On the Road: Suns Weekly Checkup for 01/28/2008

The schedule shows the Suns played four games on the road this week, but to me it seemed more like two. Maybe that's because our guys were largely MIA for that debacle in Minnesota, and because NBA League Pass lamely did not show yesterday's matchup with the Bulls. As a result, I feel like I only got to watch half a week of basketball, so maybe I should just write half a report.

Well, looking back at the week that was, here are a few highlights:

• Steve Nash's fourth quarter MVP-caliber performance in Milwaukee got the road trip started off on a good note, and was somewhat reminiscent of his performance last March in Dallas. I want to see that again this Thursday against the Spurs.
  
• In what turned out to be brilliant timing, Phoenix native srp joined the front page here at Bright Side of the Sun. In his first post following the "promotion", he managed to squeeze something entertaining out of that Minnesota game, not to mention holding down the fort in spectacular fashion while I was away for the weekend.
  
• We had this year's version of 2006-07 Suns at Chicago with Friday's nail-biter in Cleveland. This time it was Shawn Marion with the game winner. After so many reports of chemistry issues with the Suns this season, this quote from Paul Coro's blog was music to my ears:
  "As Marion talked about his winning shot, Stoudemire yelled out, 'The Matrix!' Marion then made sure to mention the preceding plays on which Stoudemire drew fouls and hit all four of his free throws, to which Stoudemire flexed and then gave Marion a high five. It was about as good as the Suns' postgame locker room has felt all season."
• According to people around here who actually got to see it, yesterday's game in Chicago was the very definition of "ugly win". I wouldn't know, because as previously mentioned, NBA League Pass did not pick up this game when ABC dropped it from their schedule. I've heard a rumor that it was because of the league's agreement with ABC--no other games can be broadcast to out of market areas while ABC is showing a game. OK, fine. But at least make it available after the fact in the League Pass online archives. Ah well, at least it turned out not to be anything all that special (unlike the last time the Suns played in Chicago).
  

The Suns finished the week at second in the West, behind the New Orleans Hornets, who are the only remaining survivor from last week's four-way tie in the loss column. Since srp has already done a terrific job of analyzing where the Suns are compared to their Western Conference brethren, I'm going to forgo that part of the discussion this week and simply point to jasonsuns1's diary for a look at the tough stretch ahead. At least the Suns will be at home for most of it, so those of you attending the games in Phoenix get ready to help the guys out with a lot of extra noise!