San Antonio Spurs Defeat Phoenix Suns, 102-91

In a movie we've all seen before, the Phoenix Suns lacked the firepower necessary to climb back from a first half 14-point deficit to the San Antonio Spurs. Making the game just barely close enough to keep the fans watching and anticipating throughout, the Suns managed to claw back from a first half deficit to 5 points, with 5 minutes left in the game, when everything fell apart again.

A "rested" Steve Nash carried the Suns on his back for most of the game, logging 35 minutes, 20 points and 10 assists, most of which went to Marcin Gortat, the other bright spot tonight for the Suns. In keeping with his NBA-leading field goal percentage, Marcin went 11-20 for 24 points and a season-high 15 rebounds. Markieff Morris had another great game for a rookie, going 6-10 from the field for 14 points, and Jared Dudley added to the fun by finally making a three, going 2-2 from behind the arc and notching 12 points.

How did the Suns lose, then? Well, everyone else was pretty bad.

The Spurs capitalized early on the Suns' absolutely atrocious defensive rotations, getting the ball to DeJuan Blair and Tim Duncan early and often. Duncan was able to notch a season-high 24 points and matched his season high with 11 boards, while Tony Parker sliced up the Suns' "matador-style" defense as per usual with 17/9.

How about those other Suns?

0-7 Channing Frye

2-5 Grant Hill

0-4 Michael Redd

0-2 Hakim Warrick

0-3 Robin Lopez

5-10 Shannon Brown (I begrudgingly give him a full 5 makes, though. Some of those shots were hideous chunks in the general direction of the basket)

The Roll Call is after the jump.

All of the Suns were a - in the +/- column.

This was a win that the Suns needed badly in order to come out of this road trip with a win or two. Steve Nash looked absolutely tired and broken at the end of this game. I wouldn't blame him if he was tired of getting everyone open shots only for them to miss every time.

Ronnie Price was another bright spot tonight, I should mention. He ran the bench unit very well and ended up with only one turnover to go along with 7 assists in a game where assists were very hard to come by. He played his heart out and I have to give him credit for that.

This is a team that we all know needs TIME to gel and to work well together. There are a lot of new faces. Things like this take time. The problem is, time is one thing that is running out. With this condensed season and without training camp there isn't an opportunity to make sure your rotation and defensive schemes work before you have to go on a five-game road trip against the Bulls, Celtics, Knicks, et al.

Forgive my negativity but I know that this team still can make it work. It just takes more time.

Game Thread Roll Call: PHXgp, East Bay Ray, Airwave, Sun God, Aztiramtempe, Toon Army Sun, SteveNash, QuantumPhysicist, Lino Canaan, rsavaj, Spit_Fire, suns68, Fritzy, sonicking, sacardsfan, phxpurple, Juac, atkammoh, AcucracK, SUNS PORTUGAL, shawndy, 36_Chambers, ArizonaCactus, jc79, Dragic_is_Magic, CKH, good like a-1 beer, rzyn, MMotherwell, steve13nash, raxado, KD1, ilintar, TheAlexSkinner, ClipperBEAST, 7footer, silverandblack_davis, lixuec, RogerM, Migonads, Skii, iceythril, 2NASHTY, jog, noonoo, Jim Coughenour, Colton Dodson, Turambar, u_must_chill, Will Slaven, the new Bradfather, blanke, Berecki, paulimer, SuperSteve, keiththejourno, N8lol, WaveOcean, Suns R Us, sidepart, Pedro Ivo, sun-arc, Larfleeze, txzona
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