Not exactly the most informative article, but it's good that the Suns are getting some national publicity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/22/sports/basketball/22suns.htm?pagewanted=1
_______________________________________________________________
High-Flying Suns Look to Keep On Running
By LIZ ROBBINS
Published: April 22, 2005
The first 82 games and 9,054 points were a warmup for the Phoenix Suns, whose high-speed chase left opponents wondering what had hit them.
On the heels of their N.B.A.-best 62 victories - 33 more than last season - the Suns are surging into the playoffs, but how long can they outrun their critics or their history? Conventional wisdom says the playoffs grind to a half-court scrum, a clutch-and-grab clinic in which defense decides championships. The formula worked for the Detroit Pistons last year and the San Antonio Spurs the year before.
Where does that leave the unconventional Suns? Their free-flowing offense (110.4 points a game) is a show-stopper, but their matador defense (allowing 103.3 points) is an also-ran.
While Coach Mike D'Antoni admitted the obvious in a telephone interview this week - "we have to play better defensively" - he quickly added: "I don't think we have to play as well defensively as a nonoffensive team. It gives us a lot of chances to mess up, and we will."
The Suns lead a league-wide offensive charge that is more lethal than it has been in eight years. New rules were introduced this season to curtail hand-checking, clarify blocking fouls and call defensive three seconds to open up the game. Suddenly, six teams averaged more than 100 points as Phoenix, Washington, Boston and Miami joined the usual suspects, Dallas and Sacramento. And in the 40 games since George Karl took over in Denver (and installed Doug Moe as an assistant), the Nuggets have averaged 104.4 points.
The Suns, who meet the Memphis Grizzles in the first round, starting Sunday in Phoenix, average a league-high 98.7 possessions a game, and their 110.4 scoring average is the highest since the Magic (110.9) in the 1994-95 season. With Steve Nash at point guard, the Suns are the next incarnation of the Lakers' Showtime, whose run-and-gun roots trace back to Moe's Nuggets in the 1980's and were born in Bob Cousy's Celtics, the 11-time champions of the 50's and 60's.
But those Celtics had Bill Russell and Pat Riley's Lakers had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as defensive stoppers to clog the middle and grab rebounds to ignite a fast break.
"Once we got Russell, end of story," Cousy said yesterday from his home in Worcester, Mass. "To ultimately win, I doubt whether you can win with only offense. But if the Suns rebound effectively, then, hopefully, their offense will carry the day. I would love nothing better. Talk about the impact that would have on schoolyards of the world."
Cousy is a traditionalist - but only because he wants to return to a time when teams played like the Suns.
"That's the only way to go," Cousy said. "That's what Naismith was thinking about. It's a game of free flow, that's the beauty of it. If basketball is an art form, it's in the movement of these 10 huge but graceful bodies moving up and down, making these constant, instantaneous decisions."
Watching teams struggle in halfcourt sets, he said, is "like watching grass grow for me," adding, "all you're doing is inhibiting superior talent."
Enter Phoenix, a team that is looking to rewrite the adage: Offense sells tickets, defense wins championships.
Amare Stoudemire stars at center, out of position and undersized at 6-foot-10, but not underestimated at age 22. With Nash, Shawn Marion, Quentin Richardson and Joe Johnson on the wings, the Suns have five players who sprint into the frontcourt looking for the quick score.
"Don't say it can't be done," said Don Nelson, the former Mavericks coach whose teams, with Nash until this season, went to four straight playoffs but never to the finals. "It depends on the personnel you have," Nelson said. "I think there's a sentiment out there that a run-and-gun team won't do well in the playoffs.
"There hasn't been as much talent on the floor as Phoenix has had in the modern era," Nelson added in a telephone interview last week. "They have the best chance of doing it. No one else has had Stoudemire as their big man. He's unplayable, he's unguardable at this point. You can't guard him with a small, you can't guard him with a big."
