duncan228
04-23-2008, 11:10 AM
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/24255059/
Meet Phoenix: The Valley of the Stunned
Suns must finally beat Spurs to reach their ultimate goal
By John Walters
"Nooooooooooooooooooo!"
As Tim Duncan set his feet and then lofted what would be his first successful 3-point shot of the 2007-08 NBA season, fans of the Phoenix Suns cringed. Sure they saw Duncan, the San Antonio Spurs' two-time NBA Most Valuable Player, who has helped end the Suns' postseason four times in the past 10 years, but they also saw John Paxson of Chicago in 1993. And Mario Elie of Houston in 1995.
They saw a team that yet again appears to be rattlesnake-bitten in the playoffs. Suns fans, welcome to the 2008 NBA playoffs: Where Anguish Happens.
Oh, it was awful. A fan listening to longtime announcer Al McCoy's broadcast of the game lost control as he was driving and drove his golf cart into a ball-washer. Breast-enhancement surgery consultations were canceled -- and not just for teenage patients. At the Kierland Commons shopperia in Scottsdale, someone was even spotted reading a book. Not a self-help book, a book-book.
Call it the Valley of the Stunned.
And any comments about it only being Game 1 were quickly washed away by an impressive Spurs win in Game 2 on Tuesday.
The Suns lost a wildly entertaining but ultimately excruciating double-overtime contest in Game 1, 117-115, to the defending NBA champs last Saturday in San Antonio. They blew a 16-point first half lead, but every Suns worshipper expected that to happen: Phoenix is the NBA's best first-half team.
Phoenix, in signature form, outplayed San Antonio in all but the game's final moments. They allowed a game-tying three with 0:15 left in regulation by Michael Finley, another such shot by Duncan, a buzzer-beater, in the first overtime, and a game-winning lay-up by Manu Ginobili with 1.8 seconds left in the second overtime.
"Heartbreak hotel," as McCoy, the voice of the franchise since 1972, would say. As cover-your-eyes television goes this spring, only the love scene between Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney in "John Adams" is more troubling.
Then again, it was only Game 1. It was only the opening playoff contest of a Western Conference tournament so exacting that it's a wonder any team will survive and win three consecutive series. Someone has to, by design, but there are times when you wonder if the playoffs out west will end like "Reservoir Dogs," with everyone taking down one another.
The Suns are not looking past San Antonio, however. Nor are their fans, dubbed "Planet Orange" last September by the team's marketing staff, a diligent if not astronomically savvy bunch. The Spurs may be the defending NBA champions, but they are also the team that has eclipsed the Suns in the postseason three times in the past five seasons.
No series since 1995, when Phoenix blew a 3-1 lead to the Houston Rockets and an 18-point second-quarter lead in Game 7 of that series before Elie's game-winning three, has been as painful for the Suns. Had Phoenix just closed out Houston in one of those three games, they most likely would have cruised past the Orlando Magic -- a talented yet callow team led by two future Suns, Penny Hardaway and Shaquille O'Neal -- in the NBA Finals for the city's first major professional championship.
Alas, it was not to be in 1995, and thanks to Robert Horry and a corrupt referee named Tim Donaghy, it was not to be in 2007. Let us not be too revisionist, though: The Spurs were the NBA's most formidable team last season, and even if Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw had not been suspended for Game 5 of the Western Conference semis last May, there's no assurance that the Suns would have won that game, much less the series. After all, San Antonio has an 8-5 postseason record at Phoenix since Duncan entered the league.
Still, if you are an individual member of Planet Orange (an "Agent Orange?"), you wanted this first-round match-up. You wanted Steve Nash and his band of inimitable first-named teammates (Amare, Boris, Leandro, Raja, Shaquille ... keychain-ready names they are not) to get another shot at Duncan, Ginobili and Tony Parker. You've waited 11 months for this, and you have no patience for some first-round series vs. Utah or Houston. If the Suns cannot beat San Antonio, then what difference does a preliminary playoff series win make?
You want San Antonio. You want to figuratively hip-check Robert Horry into an early summer vacation. You want Bruce Bowen's blood the way Chicago Bulls fans once wanted Rick Mahorn's. You want Eva Longoria to show up at U.S. Airways Arena and then show fan shots on the Jumbo-tron of all the Phoenix lasses who are hotter than she is.
You admire Duncan, but you want to see him lose.
You want, most of all, to see Nash win. For the Suns' own two-time MVP to be rewarded for last year's Hannibal Lecter face and all the passion he has instilled in this franchise since 2004.
It was only Game 1 of Round 1, even if it did not feel that way. "It feels like a Finals game," Duncan said afterward. "It's the first game of the first series, and we're going to have to muster energy up."
As will the Suns, who have had to pick themselves up/dust themselves off many a time since Nash returned to the Valley in 2004. Because none of these wrenching defeats would be so painful if the Suns, who have averaged nearly 58 wins per year since Nash became their starting point guard four seasons ago, were not Finals-worthy. But they are.
It's legacy time for players such as Nash, Leandro Barbosa, Raja Bell, Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire, who have been teammates for three seasons now. Unlike the team's rent-a-cop, O'Neal, none of them have championship rings. And this may be the last, or second-to-last, season that this thermal core of Suns has a realistic shot of winning one together.
This is their moment. Will Nash and the Suns be remembered as the NBA's most entertaining team -- over a four-year span -- that could never even advance to the Finals? Or will Phoenix at last win the gut-check games against a San Antonio team whose only real advantage over them is their fortitude?
Planet Orange? How about "Determi Nation?"
San Antonio. And if the Suns get past the reigning champs, then likely New Orleans. Then Los Angeles. Then Boston. Good luck.
