Game 9: Phoenix (4-4) @ La Lakers (5-4)

[JohnVancouver]

man, a lot of passed blame on this board.

nothing to do with brown's "bad" defense. you could put Worldpeace, Battier, or... whoever. It doesn't matter. When Kobe gets like that, he just scores. .... C'mon. We're giving the guy Nash and a bunch of bench players and we want him to beat the Lakers? Seriously?

Trust an Irishman to make sense - I think we got our hopes up when we got up by 10 and looked like we could take them apart, and if we played like that for 48 minutes we could beat them. But ... we have no bench, which is why I was shocked to see Alvin using the same substitution patterns he used with the Wonder Bunch. We can't just throw Lopez, Hak and S Brown out there and hold or increase a lead.
And then Kobe went off and we fell apart. I may intensely dislike Bryant for his sense of entitlement, and all his others failings, but there's no denying he is one of the great basketball players of all time and he simply took us apart.
So - one first-ballot HOF'r, two legit all-stars and a not bad cast of supporting characters > Nash and the remains of the PHX Suns. What you gonna do? We were outgunned ...

There were things we can improve on - Alvin, for one, took our best lineup off the floor and we lost momentum. I would have tried to get the lead above 20 while we were clicking and hope that discouraged the Lakers. Then he left the scrubs out way too long.

and we didn't run at all, without which we're sunk. And we didn't use Childress at all, which I don't get. Surely this is exactly the situation we would want him in? On top of which we shot badly outside of that early stretch, and when we shoot badly we lose.

Bright spots .... Maybe I'll start a regular thing here and call it something corny like "Sun Rays" or "Sunshine through The Clouds":

Gortat still looked good - Price is growing on me. Frye didn't have a great game but he played tough. Anything else? No, not really

And as for bringing Sloan in, it would be Porter Revisited. Bad idea, and it would negate the one thing we have going for us, which is Nash.

Ah, the hell with it. Onward and upward.


one piece of advice - when you're juts getting over a really nasty flu, don't dink the better part of 2 bottles of Merlot. It's like peeing your pants - it feels good for a minute, but then increasingly less so.

[NiGhtWiSh]

Good game. Kobe in his Mamba mode, Suns with some mistakes, some bad luck, some great D and great O. I'm really optymistic.

Jerry Sloan replacing Alvin Gentry? Yes, yes & 1000 times yes. But - for next season. This one we need to finish with all that we have in tank.

[RunDogGun]

I was sort of joking about Sloan. To me, he is way to old to still coach. He looked old before he left, and extremely slow mentally. But that still seems like an improvement over Gentry.

[RunDogGun]

I just don't understand why Chilldress wasn't at least tried against Kobe. I still feel that Chilly is our best defender if Hill isn't 100%, and I understand that Chilly isn't a huge scorer, but he has to be able to shoot better than Hill's 1-12.

I love Hill and I do not want to trade him, but he isn't himself right now. And any coach expecting him to is a fool. If you have the depth at that spot, use it. Brown was trying too hard to prove to LA, that they should have re-signed him, and Gentry let it go on for too long.

Honestly, I started hating Gentry last year, when he kept taking out the hot hand, and losing games because of it. It was almost like Sarver knew that Nash and Hill would never tank, so Gentry had to do his best to lose games. And it still looks like that. We have winnable games only to watch Gentry let a team go on a big run, call a timeout, and make no changes. It is almost like he didn't learn anything from D'Antoni's stubbornness and it's results.

[rsavaj]

man, a lot of passed blame on this board.

nothing to do with brown's "bad" defense. you could put Worldpeace, Battier, or... whoever. It doesn't matter. When Kobe gets like that, he just scores. The problem is clear: Our team is old and after 35 minutes of intense play, our team just gets boring. I'll say it. Nash and Hill are actually not valuable after playing an intensely competitive game like that. I don't care what the numbers say or whatever percentages anyone throws at me. We don't have a closer. It won't be Redd. So stop hoping. We have a really bad 4th quarter team, and it will be like this all year.

Gentry being fired is a bad idea. C'mon. We're giving the guy Nash and a bunch of bench players and we want him to beat the Lakers? Seriously? The fanboys on this board are getting out of hand. We have NOBODY on this team. We won't win more then .550, we'll be the 8th seed at best, and we'll lose in the first round. Deal with it.

+1

We didn't play badly last night. We just don't have a closer. That will lose us quite a few games this season:

http://www.brightsideofthesun.com/2012/ ... h#comments

I'm upset about the loss, obviously, but not like "OMG THIS TEAM IS TERRIBLE!!!!!" No reason to be THAT mad unless you had super high expectations. Right now our roster is Nash and 11 role players.

