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The NBA schedule makers strike again. A day after they forced our beloved Suns to play on Christmas day, the brilliant minds decided to make our sqaud fly up to the Bay Area to run a track meet against the Golden State Warriors.
What shall we expect from our Suns? The good news is the starters were able to get some rest after drubbing theClippers for 3 quarters. The bad news is that Suns should arrive in Northern California at some awful hour and play a game later the same day.
The "Dubs" are coming off of a 108-102 defeat to the New Orleans Hornets to which Monta Ellis (who put up 35 points) said:
"IT JUST SEEMED LIKE ONE OF THESE GAMES THAT IF I DIDN'T HAVE THE BALL IN MY HANDS, WE JUST COULDN'T SCORE."
OK Monta. Good quote. Sounds good to me. If you are the main threat, well then we'll let you get yours as long as we can contain Curry, Randolph, and Maggette. Here's how the Warriors break down:
STAT | PLAYER | AVG |
PPG | Ellis | 25.0 |
RB | Randolph | 6.5 |
ASST | Ellis | 5.0 |
FG% | Moore | 60 |
FT% | Morrow | 87.9 |
3 PT% | Morrow | 46.4 |
BLK | Randolph | 1.5 |
STL | Ellis | 2.4 |
The numbers suggest a high scoring affair in this one, with plenty of offense and little to no defense. However, the Suns are notoriously bad in back to back games (1-4). I expect tired legs, which means bad shooting and worse than usual defense. But who knows, with only Amare Stoudemire playing more than 20 minutes of all the starters, we may have a better showing than usual. And just maybe the Warriors had a late Christmas dinner with plenty of tryptophan-laced turkey.
Here's how the teams break down statistically:
TEAM |
PPG |
FG% |
OPP PPG |
OPP FG% |
RBPG |
WARRIORS |
106.3 |
47.0 |
111.8 |
49.1 |
37.0 |
SUNS |
108.5 |
49.3 |
105.7 |
45.8 |
41.6 |
Since Santa and the Suns were good to me tonight, I can't really ask for anything else (can I?), so how about escaping with an ugly win? Don't forget to drop in Golden State of Mind and say hello to our pals over there and wish them Season's Greeetings!
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