Henry Abbott: Phoenix: Out of Time

[some_user86]

Phoenix: Out of Time
April 30, 2008 11:16 AM

Shaquille O'Neal didn't hit his free throws. Tim Duncan nailed an improbable three-pointer. Steve Nash made uncharacteristic turnovers. Boris Diaw lobbed a key pass out of bounds. The Suns had those suspensions last year, when Steve Nash was also hurt. Leandro Barbosa went cold. Amare was in foul trouble. Grant Hill tweaked his groin at the wrong time.

You can nitpick. You can generalize. You can what-if into oblivion.

But in the end, you could have the Suns play the Spurs in a thousand series -- that practically has happened -- and it certainly now feels like the Spurs would win 800 of them.

The Suns have always had to play exceedingly well to beat the Spurs. If both teams play reasonably well, however, like last night, the Spurs win.

And win. And win.

At the beginning of this series, Mike D'Antoni and the Suns said they believed they were the better team. At this point, we know that's simply not true.

Congratulations, San Antonio, on yet another well-earned win.

It is right that America loves the Suns. The NBA was sluggish and boring there for a while. Then a point guard imported from Canada and a coach imported from Italy conspired to flatly ignore conventional wisdom, in a league where conventional wisdom has insane mojo. They did things a different way and, helped along by an important shift in how referees call games, they really did change the NBA.

D'Antoni and Nash had crushes on scoring. They showed the world what it was like, and now most of the league has tried dating a little with that dame, and it looks like they might be moving in together.

League-wide, scoring is now almost exactly 100 points a game. The league is in strong shape.

Thank you Mike D'Antoni and Steve Nash.

To understad D'Antoni just a little, it helps tremendously to read Jack McCallum's book "Seven Seconds or Less." Two things really stand out.

The first is that D'Antoni and his coaching staff are always telling players what good shooters they are. So many coaches preach shot selection. And shot selection is huge! But confidence is king when it comes to making shots. And after recruiting players who really could shoot, D'Antoni and his coaches resolved to boost their confidence. And the result was players who felt good about themselves and made a ton of big shots.

Take Raja Bell. He was a serviceable NBA shooter in Philadelphia and Utah. Under D'Antoni, he was one of the last guys the Clippers should have ever let shoot with the game on the line a couple of years ago. He shot the Suns into a decent lead Game 4 against the Spurs. That's a credit to Bell, and D'Antoni.

The other thing D'Antoni deserves an insane amount of credit for is turning Steve Nash loose.

Today is probably the day that all those advocates of top-down, over-controlling, over-coaching will be saying "I told you so." But without placing supreme trust in a supremely talented point guard, the Suns never would have even been an NBA theory worthy of rebuke.

There are players all over this league who feel they are being held back by controlling coaches. Most of them are probably wrong. But many of them are right. Too few ball-handling guards are empowered to be truly creative, play after play. Yet, those players who really can handle the responsibility -- o Chris Paul! -- need not have a coaching staff second-guessing their every move.

The Suns, the Suns that we know, were the team that got a good ball-handler and turned him loose. It didn't get the Suns a le, but it got a ton of wins -- even big playoff wins against people like Kobe Bryant and Dirk Nowitzki. One of these days, it'll get someone a le, and that will be a great thing for basketball everywhere.

In building and running this NBA team, the Suns boldly departed sphere of normal NBA decision making (you need a big man who can score in the post! you need bruisers!) and marched to their own polyrhythmic drummer.

They were the hare. The tortoise was the steady drumbeat of conventional wisdom.

Thump thump thump thump thump.

You can't dance to it. But, like a long march, it's sure not going away.

When did we learn the Suns' path wasn't to a le? Maybe we still haven't learned that. Maybe you could reboot, do the whole thing again, and they win it all next year.

But it won't be the same. At the mid-point of this season, the Suns' braintrust -- including D'Antoni -- decided that the dance party wouldn't get them through the long night of the NBA playoffs. It was time to learn how to march.

Enter drum major Shaquille O'Neal. (Ask not for whom the thump, thump, thump of conventional basketball wisdom tolls. It tolls for Shaq.)

It's like the marching band showing up at intermission of a o Puente concert. That's great work guys, but, um, what are you doing here?
O'Neal played admirably -- far better than almost anyone predicted. He did give Tim Duncan trouble.

But he was also slow-footed as a help defender, which is a mortal sin when charged with guarding the rim against Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.

