Phoenix Suns At Dallas Mavericks Game Preview: The Road Home

Roseless
Rondoless
Dirkless
Manuless

And still we lost 2 of them, if we wanna be a playoff team we need to seize the opportunities we have, Let’s bring a W home

7-9 GO!

*Key Points:

Hold Jason Terry to a 15 points game
Hold Odom offensive rebounds and easy baskets
Put Price on Jkidd
Watchout for Rodrigue, not a season high for him, should do it.

Marcin Gortat vs. Brendan Haywood (Strong Advantage Suns) , Haywood is no fool.

With Nowitzki, I think this one is a no-brainer for Dallas at home…Without him, we have a good chance and we need to seisze it. For me, Jason Terry is the one guy that can burn us. He needs to be the focal point at all times on Defense. We need to keep a guy like Price or Brown on the court at all timnes just to deal with him.

The only other offensive threat, Lamar Odom is just too passive to be a major concern. I’d let Gortat/Lopez deal with all night one-on-one and go from there. We hold Lamar to 15 & 10, and Terry to under 18, then that’s a good night for us and I think we win. We shouldn’t worry unncesarily about the others as Kidd is just a shadow of his former self, VC is not a threat unless he feels motivated to get us back for releasing him..but, I doubt it.. .Marion will get his garbage points and boards and it’s up to the Suns to do the rest…

Suns 91, Mavs 85….

1. Limit Terry – an entire evening of Price/BAMF should do the trick. It would be nice to see Price handle him like he handled Allen, this would give BAMF some rest on defense which takes us to

2. Production from wings. SteveHammer as good as it might be the last 5 games is not enough. We need steady 20-30 PPG from our 2 and 3. Dudley has been doing his thing of late but hopefully this is the game when BAMF explodes on offense as he pretty much won’t have the other teram’s biggest threat to cover on the other end. This is why I preach

3. Frye/Gortat on Odom. Haywood is bad on offense. Odom is smart – he will eat our rookie for breakfast. As good as Morris has been he is still a very naive defender. Odom would probably get the best of him with his mixture of outside shhoting and driving inside. I would much rather he stuck with Marion – he is very good on the boards and might effectively take Marion out of his element.

4. Go inside! – let’s not settle for 3’s! let’s drive inside with all we got – Brown/Gortat/Morris. We need to take it to this thin Dallas lineup.

5. IMO the most important for this game: play 1-on-1 defense!!!! Especially inside. Nothing gets Dallas going like open 3’s. So what if Odom abuses our PF once in a while. Let’s try to stay in front of our guys and stop hedging so much. Dallas without Nowitzki has noone commanding a double team. This way if they make shots, at least they are contested.

With his quickness, hopefully he can blow by old man Kidd for some easy layups. Also, I think any positivity generated by Dirk’s absence is countered by Carter’s absence.

Last time we played Dallas, we made Haywood and Mahimi look like Dwight and Love. Hopefully Morris in the starting lineup helps with that.

I think the morst important thing is the Suns secure their shoes strings. They’re not going to get it done with shoe laces trailing them like a cop chasing DMX on the 101.

Secondly

Keep Nash’s fingers moist. It should be a team effort to lick his fingers after every possesion. Yes, it maybe a little unorthadox but you do what it takes to win.

The Mavericks are still a dangerous team even when Dirk-less

felt the Mavericks were sort of Dirk-less well before Nowitzki’s recent injury.

is that there is no chance of a VC “air motorcycle vroom vroom” or Dirk sticking his tongue out after a fade away jumper. There still might be a Jason Terry imaginary airplane ride, Delonte West’s face, and Mark Cuban’s broski designed Mavs football jersey but you can’t have everything go your way.

Nine losses in a row!? That’s downright embarrassing. Good thing I’ve never seen or met a Mavs fan or they would be talking some smack.

Suns can’t underestimate Odom, West, or Marion. They have stepped up nicely this season at various times, Odom just recently. I think the key to a Suns win will be keeping Beabois from going off.

I’ll be a very happy camper. He lit us up from beyond the arc last game, we can’t let him do that to us again.

Keep Odom of the boards and try not to turn Terry into Kobe Bryant.

And I’m hoping he insults us in any interviews he gives tonight . Because the last time he talked smack, we freakin’ punched back. Let’s beat these jerks.

Still pissed about the niners game last night. We need Redd to score big for us tonight. Horus has to own the paint. Also need Chilly to attack the basket more.

is he still out of shape or does gentry feel he doesn’t need him

However, the last two teams the Suns played minus one of their star players they lost (see above), so the Suns cannot rely on this alone to help them.

You forgot the Rondoless Celtics, but your point still stands.

Also, I just wanted to say night classes suck. I’m stuck in here form 6-9. Hopefully I can join you to see the end of the game after class. 7:30 start + 2.5 hours = 10:00 finish, which means I might be able to watch a good 45 minutes of it. Hopefully the Suns are up 20 by then.

Go suns

in combination, and this seems to be a good strategy.

1) rebound the ball, or force turnover
2) push the ball up the floor, good things happen