NBA PLAYOFFS: Game 6 - (2) Phoenix Suns @ (7) Los Angeles Lakers l Thursday l 7:30pm l TNT l PHX wins series (4-2)

[SunsRback4Good]

Who: Phoenix Suns @ Los Angeles Lakers

When: Thursday, June 3rd @ 7:30pm (10:30ET) l TNT

Where: Phoenix Arena, Phoenix, AZ












Phoenix Suns starting lineup:


C- Ayton

F- Crowder

G- Bridges

G- Booker

G- CP3



Reserves: Payne/Cam/Craig/Kaminsky







Los Angeles Lakers starting lineup:


C- Drummond

F- Morris

F- Lebron

G- Caldwell-Pope

G- Schroder




Reserves: Caruso/Kuzma/Matthews/Gasol


Good lick charm!!!

[SunsRback4Good]

[Flying Colors]

Go in for the kill

[Bogyo]

Let Payne take care of them, rest CP - he should be there as healthy as possible for game 7, IF necessary. I have a lot of faith in Payne against this opponent, it is carbon copy of the Spurs-Dragic series. Noone can stay in front of him from that frontline. None of their C's, not hobbled Davis (if he plays), not even LeBron.

[RedIndian]

Closing games are tough as hell. We'll need CP and his game management to get this one over the line. Praying that he's healthy enough to give us 25-30 good minutes.

[Saberestar]

Let Payne take care of them, rest CP - he should be there as healthy as possible for game 7, IF necessary. I have a lot of faith in Payne against this opponent, it is carbon copy of the Spurs-Dragic series. Noone can stay in front of him from that frontline. None of their C's, not hobbled Davis (if he plays), not even LeBron.

CP3 will play in Game 6, no doubt about it.

He is too important to the team, we need CP3 to give us quality minutes as a floor general.

It is not gonna be easy, I expect AD to play and that would change everything.

[Bogyo]

Let Payne take care of them, rest CP - he should be there as healthy as possible for game 7, IF necessary. I have a lot of faith in Payne against this opponent, it is carbon copy of the Spurs-Dragic series. Noone can stay in front of him from that frontline. None of their C's, not hobbled Davis (if he plays), not even LeBron.

CP3 will play in Game 6, no doubt about it.

He is too important to the team, we need CP3 to give us quality minutes as a floor general.

It is not gonna be easy, I expect AD to play and that would change everything.

I've had groin issues - if he plays, he should be close to what he did in the first half of the previous game. We should attack him, and single coverage should be more than enough when he has the ball. I'm not sure if it's a bad thing for us if he does play like this. Obviously this depends on how severe the injury is, but judging by his face, it's not good.

This is also a reason why I think we should let CP heal as much as possible.

[AtheJ415]

Let Payne take care of them, rest CP - he should be there as healthy as possible for game 7, IF necessary. I have a lot of faith in Payne against this opponent, it is carbon copy of the Spurs-Dragic series. Noone can stay in front of him from that frontline. None of their C's, not hobbled Davis (if he plays), not even LeBron.

CP3 will play in Game 6, no doubt about it.

He is too important to the team, we need CP3 to give us quality minutes as a floor general.

It is not gonna be easy, I expect AD to play and that would change everything.

I've had groin issues - if he plays, he should be close to what he did in the first half of the previous game. We should attack him, and single coverage should be more than enough when he has the ball. I'm not sure if it's a bad thing for us if he does play like this. Obviously this depends on how severe the injury is, but judging by his face, it's not good.

This is also a reason why I think we should let CP heal as much as possible.

He won't be able to move side to side. Would be easy to guard.

I do think we should rest Paul in Game 6 to start and only insert him if needed. Payne has played well enough to try. We can afford to see how we play for half a quarter and see if we really need CP3.

[kwsqd]

Suns in 6.

[jsierra1985]

absolutely no chance in hell you rest Paul and NO SHOT he would allow it.

You play CP3....you go for the kill....Suns need to go to staples center with that same mentality they had last night..

AGGRESIVENESS

[ATTL]

Watch on YouTube

This is my favorite play from game 5, suns crowning LeBron.

[jsierra1985]

You do not want this to go to game 7

AT ALL

[Barkley6]

Few things:

1. You can't rest CP3 for Game 6. Two big reasons why, you don't give the defending champs two chances to beat you. That's stupid. You also don't want LeBron in a Game 7 (possibly with AD having more time to get right). You close it NOW.

2. Went over to the Lakers board to see what the sentiment was, and they are in full offseason mode. The rosterbating has begun, they're talking abut their championship window being closed (Lebron age and AD health), they're ready to move on from Schroder, etc. Will be interesting to see if the Staples crowd has the same mentality or if they get up for this one. Momentum early is going to be a big factor.