He caught all kinds of lobs in the paint, as D'Antoni and company predicted. But instead of extending his long body to dunk those great passes, he made a full extension just to catch them. Then landed ... and got hammered, intentionally, by any Spur in the vicinity.

This is the dream of the Suns -- finding the open man in scoring position -- turning into the nightmare of the game being in the hands of a 50% free throw shooter.

TrueHoop reader Joseph emails:

They didn't lose because the key cogs of the D'Antoni's offensive masterpiece fell short and they didn't get screwed over by referees or the League.

They lost because they were no longer them.

A lot has been made of the Shaquille O'Neal trade and how Shawn Marion was their best defender. Nash now had a crowded paint he could no longer hover in before making perfect passes. They got older and slower and lost the reckless fun that made them the Suns.

Shaq did a decent job on Duncan. Shaq blocked and altered shots, pulled down boards and kept up with a tamer Suns' offense. But he took their iden y. He took one of the most beautiful teams in the league, a team that spawned the insanity in Golden State, and the "outscore all" mentality in Denver, and he ripped away their essence.

Last night, Steve Nash had his first assist in the third quarter.

Read that line again. Steve. Nash.

Amare deferred to Boris frickin' Diaw in crunch time. And you know why? Because Diaw had the height advantage. The Suns were playing match-ups -- the an hesis of themselves. The Suns were playing matchups! I almost threw up on my TV.

What little was left of the "Suns" left with them running the offense through him in the post. Nash was a "make a good entry pass, please" point guard and Amare was a "maybe throw down some put backs" power forward.

I know a lot of experts claimed "they couldn't win as currently constructed" (Really, though? We know that for sure?) and I know teams don't exist for my personal pleasure. But still ... this is how they wanted to go out? Amare with 15 points, and Nash with three assists. One win in five. Selfish Shawn Marion, smiling somewhere. D'Antoni, head down, hoping his center doesn't get fouled.

This is how the saviors of the league would fall? They deserved better.

What happens now? Reports are that somebody other than D'Antoni -- that international symbol of high-octane offense, who reportedly didn't want to make his team about Amare Stoudemire's post game -- will get to figure out to what degree the Suns will defer to NBA tradition.

The new coach, whoever it may be, will have to answer the question: can you listen to one of the funkiest beats out there, and still march?

It's not easy. It's not for everybody. But it sure can be done.

They wrote the book on that in New Orleans.

(Photo: Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty Images)

LINK: http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/...t-of-Time.html

[some_user86]

Henry Abbott is an idiot. Dude, the Phoenix Suns didn't invent some entirely new dynamic to basketball. Score first teams have always existed in the league in one shape or another. , Spurs (Gervin) were one of them. But there is a reason why the haven't been successful. Basketball is made of two components: offense AND defense. You can't abandon one component and expect to do well.

Abbott needs to quit acting like this is the death of basketball. This proves that he's moron who is nothing more than a casual fan attracted by the shine of Fool's Gold.

[Spurminator]

[Extra Stout]

And the crybabies cry.

[wildbill2u]

I think his point was that the Suns now are neither fish nor fowl because of the trade. They don't have a coherent game persona like they had before.

Half-fast = half-assed.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

In building and running this NBA team, the Suns boldly departed sphere of normal NBA decision making (you need a big man who can score in the post! you need bruisers!) and marched to their own polyrhythmic drummer.

Yeah, and they have zero les to show for it you dumbass.

Of course, this is the guy who whined about Hack-a-shaq and wished the league would extend the series to 9 or 11 or 13 or 255 or however many it would take for Phoenix to get an edge in games won.

And LMAO at the Suns somehow defining some new brand of basketball. The run and gun has existed in the NBA for a long time now, it's just that outside of the Showtime Lakers no one has been able to get to the promised land playing it.

And the song remains the same.

[leemajors]

well he did say the spurs would probably win 800/1000 times.

[bus driver]

Henry Abbott is an idiot. Dude, the Phoenix Suns didn't invent some entirely new dynamic to basketball. Score first teams have always existed in the league in one shape or another. , Spurs (Gervin) were one of them. But there is a reason why the haven't been successful. Basketball is made of two components: offense AND defense. You can't abandon one component and expect to do well.

Abbott needs to quit acting like this is the death of basketball. This proves that he's moron who is nothing more than a casual fan attracted by the shine of Fool's Gold.

wow....that is a great structure of sentences

[nfg3]

He actually made some good points, especially when he stated "They lost because they were no longer them". But to claim the Suns as the saviors of the league? Wow that a a stretch.

