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Thanks for the insight.
After dispatching the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the 2010 NBA Playoffs, the San Antonio Spurs advance to take on another well-known foe: the Phoenix Suns. Since 2003, the Spurs and Suns have met in the playoffs four times -- with the Spurs winning all four battles.
However, this year's matchup is quite different than any of the previous four series between the Spurs and Suns. Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire are still headlining Phoenix's squad, however the rest of the equation is different.
While these Suns lack the high-end talent of other Suns teams of the last decade, they are deeper, more explosive offensively and better coached defensively. What do the Spurs have to do to continue their mastery of the Suns? Here are the top ten keys:
10. Manu Ginobili's Recovery
Manu Ginobili has been a superstar for the last few months. Unfortunately, he suffered a broken nose against the Mavs and his production has declined since the injury. Ginobili, if healthy, can have a lot of success against Phoenix's defense. But he'll need to learn to play with the broken nose in addition to fighting any fatigue caused by shouldering so much of the load recently. A Ginobili at 75% likely won't be enough for the Spurs to advance to the Western Conference Finals.
9. Make Steve Nash Shoot
Steve Nash has a hip injury that hindered his play in the first round, especially in Game 6. In his last two games, he's only 4-for-12 from the field with 12 turnovers in 58 minutes. Since Nash is always most deadly against the Spurs when he's racking up assists, making him score rather than distribute has been the gameplan throughout the years. If he's injured at all, cutting off his passing lanes and forcing him to score is even more important than usual.
8. Tony Parker's Penetration
The Suns do a lot of things well but protecting the rim isn't one of their strengths. This becomes especially true when the Suns have Stoudemire and Channing Frye on the court at the same time. Parker destroyed the Suns in 2008 and, although he'll be coming off the bench, he should have plenty of chances to leave his mark. The Spurs don't need Parker to dominate but if he can average 20 points per game, San Antonio should be in good shape.
7. Offensive Rebounding
Another weakness the Spurs can exploit is on the offensive glass. The Suns are a poor defensive rebounding team so the bigs crashing the offensive boards should yield good results. If DeJuan Blair can be competent on the defensive end and keep up with the swifter Suns, he has a chance to change games by dominating the offensive glass. Antonio McDyess and Tim Duncan should also try to take advantage of this weakness.
6. Slowing Jason Richardson
Jason Richardson was the best player on the Suns in their first round matchup against the Portland Trail Blazers. He averaged 23.5 points on 52.7% shooting from the field, including 22-of-43 from three-point range. (Amazingly, he had only one turnover in the entire series.) Richardson is an elite athlete with great range who likes to get out and run. The most difficult part of slowing him down is he gets such high elevation on his jumper that he becomes virtually unguardable when he gets hot. With that in mind, prevention is the best medicine. Keep Richardson from getting easy buckets in transition, keep a defender close to him at all times and try to turn him into a passer. In other words, the Spurs need to defend him like they defended Shawn Marion when he was with the Suns.
5. Shooters Stepping Up
The Spurs had only three players hit more than one three-pointer against the Mavs: Ginobili, George Hill and Matt Bonner. In total, the Spurs were 25-for-78 (32.1%) on threes against the Mavs. If the Spurs don't drastically improve on their three-point shooting against the Suns, they won't win the series. Phoenix will be throwing more double-teams at San Antonio, which means the Spurs will be forced to shoot more threes.
4. Create Depth
Typically, it has been the Spurs who have more depth when up against the Suns. Not this year. The Spurs were relegated to basically a six man rotation by the end of the series against the Mavs. The Suns, on the other hand, will use a rotation that features ten players. All ten could feasibly average more than 15 minutes per game. Since this series has limited rest between games, there's simply no way the Spurs will hold up for the duration of the series if they only have six players along for the ride. Somehow the coaching staff is going to have to cajole a rotation of eight or nine players.
3. Transition Defense
Transition defense was a key against the Mavs. Versus the Suns, transition defense is exponentially more important. Phoenix is once again the best offensive team in the NBA and they are murder when out on the break. Their roster is filled with young, combustible players. A few turnovers or not getting back on D can lead to an avalanche of energy. The Spurs forcing the Suns to play in the halfcourt is a must if San Antonio wants to win.
2. Limit Phoenix's Threes
The pick-and-roll between Nash and Stoudemire is Phoenix's bread and butter. That play is so good that the Spurs can only hope to slow it down once in a while. However, the aspect of the Suns offense the Spurs have to try to control is their three-point shooting. They have enough shooters to where they can beat you with just their three-point shooting alone. In the first round, the Suns had six players who hit at least five three-pointers. As a team, they were 60-for-153 for 39.2%. The goal for the Spurs should be keep the Suns at seven or eight three-pointers made per game instead of 10 to 12. Keeping their percentage at around 37-38% would be great.
1. Tim Duncan on the Block
In the first round, I didn't want the Spurs to ride Tim Duncan too much on the block. This series is different. The Suns don't have the personnel to slow Duncan. For that reason, the Spurs need to milk Duncan as much as possible. Doing so should force double-teams, slow the pace of the game and hopefully get the Suns in foul trouble. On the other hand, if Duncan doesn't have success on the block, the Spurs will be in trouble. In such a scenario, the Suns will be able to get away going small and turning each game into a track meet. If that ends up being the case, the Suns have too many horses for the Spurs to keep up. Simply put, Tim Duncan has to be Tim Duncan this series.
Last edited by timvp; 05-03-2010 at 11:44 AM.
Thanks for the insight.
Robin Lopez's importance cannot be stressed enough. Without him, our best chance of guarding him is Amare Stoudemire, a mediocre man-on-man defender.
