Steve Nash controlled the show a day before his 38th birthday by scoring 24 points and dishing 11 assists. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

There are many reasons why the Phoenix Suns’ offense has slipped from the heights of the elite all the way down to the bottom third of the league, but Channing Frye’s struggles have played a major role.

The Suns’ sharpshooter entered the day hitting 34.7 percent of his shots and 29.1 percent of his long balls, percentages that have hurt the Suns all year long.

But Monday night in Atlanta Frye showed why the Suns are a different team when he catches fire as Channing’s season-high 19 points on 8-for-16 shooting sparked the Suns to a 99-90 victory over the Atlanta Hawks.

“I thought Channing shot the ball well, and when he does that, we’re pretty good,” Suns head coach Alvin Gentry told reporters.

Frye got the Suns started right by draining jumpers on their first two possessions. He opened the second half the same way with another pair of jumpers, and then in the fourth quarter when Atlanta cut a 22-point Phoenix lead down to nine, Frye came right back in at the three-minute mark and knocked down a pair of jumpers to salt this one away.

As Frye has struggled he’s become less and less a part of the offense. He attempted double-digit shots for just the fourth time all year and the first time since Jan. 13. Such is life when your box scores are lined with 1-for-6s, 0-for-7s, 2-for-8s and 1-for-9s as Frye’s are. He’s a streak shooter, and this year he’s only been streaking one way.

But tonight was different. From the tip Frye shot the ball with the kind of confidence that he did in 2009-10 and ended up hitting the two critical buckets Phoenix needed to prevent a meltdown.

In the meantime, Frye has been working on expanding other parts of his game so he won’t be known as “just a shooter,” which is particularly important when you can’t hit a shot. In this one Frye hit the backboards for nine caroms, blocked a pair of shots and even slammed home a putback dunk for good measure after his two clutch jumpers.

“I was getting down on myself, but I was trying to implement new things like going to the basket, being more aggressive with that,” Frye said on the Suns’ postgame show. “The games that I’m aggressive we tend to do good.

“I’m not out here just to be a shooter, I’m out here to be a complete player and do the best I can and tonight was one of those nights.”

It’s nice that Frye is adding dimensions to his game, but for the Suns’ offense to reach its potential they need Frye’s first dimension — shooting — to become a weapon once again.

Although it may come as a surprise that Frye produced such a good game, that’s certainly not the case for Steve Nash, who twirled another masterpiece a day before turning 38.

“Steve Nash never plays like his age,” Frye said.

Two Time carved the Hawks up for 24 points on 9-for-12 shooting (4-for-4 on threes) and dished 11 assists, with all but one of the dimes coming in the first three quarters when the Suns built a 20-point lead.

Nash’s most glamorous play came when Nash answered a Joe Johnson three with 3.8 seconds remaining in the first half by weaving through Atlanta’s defense before draining an off-balanced three-pointer at the halftime buzzer to keep Phoenix’s lead safely at seven at the break. It was a huge shot as it gave the Suns all the momentum heading into halftime despite Atlanta prefacing the super shot with a 14-4 spurt.

The Suns possessed such a lead because their bench continued its superb play from Saturday night during tonight’s first half. The reserves built a 16-point lead in the second quarter by exploding on a 14-2 run as the unit once again played with a special energy. Sebastian Telfair led the corps, most spectacularly on his alley-oop feed to Josh Childress, and all the bench players chipped in on the run.

“I thought we got good effort from our second unit,” Gentry said. “They were the ones who got the separation for us.

“It was a total team win, and I thought there were some guys who played real well.”

Although the Hawks have now lost three home games in a row, this certainly qualifies as another superb win in what is becoming an unpredictable Suns season. They’ve now won on the home courts of three potential East playoff teams (Atlanta, Boston, New York) on top of beating Portland and Memphis at home despite losing to the likes of New Orleans, Toronto, New Jersey and Cleveland in US Airways Center.

This was no fluke win, either. The Suns controlled the game throughout, and although Atlanta made a run like most NBA teams do, Phoenix led comfortably during the majority of the final three quarters.

The Suns have now won three of four games in February and could be on the verge of turning their season around. But every time the Suns have strung a few solid games together, inconsistency has lurked just around the corner as Phoenix will shoot for its very first three-game winning streak of the season tomorrow night in Milwaukee.

