I've been doing some reading on Pounding the Rock today and finally came to the realization of something: Boy, we really DO sound whiny! I can come up with all the excuses in the world about why we sound that way and justify it all we want but I think it's time to man (or woman) up and realize that even without game 5, the Suns still could have won the series if they were "destined" or good enough to do so. The Suns were screwed in game 5. But it wasn't like that was an elimination game. Even with that loss, the Suns still could have won the series if they had been good enough. I think the Suns and Spurs were very evenly matched. The Spurs were the one team that I did NOT want to play in the playoffs. I would have much rather faced the Mavericks. But it wasn't to be. And if things would have swung a little bit differently (Steve's nose in game 1, Amare/Boris in game 5, etc) maybe we could have pulled it out. But then again the Spurs fans could say the same thing about game 4.
And I think I have a theory as to WHY the Spurs ended up being the better team in this series. It's because they felt like they got screwed last year. Spurs fans can say all they want about the Suns fans being whiny. But in doing some research over at PtR after last year's game 7 loss to the Mavericks, I realized that they sounded EXACTLY like we do now. And it doesn't sound pretty. Here are some things PtR said after the Mavericks loss last year (it's really long so I'm paraphrasing the main points below):
1. We totally outplayed them, but the refs helped them to win. I totally believe this. I will go to my grave believing this.
2. Neither Timmeh nor The Sickness (who was on his way to a pantheon Sickness game that night) deserved to foul out in Dallas.
3. [We lost] because we're "boring" and their {Dallas} owner has a googolplex dollars.
4. We're still better. I'm sorry guys, but we are. We just are.
5. We're still better than them, and I believe we will be for the foreseeable future. The zebras and some fluky things [messed] this series up, and fluky things will happen in small sample sizes. But you play this series ten times, and we win eight, easy.
6. I simply was dumbstruck that God or whoever runs this whole show let the Mavericks win, considering the behavior of Mark Cuban, the annoying high-pitched whining of AJ, and Terry's cheapshot to Findog's nuts.
7. Basically everything after "Here are my thoughts on a bunch of people/things. Beware, this post will never end."
So I'll stop my whining now and will move on to other things but just remember: don't ever let Spurs fans tell you we're a bunch of loud-mouth whiners. We're no different than any other bunch of fans (especially Spurs fans last year) that feel their team was good enough to win the series and just didn't quite make it...
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