Meet Phoenix: The Valley of the Stunned
Suns must finally beat Spurs to reach their ultimate goal
By John Walters
"Nooooooooooooooooooo!"
As Tim Duncan set his feet and then lofted what would be his first successful 3-point shot of the 2007-08 NBA season, fans of the Phoenix Suns cringed. Sure they saw Duncan, the San Antonio Spurs' two-time NBA Most Valuable Player, who has helped end the Suns' postseason four times in the past 10 years, but they also saw John Paxson of Chicago in 1993. And Mario Elie of Houston in 1995.
They saw a team that yet again appears to be rattlesnake-bitten in the playoffs. Suns fans, welcome to the 2008 NBA playoffs: Where Anguish Happens.
Oh, it was awful. A fan listening to longtime announcer Al McCoy's broadcast of the game lost control as he was driving and drove his golf cart into a ball-washer. Breast-enhancement surgery consultations were canceled -- and not just for teenage patients. At the Kierland Commons shopperia in Scottsdale, someone was even spotted reading a book. Not a self-help book, a book-book.
Call it the Valley of the Stunned.
And any comments about it only being Game 1 were quickly washed away by an impressive Spurs win in Game 2 on Tuesday.
The Suns lost a wildly entertaining but ultimately excruciating double-overtime contest in Game 1, 117-115, to the defending NBA champs last Saturday in San Antonio. They blew a 16-point first half lead, but every Suns worshipper expected that to happen: Phoenix is the NBA's best first-half team.
Phoenix, in signature form, outplayed San Antonio in all but the game's final moments. They allowed a game-tying three with 0:15 left in regulation by Michael Finley, another such shot by Duncan, a buzzer-beater, in the first overtime, and a game-winning lay-up by Manu Ginobili with 1.8 seconds left in the second overtime.
"Heartbreak hotel," as McCoy, the voice of the franchise since 1972, would say. As cover-your-eyes television goes this spring, only the love scene between Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney in "John Adams" is more troubling.
Then again, it was only Game 1. It was only the opening playoff contest of a Western Conference tournament so exacting that it's a wonder any team will survive and win three consecutive series. Someone has to, by design, but there are times when you wonder if the playoffs out west will end like "Reservoir Dogs," with everyone taking down one another.
The Suns are not looking past San Antonio, however. Nor are their fans, dubbed "Planet Orange" last September by the team's marketing staff, a diligent if not astronomically savvy bunch. The Spurs may be the defending NBA champions, but they are also the team that has eclipsed the Suns in the postseason three times in the past five seasons.
No series since 1995, when Phoenix blew a 3-1 lead to the Houston Rockets and an 18-point second-quarter lead in Game 7 of that series before Elie's game-winning three, has been as painful for the Suns. Had Phoenix just closed out Houston in one of those three games, they most likely would have cruised past the Orlando Magic -- a talented yet callow team led by two future Suns, Penny Hardaway and Shaquille O'Neal -- in the NBA Finals for the city's first major professional championship.
Alas, it was not to be in 1995, and thanks to Robert Horry and a corrupt referee named Tim Donaghy, it was not to be in 2007. Let us not be too revisionist, though: The Spurs were the NBA's most formidable team last season, and even if Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw had not been suspended for Game 5 of the Western Conference semis last May, there's no assurance that the Suns would have won that game, much less the series. After all, San Antonio has an 8-5 postseason record at Phoenix since Duncan entered the league.
Still, if you are an individual member of Planet Orange (an "Agent Orange?"), you wanted this first-round match-up. You wanted Steve Nash and his band of inimitable first-named teammates (Amare, Boris, Leandro, Raja, Shaquille ... keychain-ready names they are not) to get another shot at Duncan, Ginobili and Tony Parker. You've waited 11 months for this, and you have no patience for some first-round series vs. Utah or Houston. If the Suns cannot beat San Antonio, then what difference does a preliminary playoff series win make?
You want San Antonio. You want to figuratively hip-check Robert Horry into an early summer vacation. You want Bruce Bowen's blood the way Chicago Bulls fans once wanted Rick Mahorn's. You want Eva Longoria to show up at U.S. Airways Arena and then show fan shots on the Jumbo-tron of all the Phoenix lasses who are hotter than she is.
You admire Duncan, but you want to see him lose.
You want, most of all, to see Nash win. For the Suns' own two-time MVP to be rewarded for last year's Hannibal Lecter face and all the passion he has instilled in this franchise since 2004.
It was only Game 1 of Round 1, even if it did not feel that way. "It feels like a Finals game," Duncan said afterward. "It's the first game of the first series, and we're going to have to muster energy up."
As will the Suns, who have had to pick themselves up/dust themselves off many a time since Nash returned to the Valley in 2004. Because none of these wrenching defeats would be so painful if the Suns, who have averaged nearly 58 wins per year since Nash became their starting point guard four seasons ago, were not Finals-worthy. But they are.
It's legacy time for players such as Nash, Leandro Barbosa, Raja Bell, Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire, who have been teammates for three seasons now. Unlike the team's rent-a-cop, O'Neal, none of them have championship rings. And this may be the last, or second-to-last, season that this thermal core of Suns has a realistic shot of winning one together.
This is their moment. Will Nash and the Suns be remembered as the NBA's most entertaining team -- over a four-year span -- that could never even advance to the Finals? Or will Phoenix at last win the gut-check games against a San Antonio team whose only real advantage over them is their fortitude?
Planet Orange? How about "Determi Nation?"
San Antonio. And if the Suns get past the reigning champs, then likely New Orleans. Then Los Angeles. Then Boston. Good luck.