most of us frustrated here since we beat the crap out of NO a week ago plus the loss was on network TV.

If you read my comments in the game thread, I hated the Suns effort pretty much from the opening tip. That said, here are a few thoughts the morning after:

1) I’m OK with the Suns leaving Channing Frye in. He led all Suns with 10 rebounds. He’s shooting 43% from 3 point range even after last night’s dismal outing. Peja went 0-8 against the Suns last week and torched us tonight. These things happen.

2) Quote all the 4th quarter statistics you’d like, but these Suns are an awful defensive team. They are 25th in the league in defensive efficiency. When their offense isn’t firing on all cylinders, this team will lose games, and probably pretty badly against quality teams.

3) More on the defense: the rotations were mad sloppy last night. There was a lot of doubling and showing on screens that really didn’t need to happen against a team missing it’s offensive engine. As a result, Frye and Stoudemire were often out of position to box out on the defensive end or Peja was left alone in the corner. That was pretty much your ball game right there.

4) Amare Stoudemire: Dude was 8-12 from the field and 7-10 from the line, yet -11 for the game. How does that happen? 5 turnovers don’t help. Neither does allowing opposing big men to gather offensive board after offensive board. Also late in the game, he passed up a wide open look in the key to pass to Grant Hill for an awkward reverse lay-up that hill couldn’t convert. He’s hesitating in the paint. Still, we’re just barely 15% of the way into a season in which he had next to no off-season preparation for. Reserving judgment for now other than to say there is no way he should ever, ever be coming off the bench.

5) Lou’s minutes: I’m guessing that the drop-off in potential offensive production that Lou represents didn’t warrant him taking minutes from Amar’e or Frye last night, especially since Frye was the only Sun getting rebounds and Amar’e was the only one converting most of his shots.

6) Leandro Barbosa; Something is not right with him. What’s funny is that statistically speaking, he’s pretty much in line with his career averages so far this season with the exception of FT shooting and he’s playing 4 fewer minutes per game. I think a combination of the wrist injury and changes to the rotation have gotten into his head. Maybe it would help if Dan Majerle started giving him a page of game notes each night a la Dan D’Antoni.

Overall, this is hardly a panic game, but it did expose the Suns’ glaring weaknesses, particularly defense and rebounding. While I’m willing to call the rebounding discrepancy an anomaly since they’ve been doing well on the glass so far this season, I think the defense is a huge issue.

This is a bad defensive team and there’s no getting around that. The Suns are usually such an efficient offensive unit that their weakness on the defensive end is somewhat hidden. However, if there isn’t at least a moderate improvement to this aspect of their game, we can look forward to more games like this and fewer games like last week’s blowout of the same team.