More than the other offensive-oriented teams, the Suns are an anomaly in their speed, decision-making and five-man commitment to the fast break. They can go from 0 to 94 feet in under five seconds, closer to three.
The Suns' coaching staff recorded the team's fastest score after taking the ball out of bounds. In one game, Nash got the inbounds pass, threw a bomb to a sprinting Marion, who took two steps and dunked. Elapsed time: 1¾seconds. "I think Phoenix can win a title, and I am the biggest proponent of the fast-break game," said Bill Walton, an ESPN analyst. "You have to have great players, regardless of style."
What makes the Suns so difficult to defend is their improvisational skills. They have trailers on the fast break working the pick and roll. Other times, they stop, pop and shoot. They set an N.B.A. record this season with 796 3-pointers (a league-high 39.3 percent). "It's very hard to prepare for us other than having guys getting back - they have to do it on the fly," D'Antoni said.
The Suns average the most rebounds a game - 44.13 per game. But they also allow opponents to grab a league-high 46.13 rebounds.
One number showed situational defense; the Suns were ranked 14th in the league in field-goal defense. Marion, a 6-7 power forward, is the team's best defender, averaging 11.3 rebounds a game, 2 steals and 1.5 blocks.
"Phoenix has the players and a style that can be successful," Pistons General Manager Joe Dumars said in a telephone interview. "I'm not ready to hand them the trophy, but it's wrong for people to write them off as not being a serious threat in the playoffs."
The last team to take the up-tempo style into the finals was the Nets, led by Jason Kidd. Los Angeles and Shaquille O'Neal slowed down the Nets' fast break in 2002, and Tim Duncan and a lack of disciplined shooting ruined the Nets' chances in 2003.
"People say when we first got to New Jersey and put in the offense, that offense is not going to be good in the playoffs - too many people touch the ball," Wizards Coach Eddie Jordan, who was an assistant coach on those Nets teams, said last week.
"I think we just ran into a better team," Jordan said. "I thought we were competitive at both ends of the floor and we had great defensive players."
Those players, like Kidd and Kenyon Martin in 2003, determine a defensive-minded team. "They're not your beat-'em-up, highly experienced defensive-type players," Jordan said. "We use what we have. We use our length, our athleticism, not our bulk or athleticism."
Unlike the Suns, who score 7.5 more points than they allow, the Wizards averaged 100.4 points in the regular season while allowing 100.7.
In Dallas, the trend has started to change under the new coach, Avery Johnson. The Mavericks are 16-2 since he took over, holding opponents to 6.1 fewer points a game than they did under Nelson.
Nash cited the defensive deficiencies of his Mavericks teams (and his own struggles) to motivate his Suns teammates to be more active and disruptive. "I continue to harp on it," Nash said. "In the middle of the season, we got a little complacent, a little tired, the schedule was tough in January. But the last few months, we slowly picked it up."
Not that the Suns do anything slowly. In place of size and bulk and ferocity, the Suns have fast feet and boundless energy.
"We have a great quickness and athleticism on our team," Nash said. "We're going to have our tough nights. We're such a good team offensively, we'll be fine."
If the Suns' fast break is not operating at warp speed, their inside-out game generates plenty of points underneath and their half-court offense thrives on movement to cause disarray. One thing the Suns cannot control, however, is how much the referees let physical play rule the game.
"During the playoffs, certainly, teams are more focused defensively, have a day in between games, and our coaches are terrific in terms of their preparation, and we are going to have some games that are stifling," Stu Jackson, the N.B.A.'s senior vice president for basketball operations, said in a conference call Wednesday. "But over all, I don't see teams that have played wide open changing their style."
D'Antoni does not want to change now that the playoffs are here. "We're best this way," he said. "Although we don't have a lot of experience, we have five guys that want to take the big shot in the end. Because of that, we're going to be dangerous."