Tim Duncan has been nothing short of a little since owning in Game 2 of the Mavs series. He needs to drop some major loads on the Suns and end this stupid ass free throws funk he's in immediately. I trust him but I'm mad ing shocked we beat the Mavs with Tim Duncan pulling a classic Robert Horry sandbag job in the mother ing playoffs. That is all.
Scoring more points is important as well... IMHO
Agreed, first team to score more points than the other team 4 times probably wins the series.
I expect Duncan to start the series strong on the rest he's had. I hope he can maintain it with the every other day schedule.
On number 4 mason should not play, give bogans or temple his minutes
Mason will be playing heavy minutes, especially if Manu isn't Manu again. Bogans will be in there too, against Nash I presume.
TD
McDyess
RJ
Manu
Hill
TP
Bogans
Blair
Bonner
RMJ
Jared Dudley's 3-pt shooting looks ridiculous this year...he shot 120 out of 262 for the season, for 45.8%...
Nicely done, timvp. I know you've got a lot on your plate at the moment but I appreciate the yeoman efforts you've been giving on these previews/predictions -- my meek, time-consuming contributions have given me an even greater respect for these posts of yours.
That's definitely what I'm expecting and the every-other-day is definitely a concern.
The Spurs' lack of three-point shooting and the Suns' proficiency in that aspect is another worry. (Did y'all notice how a couple of the Spurs mentioned that the Suns were the best three-point shooting team ever -- Pop made mention as well ... with the media and I'm sure he's burning it into their collective skull.)
This matchup definitely has me more concerned than prior years . . .
Didn't realize John Madden was posting at SpursTalk under an alias
I would put Nash Hip condition somewhere. I mean if he's not 100%, their main weapon (pnr) won't be effective and he will be ABUSED on D by our guards penetration even worse than usual.
This is true. If Robin Lopez can return, the Suns' chances of winning the series rise significantly. With Lopez, the Suns might get away with single-teaming Duncan. Without Lopez? The Suns would have to hope and pray Duncan is having a bad series.
I think Antonio McDyess will help the Spurs immensely in this series. He's been no better than a mediocre defender in this decade, but he has a better chance of stymieing Stoudemire than Rasho/Nazr/Oberto/Elson/Horry/Massenberg/etc. ever did.
I've been thinking that Dejuan Blair may actually be THE secret weapon against Amare, assuming he even sees any consistent playing time! He's faster than Bonner, and can be quite physical which should be a good thing against Amare. The issue will probably be ticky-tack fouls... Any thoughts?
Blair is a rookie.. expect him to get into foul trouble very quickly guarding Amare. Refs will let McDyess get more physical with Amare.
Manu's recovery worries me most - if you were the Suns, especially given our past against them, wouldn't roughing up Manu be the first thing you'd do? A good hit to the nose could put him out of any game, and that's a real concern.
After that, Phoenix's three-point shooting is my next biggest concern because they can rack up points in a real hurry when they are hot and they have a lot of shooters.
OTOH, Tony and Tim are our greatest edges in this series. If those two can go off, even if Manu is turned into a distributor, we should be in decent shape.
The transition D, which worried the out of me all season - I'm sure it was the most inconsistent of any Spurs team for a decade - wasn't a problem in the Mavs series. In fact, it was consistently excellent. I hope we can keep it up.
Someone (or two) from the bench is going to have to step up to even that gap. In his limited minutes in the first round, I think, Blair showed an ability to be an energy guy and disruptive force on the boards.
One of the shooters has to step up. I think though, as others have pointed out, that this is a tailor made series for Bonner. The Suns primary big off the bench is Frye, a guy who Bonner should be able to match up well with.
If Hill starts (which is likely) and Nash is on him, moving Hill around on offense and having Nash chase him around would be a good way to go. You can't put Nash on Manu or Jefferson, they both would abuse him. So, if Hill can keep his energy up and use his athletic ability effectively, TP can remain the primary weapon and mismatch off the bench.
Jefferson must maintain his defensive focus that he flashed in the first round, while upping his offensive game. In a series where the Spurs will have opportunities to selectively run he could be a great weapon when paired with Hill/Manu or TP.
Spot on list. For all the changes that have happened over the course of the Spurs/Suns clashes this really comes down to a lot of the same things that were critical in the 05 series: force Nash to be a scorer, run them off the three point line, control the tempo, never stop attacking the hoop, rebound like you mean it. , if Joe Johnson's face hadn't been busted I'd bet the analysis on Jason Richardson could have been applied almost word for word.
It might be tougher than it was a few years ago, but by now beating the Suns is like riding a bicycle for this squad.
Last edited by spurs_fan_in_exile; 05-03-2010 at 11:32 AM.
Wow... a fan from the opposing team who shows up to talk basketball instead of trolling? Very cool.
I think Tim's performance in Game 1 is going to be important, whether the Spurs win the game or not. If he can get it going down low, it will force the Suns to being more doubles. If he can't they will try and make us beat them from the outside. That thought isn't very appealing lately.
This should be in the top 3, IMO. In the regular season against the Suns, Steve Nash has been averaging about 20 pts and 12 asts while shooting close to 58%. This is where Bruce Bowen is heavily missed since his length, quickness, and aggressive gave Nash problems in the past. I'm hoping we see similar intensity from Hill (or whomever is guarding Nash) on defense.
This is the one that has me worried. Bonner and Mason are going to have to play in this series and while on the court they need to be something more productive than just a warm body to have on the court while someone in the top 7 gets a breather.
Speaking about Depth I still don't understand the release of Theo not really for this serie but against the mavs we could have used Theo.
No mention of George Hill???
IMO he is the key to this series. He plays well and Spurs run away with it.
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