3. I can't see Davis playing. He's too easy to exploit if his lateral movement is limited by the groin (and it should be). He might be able to hit some shots, but he won't be able to stay in front of anyone and won't be able to get inside. I think him playing gives them an emotional lift, but doesn't really help basketball wise.

4. The Suns need to avoid a blowout. A loss is bad, but not devastating with the chance to come back home and close. But we can't get crushed and lose all the momentum and confidence we've built. Losing by 5 hurts, but we can bounce back. Losing by 25 is not the mentality you want to be in going into Game 7.

[Adrao]

All we now that we have to close it as fast al possible. No relax please.

[pj0tr]

Read on Twitter

This is quite a small cherry-picked sample. Overall in the playoffs, the Lakers are:

+3.7 with Drummond on the floor
-2.0 with Drummond on the bench

-15.0 with Gasol on the floor
+7.4 with Gasol on the bench

Gasol isn’t some magic answer that’s gonna save the Lakers. He’s shot hot from 3 so far but if that’s not on he’s a 36 year old slow moving center that can get massively abused by Ayton on the other end. The fact is there are no easy answers with Davis out of the lineup.

Tim does excellent breakdowns, and he does have a point that Gasol at the 5 when hes hitting 3s, DOES open driving lanes for LeBron to play like Miami LeBron. It works because PHX only has one good rim protector with Ayton, so I'd guess the Lakers try to get Ayton into foul trouble early tonight.

However, Gasol is a liability on the defensive end. Tim's data from Game 4 uses an extremely small sample size where PHX didn't have time to really adjust either to the LeBron/Gasol minutes exclusively on offense.

His PnR video is great too, but hes concluding that LA has resolved all of Phoenix's PnR moves after 4 games... The data says they have... with an effective Anthony Davis.

To say LeBron/Gasol will expose Phoenix tonight is absolute blasphemy when Phoenix's defense has held up all series, despite the huge size disadvantage.

The other issue with playing Gasol is that hes not gonna be offensive rebounding, which has killed Phoenix in this series.

So the Lakers essentially are trading more ability on offense for less effectiveness on defense... Which is fine, but remember Phoenix shot 38% from 3 in the regular season, and is only shooting 32% in this series, largely because of the Lakers defense.

And PHX IS generating a ton of wide open 3s. If they start hitting those, with Davis not playing/severley limited, they could blow the Lakers off the floor.

This was my post in the GT on the GB yesterday morning before Game 5. I think I was spot on with everything.

The Lakers aren't gonna resolve all of their issues within 48 hours.

I do expect the officiating in Game 6 to be tilted towards the Lakers, but if CP3 is able to play an effective floor game like he did yesterday, I expect the Suns to pull away in the 4th Q in Game 6, and close this series out.

[Barkley6]

Something I don't think has been mentioned enough is that Frank Vogel has not had a very good series. I feel like he's mismanaged timeouts, challenges and the Lakers rotation pretty badly. Even in Games 2/3 when the Lakers won, it seemed more that it was due to AD being aggressive (and getting a ton of foul calls) than anything Vogel has done.

He hasn't been able to find a Center rotation that works yet.
The guards he's played haven't been able to shoot the ball at anything like an NBA level (mostly while being guarded by Devin Booker who is not renowned for his defense, though he has been solid this series)

It seems like his coaching strategy is just let LeBron and AD be LeBron and AD.

I honestly don't know what the Lakers game plan was for having AD out last night, but whatever it was we clearly picked it apart. The effort we saw from the Lakers last night, to me is down to bad coaching. A team that is ready and prepared and getting the correct instructions in time outs doesn't dig a 30 point hole and never come out of it. I fully expected the Lakers to chip the lead down in the second half and we'd maybe win by 15-18. But that never came. That's a coaching failure. Vogel basically said "I have no answers" and I don't think he's gotten enough criticism for that.

Not that I care, let him be bad.....but I find it interesting that no one is pointing fingers at him.

[Saberestar]

Something I don't think has been mentioned enough is that Frank Vogel has not had a very good series. I feel like he's mismanaged timeouts, challenges and the Lakers rotation pretty badly. Even in Games 2/3 when the Lakers won, it seemed more that it was due to AD being aggressive (and getting a ton of foul calls) than anything Vogel has done.

He hasn't been able to find a Center rotation that works yet.
The guards he's played haven't been able to shoot the ball at anything like an NBA level (mostly while being guarded by Devin Booker who is not renowned for his defense, though he has been solid this series)

It seems like his coaching strategy is just let LeBron and AD be LeBron and AD.