And 1

The Suns’ defense played a major role in this victory by holding the Hawks to 39.3 percent shooting, including 25.0 percent (6-for-24) from long range. … They also won the battle of the boards, 45-35, with Marcin Gortat (nine) and Markieff Morris (seven) chipping in along with Frye. Gortat did see his streak of consecutive double-digit rebound games end at 15. … Michael Redd contributed 10 points on 3-for-9 shooting off the pine. … Shannon Brown, Ronnie Price and Hakim Warrick all did not play by coach’s decision. Warrick received a DNP-CD Saturday night as well when Price logged just four minutes.

After signing Michael Redd on Thursday, the Phoenix Suns’ roster will house 13 players with a legitimate gripe for rotation minutes once Redd is ready to take the floor, which means Alvin Gentry has quite the task on his hands to figure out which players deserve time and which players must be relegated to mop-up duty.

When Mike D’Antoni coached the Suns he barely played half that many players each game, and last season Gentry spoke of how 11 was too many to play consistently as much as he likes using his entire bench.

With 66 games crammed into four months and nights when Steve Nash and Grant Hill will likely take it easy, the Suns will likely rely on their deep reserves more often than they usually would, but if the Suns want to build bench chemistry I feel they need to settle on 10 players to receive the majority of minutes on a night in/night out basis.

That would involve the team trimming three players from its rotation. Ronnie Price and Sebastian Telfair are the backup point guards, with Price getting the majority of the minutes thus far. Hakim Warrick went from a DNP-CD to 32 minutes of action. He doesn’t seem to have a position with Markieff Morris deserving time at the backup four, but with his scoring punch he figures to earn some time as the season goes on.

And now the Suns are back in the same spot they were in last season with five wings for four spots (before considering Warrick as a potential three) when the additions of Vince Carter and Mickael Pietrus squeezed Josh Childress out of the rotation.

If Redd is right, he will play. This is a guy who averaged 20 points per game over an 11-year career. I’m not sure if he will start because a Nash-Redd starting lineup would fly in the face of the Suns’ desire to improve defensively, and he could end up being the main scorer on a bench that lacks punch. Many of the reserves are solid enough defensively to make up for Redd’s deficiencies on that end and in turn he could potentially carry the offense for stretches off the pine.

Wednesday’s -32 notwithstanding, Jared Dudley will be playing consistent minutes this season and Hill will as well, although it would not be a surprise to see his floor time cut a bit to preserve his health through this mad dash of a season.

So if Redd plays well enough to be a rotation player that means Shannon Brown and Childress are likely battling for a spot. Neither player has been particularly impressive thus far although it would be kind of a shame for both players individually to lose their spot, Brown since he came here on a cheap one-year deal to rebuild his value and Childress because this happened to him last season and the Suns need to see what they have before making an amnesty decision on him next summer.

Such depth can be a blessing and a curse, a blessing because depth will be a requirement during this jam-packed schedule but a curse if there’s not enough quality depth and defined roles fail to materialize

Gentry showed a Midas Touch developing his bench and guiding his rotations in 2009-10, but he’s got a much tougher job making this collection of pieces work.

The Warlocks’ effect

Entering the free agency period, Michael Redd was my pick to fill the Suns’ backup shooting guard spot, as I wrote in our free agency 3-on-3.

The biggest reason was that I felt Redd possessed the most upside to emulate the go-to scorer the Suns so desperately need for stretches at a time because he has done it so often before.

And the biggest reason I thought there was a chance Redd could become even a facsimile of his Olympic self is because of Aaron Nelson and the Suns’ training staff, which Redd himself cited as one of the things that drew him to this organization.

The Warlocks have worked wonders on so many vets from Nash to Hill to Shaq that the Suns should feel extra confident taking a chance on a player like Redd who could become an important rotation player if the Suns’ trainers keep him healthy.

I had a chance to sit down and chat with Nelson toward the end of last season and I asked him if he ever wonders if his staff can make a difference for a chronically injured player.

“You always wonder, and again if you fail then it goes the other way,” Nelson said. “I like challenges, and my staff likes challenges. We like to see what we can do and what we’re capable of doing, and when I see injured players for other teams I feel for my peers because we’re all in the same boat. The guys who are paid a lot of money and normally are playing a lot of minutes for you, when they get hurt that’s a lot of pressure and a lot of stress for us and the other head athletic trainers for the other teams. I don’t look at it and say, ‘I can do better than them.’ I think we’re all in the same boat. I don’t look at it in that perspective, I look at it as if my GM calls me and says, ‘Hey, if we have this guy on our team,’ then I think about it. But I don’t think outside of that.