[ancestron]

Shaq did steal the Suns iden y. They didn't know what kind of team they were anymore, which led to a lot of mistakes.

[Cry Havoc]

As soon as the Suns started going to Diaw, I knew they were done. When Boris Diaw becomes your go-to guy in an elimination game in enemy territory, you are beaten already.

Every time Diaw got the ball, the Suns offense became a little more, "Let's stand around and see what Boris does." The Spurs use Duncan's post presence to attack, to free up passing lanes, to draw a double. The Suns used Boris posting up because they had no other way of reliably operating an offense that could put the ball in the hoop.

It's a testament to the Spurs defense. We hung the Suns nuts on our rear view mirror because they were too worried about playing their own game and losing.

[Dave McNulla]

why does this guy think the suns would win 200 series against the spurs (out of 1000)?

[FromWayDowntown]

Once more, for old times sake:

[leemajors]

Once more, for old times sake:

saved.

[spurscenter]

[timvp]

I can hear tears streaming down Abbot's face as he wrote that. It's a little late to be pulling the 800 out of 1000 card when he was so all over the Suns' nvts earlier in the series.

[FromWayDowntown]

I can hear tears streaming down Abbot's face as he wrote that. It's a little late to be pulling the 800 out of 1000 card when he was so all over the Suns' nvts earlier in the series.

Abbott's face.

Ok, I guess that's more understanable than Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy _Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_dadd y_.

I agree with the sense that Abbott is both really frustrated and nearly distraught by the outcome of the Spurs/Suns series. His editorial choices for the last week or so have been largely pro-Suns and, in many instances, anti-Spurs. His analytical writing has shared that bent -- yesterday, in posting his thoughts about Celtics/Hawks, he noted a belief that the Lakers, Hornets, and Jazz must be feeling much better about the fact that the Celtics look vulnerable; it took comments from a number of readers for him to finally edit the sentence to include the Spurs (the f'n World Champions, who were up 3-1 at the time)!! He's certainly en led to his opinion and I don't care if he hates the Spurs with every fiber of his existence (to me, it's like being in on a great secret that nobody else gets), but I'd like for him to have the juevos to at least acknowledge that dislike.

[Capt Bringdown]

Henry Abbott is an idiot. Dude, the Phoenix Suns didn't invent some entirely new dynamic to basketball. Score first teams have always existed in the league in one shape or another. , Spurs (Gervin) were one of them. But there is a reason why the haven't been successful. Basketball is made of two components: offense AND defense. You can't abandon one component and expect to do well.

Words of wisdom. This article just demonstrates that a lot, or perhaps most of sports writers simply don't know basketball.

The writers are just repeating the same lame bullet points over and over again. One has to wonder if they're writing articles like these for each other to read. Kinda like Fox news, isn't it?

[m33p0]

They lost because they were no longer them.

Would have lost any which way anyway.

[SpursWoman]

Once more, for old times sake:

FWD FTW!

[ClingingMars]

Abbott's face. Ok, I guess that's more understanable than Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy _Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_dadd y_.

*cough*

Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy _Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy_

- Mars

[bdictjames]

Im pretty sure Nash would have had lots more assists when Marion was there.

[ShoogarBear]

Abbott's face.

Awesome.

[ShoogarBear]

I agree with the sense that Abbott is both really frustrated and nearly distraught by the outcome of the Spurs/Suns series. His editorial choices for the last week or so have been largely pro-Suns and, in many instances, anti-Spurs. His analytical writing has shared that bent -- yesterday, in posting his thoughts about Celtics/Hawks, he noted a belief that the Lakers, Hornets, and Jazz must be feeling much better about the fact that the Celtics look vulnerable; it took comments from a number of readers for him to finally edit the sentence to include the Spurs (the f'n World Champions, who were up 3-1 at the time)!! He's certainly en led to his opinion and I don't care if he hates the Spurs with every fiber of his existence (to me, it's like being in on a great secret that nobody else gets), but I'd like for him to have the juevos to at least acknowledge that dislike.

Yeah, I was so pissed off I was almost one of those to write in about the omission, and I never post comments to blogs.

Interesting thing was early this morning, most of the comments to Abbott's latest post were slamming him for not acknowledging the Spurs and overrating the Suns' legacy. My take from that is that Sun Fan hasn't been doing much blog reading today.

Abbott and Doug Collins need to get a room.

[FromWayDowntown]

*cough*

Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy _Dirk_is_my_daddy_Dirk_is_my_daddy_

- Mars

How in the did that happen -- I had written "Elliott."