I honestly don't know what the Lakers game plan was for having AD out last night, but whatever it was we clearly picked it apart. The effort we saw from the Lakers last night, to me is down to bad coaching. A team that is ready and prepared and getting the correct instructions in time outs doesn't dig a 30 point hole and never come out of it. I fully expected the Lakers to chip the lead down in the second half and we'd maybe win by 15-18. But that never came. That's a coaching failure. Vogel basically said "I have no answers" and I don't think he's gotten enough criticism for that.

Not that I care, let him be bad.....but I find it interesting that no one is pointing fingers at him.

In the NBA you need to have All Stars to win games. It is as easy/difficult as that.

The Lakers with LeBron and Anthony Davis are a really tough team to beat, but with just one of them they are mediocre. Vogel looks good with both on the court, without one of them he looks a bad HC. It is that simple.

Not even the great Popovic can make the playoffs without All Sars on his roster, that is why it was so important for us to get CP3 when we had the opportunity to get him.

We got CP3 for Rubio and Oubre, solid players but they would not give us a high ceiling as a team. You put CP3 next to Booker and you have a team with two All Stars and the sky is the limit for us with good role players around them.

[pj0tr]

Something I don't think has been mentioned enough is that Frank Vogel has not had a very good series. I feel like he's mismanaged timeouts, challenges and the Lakers rotation pretty badly. Even in Games 2/3 when the Lakers won, it seemed more that it was due to AD being aggressive (and getting a ton of foul calls) than anything Vogel has done.

He hasn't been able to find a Center rotation that works yet.
The guards he's played haven't been able to shoot the ball at anything like an NBA level (mostly while being guarded by Devin Booker who is not renowned for his defense, though he has been solid this series)

It seems like his coaching strategy is just let LeBron and AD be LeBron and AD.

I honestly don't know what the Lakers game plan was for having AD out last night, but whatever it was we clearly picked it apart. The effort we saw from the Lakers last night, to me is down to bad coaching. A team that is ready and prepared and getting the correct instructions in time outs doesn't dig a 30 point hole and never come out of it. I fully expected the Lakers to chip the lead down in the second half and we'd maybe win by 15-18. But that never came. That's a coaching failure. Vogel basically said "I have no answers" and I don't think he's gotten enough criticism for that.

Not that I care, let him be bad.....but I find it interesting that no one is pointing fingers at him.

Objectively, Vogel hasn't had a bad series at all. But he has the same problem any coach has when you have 2 top 5 superstars (in addition to AD being out): The role players have to step up, and they largely haven't for the msot part in this series.

The Suns strategy has been to pack the paint as much as you can, and make the Lakers take jump shots, mainly from the role players.

Vogel has been very good at countering Monty's strategies for PnR plays on offense, but again, that all works when you have AD, which is a top 5 defender.

The most baffling thing about Vogel is starting Morris last night. That lineup had NEVER started together this year, and Morris has largely been a non-factor.

I expected Vogel to start Gasol at the 5, and LeBron at the 4, given that lineups success in the 4th Q in Game 4, but he didn't do that. Granted Gasol is an absolute liability on defense at this point, but his lineups yesterday offensively were just fricking weird.

But I go back to the fact that the Suns just have the overall better, deeper team.

The x-factor this series was:

1) Lakers have AD and the Suns can't counter him
2) Lakers have experience and the Suns don't

Basically the Suns eliminated #2 by not being afraid of the bright lights, and now AD is hurt, and he was limited before he was hurt in Game 4.

[King4Day]

Let Payne take care of them, rest CP - he should be there as healthy as possible for game 7, IF necessary. I have a lot of faith in Payne against this opponent, it is carbon copy of the Spurs-Dragic series. Noone can stay in front of him from that frontline. None of their C's, not hobbled Davis (if he plays), not even LeBron.

Completely agree. Can't mess around here. Sit CP3 because LA will focus on him.

Last time, he played and we lost anyway. Moore has looked pretty good in his small minutes. I'd be comfortable having him get Paynes backup minutes while Payne starts.

Win or lose, Paul will get 3 days off. If we win, there's a chance he'll get even more rest before the next series.

[King4Day]

I have the same feeling I did back when Nash was hip checked. I was so excited because we tied that series and had momentum.
But deep down, you knew you couldn't celebrate thanks to the possibility of the suspensions.

For this one, I'm thrilled we won, but it almost feels like a loss. We're so early in the playoffs that, even if we get past LA, we have 3 more series to go if we want a ring. If Paul didn't sustain the fluke injury, I'd be ecstatic. But he did. And he hurt it again with minimal contact yesterday. To think that this team and the special season could go down the drain because Johnson and Paul had an awkward collision is just devastating to think about.
The door has never been more open for a championship and stupid **** like this happens.


If this were the regular season, there's a good chance Paul is out a month. Instead, he's going to keep playing at the risk of re-aggravating it. He knows how close he is and I imagine he won't let them take him out.