Thursday, January 29th, 2009...2:30 pm
Reflections on a Rival: The Phoenix Suns
The Phoenix Suns have become a complete enigma to me. In some sense, they are struggling mightily. Compared to the gaudy regular season records they have posted for the last several years, their 25-18 record looks mediocre. As opposed to being in a race for home court advantage throughout the playoffs, they are in a race for the playoffs itself.
Shaquille O’Neal is having what some are calling an All-Star caliber season, but in order to do so he has displaced the comfort and effectiveness of many of his teammates. Coming into the season, Suns fans were talking about how Amare Stoudemire might make a run at MVP. Now Amare is rumored to be on the trading block. For years, Nash was the golden boy of the NBA: Exciting to watch and always a gentleman, win or lose. But in recent months he has betrayed his frustrations regarding the current state of the team. That being said, I have no doubt the boys in purple and orange will have their game faces on come this evening. When the silver and black come to town, the players formerly known as “fun-and-gun” get serious.
I have never been a defender of Mike D’Antoni. I always thought “7 Seconds or Less” was a flawed system and that Popovich could consistently outcoach D’Antoni over the course of a 7 game series. But, in some ways, the Suns-Spurs rivalry of old is something I dearly miss. Yes, the memories and malice remain. But, the presence of D’Antoni made the rivalry about so much more than two fanbases driven to the edge of insanity by their anger.
Basketball is such a wildly inventive sport and I feel like the intellectual potential of the game was never on display better than that ’07 WCSF series. It’s funny because that series is best known for hard fouls and harder emotions but I remember it as the last pure contest between two vastly different conceptions of how basketball can be played. The chameleonic approach of Popovich juxtaposed directly against the ever increasing momentum of D’Antoni’s unbridled style. Those were heady days.
But under the questionable guidance of Steve Kerr, the Suns have strayed far from that time and place. I’ll obviously watch this evening’s game intently: For the rest of my life Suns-Spurs will mean something a little different. There will always be an extra dash of tension. But even though tonight’s contest features so many familiar faces, the intrigue is not what it once was. The game starts at 10:30 Eastern/9:30 Central.
19 Comments
January 29th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
The Spurs vs Suns rivalry was great because these 2 teams embodied two diametrically opposed conceptions of basketball - SSOL vs gritty defense.
As we know, defense wins championships, and the Spurs prevailed, but it’s also true that sometimes d’Antoni mental lapses cost the Suns more than the system itself (e.g. from memory not fouling on the last play of the 1st game last year, allowing a 3 to go in for the win).
For whatever reason other rivalries never really caught fire, e.g. against Dallas (disappearing act in the playoffs), Denver (being repeatedly crushed in the 1st round by the Spurs), etc. Only the rivalry with the Lakers is in the same class (but still one notch above).
Now the Suns are being rebuilt with the Spurs as a model, and they are still deeply in transition, torn between asking why they can’t be contenders right now with Nash, Shaq and Amare on their roster, and acknowledging that their roster is not in line with their current direction. But obviously talent is still talent and those Suns can be very dangerous on any given night.
January 29th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Will,
I hear you, and I’m not sure where Graydon is on this, but I’d include the Mavs with the Suns and Lakers. I honestly think the Spurs would have won three straight if not for the Manu foul on Dirk in 2006. The 2006 semifinals couldn’t have been more entertaining-perhaps the most entertaining series of NBA basketball this decade, full stop. Donnie Walsh and Mark Cuban killed all that by firing A.J. and trading Harris, but it was great while it lasted. Sadly, the Mavs have been reduced to also-rans. Nevertheless, I still get amped before a Mavs-Spurs game.
January 29th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Lakers, Suns, and Mavs are clearly Spurs rivals, even with the Mavs’ current struggles. Trust me, their fans do not think their teams inferior to ours at any time during our “Odd Year Runs,” (I hate the Blazers, too.), but I’ll address the Suns here.
