"The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." -- Mark Twain
Much has been made of the fact that the Phoenix Suns are not ready for the playoffs. What no one has mentioned is that the Suns are gutting out games that they really have no business winning. Just looking at the games on paper, you would think they would demolish the Pacers and the Bobcats. In both games they had trouble putting the teams away. In the Indiana game, they were down by 18. In the Bobcats game they had a 16 point lead and then got down by 7. But in both games, the Suns fought back and won. Not enough is made of the fact that the Suns are winning the games without running, with getting outrebounded and without staying in their true form. If they're winning now, just think how they will be when they are back to running and gunning.
Tonight they play the Hornets. Amare Stoudemire should be ready to play hard after missing the 2nd half of the previous game. Boris will ben in his 2nd game back from his back injury and I expect him to continue to improve - although I don't expect him to take many shots. Steve and Shawn will be Steve and Shawn. Hopefully Raja and Leandro will keep up their shooting prowess.
One thing I would like to see is less 3 point shots and more inside shots. I know some of the reason for that was because Amare Stoudemire was out but even before that they were shooting a lot of threes.
So while the Suns aren't playing well, they still are winning. And the intensity will increase next week as they start playing harder teams.
Editor's Note: TexSUN will be doing the analysis for the Hornets game in the diaries. Please look there for great game analysis. Thanks, TexSUN, for filling in!