bwgood77 wrote:That game 5 in 95 where Barkley went 1-13 in the second half and 1-6 from the line, and we STILL put it into OT mostly on the back of KJ and his 29, 8 and 8 on 59% shooting, was one of, if not THE most disappointing games as a Suns fan.
I remember watching the end of the game back then—it was excruciating, especially seeing Barkley miss free throw after free throw.
I viewed the game again about six years ago, and there was one sequence involving Kevin Johnson in the first quarter that needs to be noted. Barkley, playing loosely or sloppily (although he shot 7-9 from the field in the first half before falling apart after halftime) threw a bounce pass behind Joe Kleine's feet that Kenny Smith picked off for a seemingly easy and uncontested breakaway score. (Smith, after all, was one of the fastest guards in the open floor with the ball.) However, K.J. chased Smith down, rose up, and swatted Smith's layup attempt—without fouling—while keeping the ball in bounds as the Houston point guard crumpled to the floor. K.J. then picked up the ball and headed back in the other direction along the right side of the court, eyeing a posting A.C. Green on the right block. However, K.J. never really wanted to get the ball to Green. Instead, he wanted to hit Wesley Person high on the left wing, but he also wanted to draw Hakeem Olajuwon away from the left side of the court so that Olajuwon—whose combination of lateral quickness and wingspan allowed him to cover one side of the floor almost instantly—could not effectively challenge a three-point attempt by Person. Thus K.J. made a hand gesture of some sort indicating that he wanted to get the ball to Green—reminiscent of Dan Marino's famous fake-spike six months earlier:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSCfvrwR8uA[/youtube]
Once K.J. made that hand gesture, Olajuwon headed over to the right side in anticipation of helping on Green. Instantly, K.J. snapped the ball across the court to a now fully freed Person for a wide-open three, which he buried. In a span of a few seconds, K.J. almost single-handedly fostered a five-point swing, combining physical and mental brilliance. He showed that Russell Westbrook-style athleticism yet also his cerebral quality that rendered him one of the smartest players ever.
bwgood77 wrote:After taking the first two games by a combined 46 points, and stealing game 4 in Houston, they were ripe for the taking.
... plus the fact that Clyde Drexler was ill and scored just 4 points in 32 minutes of action, shooting 0-6 from the field and 4-8 from the foul line to go along with 2 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 turnovers.
bwgood77 wrote:You are right that the ball needed to go through KJ in the 4th, and fatigue likely played a part with Barkley, but as good as he was in the regular season and some playoff games, he really felt like a choker when it was finally time to close the deal in these games, whereas KJ was the opposite.
... mainly due to the difference in their conditioning, I believe. They could both excel at handling pressure and rising to the moment, but one of them was physically prepared to do so and the other often was unprepared to do so.
bwgood77 wrote:And if KJ was the guy needed to run the offense through in the 4th which proved most effective, I do think it would have been most effective to do so the whole game. Was it always necessary? No, but it likely would have improved overall chemistry to some extent.
I agree with you in general, and Cotton Fitzsimmons did somewhat reorient the offense in that direction after he took over as Phoenix's head coach (for the third time) in January 1996. On the other hand, if a team acquires a player of Barkley's caliber and talent, it does need to place the ball in his hands a fair amount and give him a fair amount of post-ups and "isos." And the Suns still ran a good amount of pick-and-roll with Kevin Johnson, usually with Barkley but also with others. Phoenix's main two options during those years were posting up (or isolating) Charles Barkley and running the pick-and-roll with Kevin Johnson; the question was whether the offense would tilt in one direction or the other. Unlike Paul Westphal, Fitzsimmons tilted toward Kevin Johnson.
Barkley's presence usually created a much less free-flowing offense than had existed before, but the Suns' chemistry proved fine in my opinion. Years after being traded from Phoenix, Dan Majerle once talked about how he had taken the Suns' chemistry for granted, because he subsequently learned it was not necessarily that way elsewhere. The Suns' defense after 1993, however, and the perils of ball-stopping in the fourth quarters of playoff games, represented genuine plagues.
