That wasn't too bad, was it? The home team played about three and a quarters of pretty solid basketball. To paraphrase the great Patrick Ewing, the Suns gave up a lot of points but they scored a lot of points too.
At least right up to the point that the league's best defense showed up and put a stop to all that scoring nonsense.
It was an entertaining game for the most part. We saw some interesting things like the Sasha PavlO'Neal 4 step crab ball fake. LeBron James missed a WIDE open dunk. Shaq fouled out by sweating to hard. Cavs coach Mike Brown spent more time on the court then Jared Dudley. And then there was this....
With the Suns trailing by two points with about 8:45 in the 4th quarter LeBron missed a three pointer, Barnes rebounds and hits a wide open Jason Richardson streaking down the court like he was going 90 in a 35. The can't miss dunk ties the game except Mr. Richardson decides to play fast and loose and unbuckles for a 360 dunk. You know, to get the crowd on it's feet.
Unfortunately, King James has his wheels in overdrive too and comes from behind to foul block the shot. The Cavs comes back hit a three, go up by five.
Boom. Game Roasted.
Yes. It was a foul. No, it did not deserve to be called a foul. There is a rarely known portion of the NBA rule book (Chapter 4, section 17, para 7(r)) which states:
When the player in possession of the ball with a clear and unobstructed path to the basket chooses to make an ass of himself, his team and the sport of professional basketball by spinning, windmilling, through the legging or otherwise showing up the other team then any physical contact made by a defensive player who shall have shown a high degree of hustle and effort and heart to have not given up (sometimes referred to as bailed) on the play shall not be deemed a foul. Ever.
Jason Richardson, understandably wasn't familiar with this little known exception to the rules:
Aside from that, it was a pretty enjoyable game.
[Note by Phoenix Stan, 03/13/09 8:29 AM MST ]
Here's the rest of the post game audio including: LeBron, Mike Brown who took exception to Steve Nash's "charge" call on West; Hill and Nash. Audio provided by Sports 620 KTAR.
Box Score * Fear The Sword * Recap
6 straight losses is depressing enough so lets go to our happy place:
- There was much better offensive balance with six Suns in double figures.
- The Suns worked better together and moved well with out the ball. The shooting was varied and the Suns had a 64-20 points in the paint advantage which normally will win you the game (if you can get an occassional stop and keep the other team from shooting 52% from 3pt line)
- 17 turnovers from the Suns was barely above their season average. Not horrible
- Goran Dragic had 11 solid minutes of play. Probably his best game of the season and possibly his career. He looked pretty good on both ends of the floor
- Shaq being in foul trouble allowed Robin Lopez to play 9 minutes which is kind of what you want to see from your #15 pick. Playing that is
- Shaq didn't eat anyone even though he looked like he really really wanted to munch on that fuzzy headed kid a few times. No, no, not that one. The other one.
- Steve Nash looked pretty darn brilliant going 9-15 with only 2 turnovers
- Matt Barnes lead all Suns in scoring and managed not to get into a fight with his coach in front of about 3 million witnesses after getting publically berated for leaving a shooter wide open
- LeBron battled and scrapped and stole a couple of rebounds from his team mates in the final 90 seconds to acheive his third straight triple double. Who said padding stats was a bad thing? Not me!
- We won't have to worry about playing in too many nationally televised games next season
- The Thunder are coming to town on Saturday
- Zone Flash is coming to town and showing his face on Saturday too. We are meeting for beers at 5pm at Seamus McCaffrey's if you are interested in meeting the man behind the snark
Link to audio mp3 files: