STICKY - Suns vs Spurs - Round 2

[Christine-In-AZ]

http://www.hardwoodparoxysm.com/2010/05/03/nba-playoffs-spurs-suns-series-preview-the-welcome-embrace-of-ancient-enemies/

Loved that!
...thanks for the link

[ls2ws6]

ill be at the game tonight, i got a smokin deal on 2 tickets in 114 so im there

[Kerrsed]

http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=16122
Playoff Preview: Suns vs. Spurs

Two familiar foes meet up in the second round of the Western Conference Playoffs in the San Antonio Spurs and Phoenix Suns after being left for dead during the regular season. It appeared as if both team's window had closed, but one will be in the Western Conference Finals.

These two teams last met in 2007-2008 when the Spurs made easy work of the Suns in the first round, eliminating them in five. Their most intense and controversial series occurred in 2006-2007 though when suspensions helped the Spurs get by the Suns en route to winning it all. We can only hope that this series is half as entertaining. It has the potential to be quite interesting and with the series opener coming later today we take a deeper look at the matchups.

Point Guard: Steve Nash vs. George Hill – The Spurs' first round series against the Dallas Mavericks was George Hill's coming out party. He showed why Coach Popovich gave him the nod over Tony Parker in the starting lineup by carrying the Spurs past the Mavs with clutch shooting and great defense. Steve Nash is still one of the league's best assist men and shooters, but he can't be looking forward to going up against the Spurs point guards.

Tony Parker has always given Nash trouble with his speed and quickness and Hill will present a different set of issues for him to deal with. Hill is better than Parker defensively with length that will give Nash trouble. With that said Nash is a crafty veteran that will undoubtedly get his, but it won't be easy against the surging Hill that will be looking to make a statement against the former MVP.

Advantage: Suns, but not by much.

Shooting Guard: Jason Richardson vs. Manu Ginobili – This is one of the most intriguing matchups in the series between two players that were red hot in the first round. Richardson poured in 23 points and seven rebounds while Ginobili averaged 19 points and five assists.

Both players are exciting in different ways, Richardson with his explosiveness and Ginobili with his creativeness. It sets up for a great battle, but Ginobili has the edge in experience and is slightly better defensively. Expect big numbers from both of these players throughout the entire series.

Advantage: Spurs

Small Forward: Grant Hill vs. Richard Jefferson – All season long Richard Jefferson has been a source of disappointment for the Spurs and he didn't do much to improve on that in round one. Jefferson contributed a modest nine points and four rebounds. His best performance came in the second game of the series when he had 19 points and seven rebounds.

Hill's numbers against the Portland Trail Blazers weren't much better but it's not his role to fill up the stat sheet. He provides the veteran presence that helps keep things stable on both ends of the court. Jefferson is younger and has a little bit more spring to his step than Hill does at this point, but by no means is Grant overmatched.

Advantage: Even

Power Forward: Amar'e Stoudemire vs. Antonio McDyess – On paper this may look like an incredible mismatch in favor of the Phoenix Suns. It looked the same when McDyess lined up opposite of Dirk Nowitzki too though and he more than held his own in that matchup.

McDyess is not going to back down from Amar'e and is actually just hitting his stride. He's going to make Amar'e work for everything he gets by being physical with him and playing sound defense.

This is an important series for Amar'e as free agency gets closer and closer. He was good for 20 points a night against the Blazers but only grabbed five rebounds a game. That's just unacceptable and it will not get the job done against San Antonio. He could spend a fair amount of time on Tim Duncan defensively, so he's going to have to be up to the challenge or else Duncan will have a field day every game.

Advantage: Suns

Center: Jarron Collins vs. Tim Duncan – Now this matchup is as big of a mismatch as the statistics indicate. Jarron Collins would be set up for failure if he was asked to man up against Duncan all series long.

Collins is the starter by title only though in Phoenix and will likely only see time against Duncan at the start of games and after halftime. Duncan will likely see every big man Phoenix has try to defend him, but they won't have much luck. As much talk as there is about his game declining, Duncan is still good for just around 20 and 10 a night.

Advantage: Spurs

Bench: Channing Frye, Leandro Barbosa, Louis Amundson, Jared Dudley and Goran Dragic vs. Tony Parker, Keith Bogans, Roger Mason Jr., Matt Bonner, DeJuan Blair - Tony Parker is the best 6th man in the playoffs and possesses game-changing ability that nobody on the Suns have. Channing Frye will present a different look at the center position from what the Spurs saw against the Mavericks. They didn't have to worry too much about Brendan Haywood and Erick Dampier offensively. Against Frye they'll have to be very aware of where he is at all times because of his lethal jump shot.

Phoenix's second unit consists of more quality shooters outside of Frye. The Spurs perimeter D cannot falter while they are out there. Keep an eye out for DeJuan Blair, who could have a big series due to his strength and tenacity inside.

Advantage: Spurs

Coach: Alvin Gentry vs. Gregg Popovich – There's not a whole lot to discuss regarding who has the advantage here. Alvin Gentry would be the first to admit that Popovich is superior to him in every aspect of coaching, but it's not an insult. Popovich is simply one of the best coaches the league has ever seen and he's got his team peaking at the right time. Never has a seventh seed been feared as much as his Spurs currently are. The Spurs are definitely the favorites in this series and in order to pull off the upset Gentry will really need his group to play their best basketball. Trying to get Tim Duncan in foul trouble is a good start. Hopefully for Gentry's sake Amar'e steps up his play significantly playing opposite of Duncan.

Advantage: Spurs

Prediction: Spurs in 6

Funny how the Poopsworld writer compares the PG spot between Nash and Parker (when it should just be Hill) and then uses Parker in his argument for the bench (where Parker should be). Suns totally have the PG advantage if it was Nash vs Hill, but since he used Parker it made it "Suns, but not by much."

[KJ7]

RE: Benches - while Parker is def the best player on the bench for either side I'll take the rest of our bench over theirs. So yeah, I'd take our bench for strength in numbers because if Parker doesn't have a good game all of a sudden their bench could look quite ordinary.

One thing which has flown under the radar is that only two of their bench players in the first series played over 15mpg. Meanwhile we had 4 players on our bench with 15mpg or more. Hopefully this means that our starters are a little more fresh (TD clocked up 37mpg in the first series while none of our starters did more than 35mpg).

Doesn't sounds like a big difference but wasn't a major criticism of D'Antoni the lack of bench play? While bigs play into their late 30's, rarely do you see them clocking up so many mins at the age of 34 and I don't really see him playing too many less in this series.

[hunterxaz]

Anyone able to post this story? ESPN Insider about matchup

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs ... iem-100430

Spurs vs. Suns

This is the one series most likely to buck the trend. For starters, San Antonio had a slightly better regular-season point differential than Phoenix. It's also the only one in which any of our 10 experts picked the lower seed, and in fact only two of us took Phoenix despite its home-court advantage -- both had the Suns winning in seven.

Nonetheless, Phoenix has many of the same advantages as the teams above. I attended two of the three meetings in person and the Suns won both fairly handily. The one Spurs win was by three points Feb. 28 in San Antonio. Included in the regular-season series was the Suns' 112-101 win on April 7, when San Antonio was in the midst of its late-season push.

The one caveat for Spurs fans is that Garrett Temple played 23 minutes in place of an injured George Hill in that game. On the other hand, the Suns also felt confident enough that night that they sat Steve Nash the entire fourth quarter. Additionally, Phoenix didn't have center Robin Lopez in that game, and he may return at some point this series. While the reports I got last week in Portland weren't optimistic, he's apparently made progress since then, and there's a chance he could be active for the opener Monday.

Looking at the first round, Phoenix also had a much more impressive run. The Suns handed Portland three of its four worst losses of the year while racking up a plus-52 total margin over six games; while San Antonio outscored Dallas by only three points over the course of the six games. Portland had an injured Brandon Roy, of course, but the Blazers had a superior power ranking to Dallas. Additionally, it's hard to ignore the fact that the Suns are 32-9 over their past 41 games -- a 64-win pace.

As a result, I expect Phoenix to join the other three favorites in the conference finals -- they'll just need the most time to get there.

In any case, once we get down to our final four, things get a lot more interesting. For instance, the East's No. 1 seed hasn't survived in six of the past seven years.

Until then, if you're rooting for upsets, hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Chances are, Round 2 will be chalk city once again.

[PHXfan85]

http://www.hardwoodparoxysm.com/2010/05/03/nba-playoffs-spurs-suns-series-preview-the-welcome-embrace-of-ancient-enemies/

"We are in the Spurs’ territory. And there is no water, nor relief, nor hope here. Just dust and bone and championships."

That closing gave me chills...

[hitachi7]

If we were better we would have won game 6 and game 7 or not lost 2 of the first four. One game in a 7 game series does not change everything as you would suggest. Could we have won game 5 with Amare and Diaw? Yes. Could we have also lost? Yes.

The game was never played and thats the bottom line. However, we lost 2 of 4 with those guys. And we lost game 6 with them as well. So in a 5 game series we lost 3 of them at full strength.

Agree. In all those years, we were actually underdogs despite of our better regular season records, mainly due to DA's game plan. 2007 was the year with highest odd for us to beat the Spurs (40-60 in favor of Spurs was my estimate). But first, DA reinserted KT into starting lineup one game too late, second, we had the suspension. These ruined our final chance then.

For the record, Vegas had us as 60% favorites going into the 06-07 series. However, we went from 65% to win game 5 to 40% once the suspensions were announced. We were underdogs in 04-05 and 07-08.

[impulsenine]

I really don't see how the Spurs' and Suns' benches are even comparable right now. The Suns are ten players deep solid, and any one of them except Lou is liable to score 20+, often in bench minutes.

I also don't see how Jefferson and Hill compare right now.

JRich v Ginobili I agree is intriguing and even.

I also have to say that Nash really made this article look foolish tonight.

[rsavaj]

I posted this in the game 1 thread but this is fantastic: http://www.hardwoodparoxysm.com/2010/05 ... xposition/

[Sun Scorched]

We need to give Amare the ball in the high post every other time (at least) down the court. There is no way that Duncan can guard Amare anymore and there is no reason we shouldn't be forcing the refs into calling the obvious fouls.

This next game, I want Duncan on the bench with three fouls before halftime. After that, Spurs have nothing and Amare can have a field day.

[garrick]

We need to give Amare the ball in the high post every other time (at least) down the court. There is no way that Duncan can guard Amare anymore and there is no reason we shouldn't be forcing the refs into calling the obvious fouls.

This next game, I want Duncan on the bench with three fouls before halftime. After that, Spurs have nothing and Amare can have a field day.

He has been playing better from the post this season and seems to have gone back to his fade away which we haven't seen for a long time now.
It's too bad Mike D never really made an emphasis on posting Amare up on offense to improve his post game.

[dantian]

We need to give Amare the ball in the high post every other time (at least) down the court. There is no way that Duncan can guard Amare anymore and there is no reason we shouldn't be forcing the refs into calling the obvious fouls.

This next game, I want Duncan on the bench with three fouls before halftime. After that, Spurs have nothing and Amare can have a field day.

He has been playing better from the post this season and seems to have gone back to his fade away which we haven't seen for a long time now.
It's too bad Mike D never really made an emphasis on posting Amare up on offense to improve his post game.

True. DA gave Amare hope with lipservice like "point center", but never consistently tried to develop Amare there, as the alternative of having Nash create was so convenient. We have been wasting on Amare's talent/potential for so long, mainly using his athletic freak nature.

[DirtyDez]

We need to give Amare the ball in the high post every other time (at least) down the court. There is no way that Duncan can guard Amare anymore and there is no reason we shouldn't be forcing the refs into calling the obvious fouls.

This next game, I want Duncan on the bench with three fouls before halftime. After that, Spurs have nothing and Amare can have a field day.

He has been playing better from the post this season and seems to have gone back to his fade away which we haven't seen for a long time now.
It's too bad Mike D never really made an emphasis on posting Amare up on offense to improve his post game.

True. DA gave Amare hope with lipservice like "point center", but never consistently tried to develop Amare there, as the alternative of having Nash create was so convenient. We have been wasting on Amare's talent/potential for so long, mainly using his athletic freak nature.

After reading SSOL by Jack McCallum it sounded like Marc Ivaroni was the only one who worked with the bigs and was huge in developing Amare.

[WTFsunsFTW]

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs ... iem-100504

Can someone post? Would like to see which objective formulas he uses for subjective concepts...

[hunterxaz]

Williams barely outranks Nash in the PER category in the past three seasons, even though Nash spent two-thirds of a season mired in a half-court system that was destroying his stats.

In fact, if you compare Nash today with the Nash of five years ago, the similarities are remarkable: His points, assists, shooting percentages and turnovers are almost exactly the same. So is his PER, and, more importantly, so are the results -- the Suns again were the league's top team in offensive efficiency, this time by an even wider margin than usual, and they're once again 50-something-game winners pushing to make a deep playoff run.

Half a decade ago, that sort of performance earned Nash not one but two MVP awards. Somehow, the consensus has shifted to the point that Monday night on TNT, Charles Barkley left Nash off his list of the league's top three point guards.

This is crazy -- Nash has barely changed. We've moved on, looking for whatever was "next," but Nash has just kept on chugging out ridiculously efficient offensive seasons, and he's still doing it at age 36.

So if Paul supplanted Nash as the league's top point guard when CP3 put together his MVP runner-up season in 2007-08, and we're now looking to fill the title again as a result of Paul's injury-plagued season, shouldn't our top contender be the guy who previously held the title belt?

And if so, isn't there a strong argument to pull the lever for Nash? He led the "point guards not named Chris Paul" category in PER this season, and he would have done so last season if you included only the part of the season when Alvin Gentry coached the team.

Alas, I can't quite go there. I'd take Williams, and I'd take him for two reasons.

First, he's a much better defensive player. Nash takes an unreasonable amount of criticism for his defense, but he is vulnerable to dribble penetration by quick guards. Williams is a bit more stout on this front and is big enough to check wing players in switches.

Second, and more importantly, Williams is more durable. Remember, quantity can be just as important as quality. Although he has suffered some injuries, he has played in all but 24 games in his first five seasons, and his minutes don't need to be managed the way Nash's do. This is critical when it comes to the postseason, especially -- for instance, in the 2010 playoffs, Williams averages nearly seven minutes a game more than Nash. That difference is so large that Nash would have to outplay Williams by quite a bit on a per-minute basis to be the more valuable player overall.

I don't think Nash has done that. So although it's really close, I'll take Williams by a whisker.

So right now, my list of the top point guards in the league looks like this:

1. Williams
2. Nash
3. (Keeping it warm for Paul)
4. Rondo
5. Billups

Honorable mention: Rose, Westbrook, Parker, Nelson.

That might not be your list, and that's part of the fun. Nash, Williams and Rondo have renewed the debate over the league's top point guard, a matter that had been settled as long as Paul was healthy. And we might find ourselves changing our minds several times in the next two weeks as we watch those three light up the second round. We might even get the occasional urge to move Parker and Nelson higher up the list, as well.

[albasuna]

Dare I say this but... Rondo might be above Nash. If Nash was younger this would obviously would be a no contest. His role in the team success is not nearly as much as it was back in the SSOL days.

Deron Williams
Chris Paul (healthy)
Rajon Rondo

Steve Nash
Chauncey Billups

[hunterxaz]

Naw, no way. Nash still plays better than Deron and CP3, but since they're younger they're picked as being "better" than him, which is hogwash. Nash is still the #1 PG in the NBA, and will be if he keeps playing as well as he has been, or someone surpasses his level of play -- which no one else has really.

RIght now it's

Williams/Nash (interchangeable imo)
Rondo
Billups

CP3 is ok but oft-injured, so I can't really count on him. Post-injury he sucked big time, too.

[WTFsunsFTW]

Dare I say this but... Rondo might be above Nash. If Nash was younger this would obviously would be a no contest. His role in the team success is not nearly as much as it was back in the SSOL days.

Deron Williams
Chris Paul (healthy)
Rajon Rondo

Steve Nash
Chauncey Billups

Have you ever seen Rondo shoot the ball? If he could make a shot outside of 10 feet he would be MVP every year. Since he can't, putting him above nash is silly.

Just to clarify, you put a PG who hasnt played this season and another that cant hit the broad side of a barn above the only player in history to achieve 50/40/90 in multiple years that also runs the most efficient offense in history.

Just clarifying...

[ma_falaa_50]

hopefully phx wins tonight. I dont care about politics, i just want the suns to beat the spurs!!! hopefully Nash is going to be MVP form tonight. we need to win this game. San Antonio is hard to beat in San Antonio.

[KJ7]

Rondo looks half decent offensively purely because Celtics have had so many offensive weapons and he doesn't get targetted. When he starts attracting the oppositions best dribble-penetration defender then we can start talking about him being top 5 let alone top 3.

For me he's a younger, better defensive version of Andre Miller. I'd still take Billups over Rondo to be honest.

To think he's better than Nash is just crazy ... sorry ... but you put him on our team and he'd get shut down in the half-court (teams would just collapse on him and Amare). Put Nash on their team and he would avg the same numbers. And before you mention the obvious, yes I agree that the Celtics would be worse off defensively.