“Defense wins championships, baby,” is a fun mantra, but the truth is that the Suns were very close to winning in all of their series against the Spurs, and held leads til the bitter end.
Kerr changed the Suns to beat the Spurs in the playoffs, and they still might, but at the cost of night-in-and-night out competitiveness. I think this is a good lesson for the Spurs before they go trading off pieces to get specific match ups with Gasol or Bynum. (If Pop is worried about Odom then we’re really in trouble.)
Neither of these guys is old school Shaq.
Put the best team we can on the floor, Pop, people who will work within our system. Like every team, the leaders are one injury away from the basement, so don’t get too focused on any one team, or you’ll end up like the Suns….
Playing the second best team in the West in January as if June is on the line.
January 29th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Don’t both sides have to win a series from the other before it’s a rivalry?
Dallas is more of a rival than Phoenix.
January 29th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Lakers are definitely a rival too.
January 29th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Gianluca,
Since 1992, the Spurs and Suns have met 9 times in the playoffs. The Suns have won 3 of those 9 meetings (1992, 1993, 2000). It is a rivalry.
January 29th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
In that case Portland & Houston (80′s-90′s), & Denver(70′s-80′s) are rivalries as well… what’s your point?
In the Duncan era, the Spurs have never lost to Phoenix when he is on the floor.
January 29th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
*playoffs
January 29th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
In the last 17 years we have met 9 times in the playoffs. That is a rivalry that began before the Duncan era. I don’t know how I can make my point more clear.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
The Suns need to decide if they’re really going for a championship right now, before it’s too late for Nash and Shaq, or not. And if so, they could use better role players.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
You can lead a horse to water….As an Aggie who considers Tech and Texas both rivals, I don’t think its about records, but history. Think about it, if you had to choose one loss, would you rather the Spurs have lost against this past week, the Nets, Lakers, Jazz or Suns? And if you say, “no one” I know your a true Spurs fan.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Just because you meet often in the playoffs doesn’t make the match-up a rivalry..
The Lakers are a rivalry.. we’ve beaten them, they’ve beaten us.
The Mavs are a rivalry.. we’ve beaten them, they’ve beaten us.
The Suns have only beaten the Spurs once in the last 15 years (Duncan injured).
How many of the current Suns players were on that 2000 team?
January 29th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
“As we know, defense wins championships,…”
I’ve have never seen any proof of this assertion. Show me the numbers, the statistics. It’s just a cliche. You need to score more points than you give up to win a basketball game. It’s that simple.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Re: defense wins championships
Look at some numbers that debunk this. Left this off my last post.
http://kevinbroom.wordpress.com/2007/05/07/does-defense-win-championships/
January 30th, 2009 at 4:04 am
Re: the rivalry with the Suns, even if they didn’t beat the Spurs recently I’d say it still counts because of a) the number of close calls and b) the controversy (e.g. Horry’s foul on Nash or Stoudemire trash talk on Bowen). The rivalry with Dallas is probably easier to feel for people actually living in Texas (not my case!)
Re: defense, I’d say that “defense wins championships” is a better way of saying “no defense loses championships”. Of course a team still needs to score points to win (d’oh!) but it’s a reality that champions produce a great defensive effort (recently Spurs, Detroit, any team with Shaq). But I agree it’s claim that’s quite “intangible” (like Manu or Bowen being more important than their stats
January 30th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
I had attended only one and unique NBA game in my life, a Suns@Spurs playoff in the Alamodome, near ’96 or ’97, during a short work trip to the US. Jason Kidd was playing for the Suns then, the Admiral and Little General for SA. So, being an Argentine, I started to be a SA’ fan even before knowing about Manu. I’d also started to consider the Suns as a rival. Years after I learned to consider them as the worst ever rival. They usually scared me, they were supposed to be able to beat us! and our victories were more sweet due to the rivalry. So, in certain way I’m a little sad seeing them falling down. We should ask Steve Kerr to improve his roster in order to feel the old emotions.
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