If the Suns were to win a title playing this way, wouldn't that validate the view that offense can win championships? D'Antoni just laughed and said, "Nah, if that happens, at the end of the day, people will just say, 'They really picked their defense up.' "
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/22/sports/basketball/22suns.htm?pagewanted=1
_______________________________________________________________
High-Flying Suns Look to Keep On Running
By LIZ ROBBINS
Published: April 22, 2005
The first 82 games and 9,054 points were a warmup for the Phoenix Suns, whose high-speed chase left opponents wondering what had hit them.
On the heels of their N.B.A.-best 62 victories - 33 more than last season - the Suns are surging into the playoffs, but how long can they outrun their critics or their history? Conventional wisdom says the playoffs grind to a half-court scrum, a clutch-and-grab clinic in which defense decides championships. The formula worked for the Detroit Pistons last year and the San Antonio Spurs the year before.
Where does that leave the unconventional Suns? Their free-flowing offense (110.4 points a game) is a show-stopper, but their matador defense (allowing 103.3 points) is an also-ran.
While Coach Mike D'Antoni admitted the obvious in a telephone interview this week - "we have to play better defensively" - he quickly added: "I don't think we have to play as well defensively as a nonoffensive team. It gives us a lot of chances to mess up, and we will."
The Suns lead a league-wide offensive charge that is more lethal than it has been in eight years. New rules were introduced this season to curtail hand-checking, clarify blocking fouls and call defensive three seconds to open up the game. Suddenly, six teams averaged more than 100 points as Phoenix, Washington, Boston and Miami joined the usual suspects, Dallas and Sacramento. And in the 40 games since George Karl took over in Denver (and installed Doug Moe as an assistant), the Nuggets have averaged 104.4 points.
The Suns, who meet the Memphis Grizzles in the first round, starting Sunday in Phoenix, average a league-high 98.7 possessions a game, and their 110.4 scoring average is the highest since the Magic (110.9) in the 1994-95 season. With Steve Nash at point guard, the Suns are the next incarnation of the Lakers' Showtime, whose run-and-gun roots trace back to Moe's Nuggets in the 1980's and were born in Bob Cousy's Celtics, the 11-time champions of the 50's and 60's.
But those Celtics had Bill Russell and Pat Riley's Lakers had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as defensive stoppers to clog the middle and grab rebounds to ignite a fast break.
"Once we got Russell, end of story," Cousy said yesterday from his home in Worcester, Mass. "To ultimately win, I doubt whether you can win with only offense. But if the Suns rebound effectively, then, hopefully, their offense will carry the day. I would love nothing better. Talk about the impact that would have on schoolyards of the world."
Cousy is a traditionalist - but only because he wants to return to a time when teams played like the Suns.
"That's the only way to go," Cousy said. "That's what Naismith was thinking about. It's a game of free flow, that's the beauty of it. If basketball is an art form, it's in the movement of these 10 huge but graceful bodies moving up and down, making these constant, instantaneous decisions."
Watching teams struggle in halfcourt sets, he said, is "like watching grass grow for me," adding, "all you're doing is inhibiting superior talent."
Enter Phoenix, a team that is looking to rewrite the adage: Offense sells tickets, defense wins championships.
Amare Stoudemire stars at center, out of position and undersized at 6-foot-10, but not underestimated at age 22. With Nash, Shawn Marion, Quentin Richardson and Joe Johnson on the wings, the Suns have five players who sprint into the frontcourt looking for the quick score.
"Don't say it can't be done," said Don Nelson, the former Mavericks coach whose teams, with Nash until this season, went to four straight playoffs but never to the finals. "It depends on the personnel you have," Nelson said. "I think there's a sentiment out there that a run-and-gun team won't do well in the playoffs.
"There hasn't been as much talent on the floor as Phoenix has had in the modern era," Nelson added in a telephone interview last week. "They have the best chance of doing it. No one else has had Stoudemire as their big man. He's unplayable, he's unguardable at this point. You can't guard him with a small, you can't guard him with a big."
More than the other offensive-oriented teams, the Suns are an anomaly in their speed, decision-making and five-man commitment to the fast break. They can go from 0 to 94 feet in under five seconds, closer to three.
The Suns' coaching staff recorded the team's fastest score after taking the ball out of bounds. In one game, Nash got the inbounds pass, threw a bomb to a sprinting Marion, who took two steps and dunked. Elapsed time: 1¾seconds. "I think Phoenix can win a title, and I am the biggest proponent of the fast-break game," said Bill Walton, an ESPN analyst. "You have to have great players, regardless of style."
What makes the Suns so difficult to defend is their improvisational skills. They have trailers on the fast break working the pick and roll. Other times, they stop, pop and shoot. They set an N.B.A. record this season with 796 3-pointers (a league-high 39.3 percent). "It's very hard to prepare for us other than having guys getting back - they have to do it on the fly," D'Antoni said.
The Suns average the most rebounds a game - 44.13 per game. But they also allow opponents to grab a league-high 46.13 rebounds.
One number showed situational defense; the Suns were ranked 14th in the league in field-goal defense. Marion, a 6-7 power forward, is the team's best defender, averaging 11.3 rebounds a game, 2 steals and 1.5 blocks.
"Phoenix has the players and a style that can be successful," Pistons General Manager Joe Dumars said in a telephone interview. "I'm not ready to hand them the trophy, but it's wrong for people to write them off as not being a serious threat in the playoffs."
The last team to take the up-tempo style into the finals was the Nets, led by Jason Kidd. Los Angeles and Shaquille O'Neal slowed down the Nets' fast break in 2002, and Tim Duncan and a lack of disciplined shooting ruined the Nets' chances in 2003.
"People say when we first got to New Jersey and put in the offense, that offense is not going to be good in the playoffs - too many people touch the ball," Wizards Coach Eddie Jordan, who was an assistant coach on those Nets teams, said last week.
"I think we just ran into a better team," Jordan said. "I thought we were competitive at both ends of the floor and we had great defensive players."
Those players, like Kidd and Kenyon Martin in 2003, determine a defensive-minded team. "They're not your beat-'em-up, highly experienced defensive-type players," Jordan said. "We use what we have. We use our length, our athleticism, not our bulk or athleticism."
Unlike the Suns, who score 7.5 more points than they allow, the Wizards averaged 100.4 points in the regular season while allowing 100.7.
In Dallas, the trend has started to change under the new coach, Avery Johnson. The Mavericks are 16-2 since he took over, holding opponents to 6.1 fewer points a game than they did under Nelson.
Nash cited the defensive deficiencies of his Mavericks teams (and his own struggles) to motivate his Suns teammates to be more active and disruptive. "I continue to harp on it," Nash said. "In the middle of the season, we got a little complacent, a little tired, the schedule was tough in January. But the last few months, we slowly picked it up."
Not that the Suns do anything slowly. In place of size and bulk and ferocity, the Suns have fast feet and boundless energy.
"We have a great quickness and athleticism on our team," Nash said. "We're going to have our tough nights. We're such a good team offensively, we'll be fine."
If the Suns' fast break is not operating at warp speed, their inside-out game generates plenty of points underneath and their half-court offense thrives on movement to cause disarray. One thing the Suns cannot control, however, is how much the referees let physical play rule the game.
"During the playoffs, certainly, teams are more focused defensively, have a day in between games, and our coaches are terrific in terms of their preparation, and we are going to have some games that are stifling," Stu Jackson, the N.B.A.'s senior vice president for basketball operations, said in a conference call Wednesday. "But over all, I don't see teams that have played wide open changing their style."
D'Antoni does not want to change now that the playoffs are here. "We're best this way," he said. "Although we don't have a lot of experience, we have five guys that want to take the big shot in the end. Because of that, we're going to be dangerous."
If the Suns were to win a title playing this way, wouldn't that validate the view that offense can win championships? D'Antoni just laughed and said, "Nah, if that happens, at the end of the day, people will just say, 'They really picked their defense up.' "