[JohnVancouver]

http://bleacherreport.com/tb/bdaKL

[SunsRback4Good]

We played pretty good for the first 42 minutes only down by 1 point. But the last 6 min where awful and we got killed. Why couldn't Gentry put Dudley on Kobe, maybe Kobe wouldn't explode for 48 points. Hill isn't the same defender he used to be. We're putting too much pressure on Hill to guard the best players in the NBA.

[bwgood77]

Losing to the Lakers in LA isn't anything to be ashamed about, and for most of the game, we were right there with them. Then we just stopped hitting baskets.

We left Shannon Brown in there for far too long. I didn't understand why we signed a shooting guard who can't shoot in the offseason...particularly to be in an offense that needs to spread the floor.

Now, I don't understand why we left him in when he was launching shots and missing them for so long...luckily after awhile he started taking it to the hoop....but I didn't understand why we didn't yank him and put Childress in there.....one good thing about Childress...is that if he isn't feeling his shot, he won't take it....and he will continue ball movement....sometimes he doesn't do much, and doesn't add much, but he rarely takes much OFF the table by badly missing shots or turning it over....and he is a good rebounder and plays with hustle.

We just better win these next two before embarking on the brutal five game road trip.

[lilfishi22]

We left Shannon Brown in there for far too long. I didn't understand why we signed a shooting guard who can't shoot in the offseason...particularly to be in an offense that needs to spread the floor.

I'm still trying to figure that one out.

[rsavaj]

From Bright Side....Grant didn't do as poorly a defensive job as the box score makes you think

Here’s a breakdown off Kobe’s stats against Hill vs when Hill sat. Most of Kobe’s stats when Grant sat came at the end of the 1st when the Lakers went on that big run, but forcing Kobe under 50% when he’s having one of those nights isn’t bad. Another showing stat was the amount of shots Grant forced him to shoot outside of 15ft.

32:53 Min with Grant
29 pts, 3 reb, 3 ast, 2 stl, 2 to, 2 pf
11-23 FG, 0-2 3P, 48.8 FG%
14 shots outside of 15ft (60.8% of his shots)
7-7 FT (2 FT off defensive 3 sec technicals)

6:13 Min without Grant
19 pts, 2 reb, 0 ast, 1 stl, 0 to, 0 pf
7-8 FG, 0-1 3P, 87.5 FG%
3 shots outside of 15ft (37.5% of his shots)
5-6 FT

http://www.brightsideofthesun.com/2012/ ... h#88366512

[RunDogGun]

I didn't think Hill did a poor job guarding Kobe. Brown did. I just thought it would be better to throw more guys at him. Chilldress should have played in that game to see if he could do a decent job on Kobe. To me, just another loss due to poor coaching. Gentry let's the Lakers close out the first quarter on a 15-0 run when we were up by nine. Since we didn't score, why keep in guys that can't defend?

[GoldenKnight]

Kobe played near forty minutes. o.O
To take us down, that's pretty pathetic. Pau also played near forty minutes. Oh yeah, they got a game against the Jazz tomorrow. Bet they lose.

[sunskerr]

Kobe played near forty minutes. o.O
To take us down, that's pretty pathetic. Pau also played near forty minutes. Oh yeah, they got a game against the Jazz tomorrow. Bet they lose.

Lakers won and Kobe dropped 40... :/

I'd like to see our bench unit run run run up and down. They're very athletic with Price/Brown/Warrick and sometimes that seemed to give the Lakers fits.

[raff]

Oh that last half of the 4th was tough to watch.

[JohnVancouver]

From Bright Side....Grant didn't do as poorly a defensive job as the box score makes you think

Here’s a breakdown off Kobe’s stats against Hill vs when Hill sat. Most of Kobe’s stats when Grant sat came at the end of the 1st when the Lakers went on that big run, but forcing Kobe under 50% when he’s having one of those nights isn’t bad. Another showing stat was the amount of shots Grant forced him to shoot outside of 15ft.

32:53 Min with Grant
29 pts, 3 reb, 3 ast, 2 stl, 2 to, 2 pf
11-23 FG, 0-2 3P, 48.8 FG%
14 shots outside of 15ft (60.8% of his shots)
7-7 FT (2 FT off defensive 3 sec technicals)

6:13 Min without Grant
19 pts, 2 reb, 0 ast, 1 stl, 0 to, 0 pf
7-8 FG, 0-1 3P, 87.5 FG%
3 shots outside of 15ft (37.5% of his shots)
5-6 FT

http://www.brightsideofthesun.com/2012/ ... h#88366512

and here's a nice look at the last six minutes and how we folded:


http://valleyofthesuns.com/2012/01/11/b ... es-lakers/

[Frank Lee]

and here's a nice look at the last six minutes and how we folded:


http://valleyofthesuns.com/2012/01/11/b ... es-lakers/

Breaking it down good. Pretty much sums up many of the arguments the doomers were making.

Stormy weather ahead