“If I’m watching SportsCenter and so and so has been out now for whatever I think that I feel bad for my peers that are having to deal with it because I have to deal with it when our guys get hurt, but again if our GM or owner says, ‘Hey, if we’re looking at Player X, do you think you can help him?’ Immediately I start thinking, ‘OK, yeah.’”

Nelson and crew have a new challenge ahead of them when they aren’t focusing on maintaining the health of Nash and Hill, and if they succeed the Suns’ offense will receive a much-needed boost at a veteran’s minimum price.

But aside from the pick-and-roll run by those two stars, that Suns team succeeded most because it went 10 deep with a defensive-focused second unit that gave opponents a completely different look than the high-octane starters.

Time and time again the bench turned deficits into advantages or extended leads built by the starters.

All of the backups understood their roles and executed them to perfection more often that not.

Aside from obvious factors like losing Amare and later Jason Richardson, one of the biggest reasons the Suns plummeted last season is they never could find any rhythm with their bench. Through the two in-season trades and a starting lineup that never solidified, players shuffled between different roles without the bench unit forming any kind of identity like they did the year before.

As the Suns prepare for this 66-game sprint of a regular season, they understand how vital their bench is if they want to become a surprise team in the West like they were two years ago.

“One thing that we’ve done around here is we’ve always tried to play nine, 10 guys,” said head coach Alvin Gentry. “I think it’s going to be very important this year that you have a deep bench because there are going to be certain situations where you play five games in seven nights or six games in nine nights where it’s going to be really important to have depth so you’re not burning guys out.

“I think you’ve got to be really careful that 30 games in you’re haven’t burned players out, so we have to keep a closer eye on that and be able to use our bench and develop guys that are going to be able to not only come in and play but play effectively for us.”

With so many back-to-backs and even a pair of back-to-back-to-backs, there will be nights when the Suns will need to rest a Nash or a Hill or just limit their minutes. Even younger players like Marcin Gortat and Jared Dudley must not play so many minutes that it affects them later in the season.

“We can’t be in a situation where we’re playing guys 40 minutes a night,” Gentry said. “It’s just not going to work out. … I can’t see how anybody’s going to do that.”

To this end, whereas the Suns lack blue chip talent after Nash, they do feature a slew of role players who could mesh into an effective bench unit.

If Robin Lopez is as healthy as the Suns seem to think, he should be one of the league’s better backup centers. Markieff Morris should help on the boards and in the post on defense as well as provide a floor spacing presence on offense. Josh Childress is an elite slasher. Shannon Brown (if he does not beat out Jared Dudley for the starting spot) is a dynamic presence in the open court. Ronnie Price provides defense and Sebastian Telfair can run a team although the winner of the backup point guard battle once again will represent a steep dropoff from Nash.

That’s not even counting Hakim Warrick, who has played well in training camp and could give the Suns an offensive boost on any given night.

It’s not a stretch to think the Suns will go 12 deep this season, with players like Price and Warrick providing a lift when the matchup is right.

“We’re excited, we have a little more depth this year,” Nash said. “I think for every team depth is going to be a huge part of a team trying to get into the playoffs or trying to exceed expectations, trying to make it through this schedule. We’ve tried to bring some depth in, and I think we’ve succeeded.”

Just like in 2009-10, the calling card of this bench mob figures to be defense. Aside from Warrick, every player on the bench rates as at least a solid defender.

It’s common in the NBA for teams to go only eight players deep, and when Mike D’Antoni ran the show in Phoenix he often played only seven key guys.

But with 66 games in 123 days more teams figure to emulate the 2009-10 Suns than the 2004-05 Suns, which means Phoenix’s bench will likely log more minutes against opposing bench players than they have in the past.

That could give Phoenix a major advantage if their bench can come close to reaching the level of their elite reserve corps from two years ago.

“Guys are going to be tired, a lot of minutes are going to be played in a short amount of days,” Price said. “So having a deep bench is very important, and this team has that.”

Suns

Hornets

The Phoenix Suns expected everything to be on the line tonight against a New Orleans Hornets squad that two weeks ago they seemed to have a legitimate chance of catching.

At the time the Suns still were seeking a miracle, but it seemed to be a doable miracle if the team were to get hot down the stretch as they did a year ago.

A victory over the Hornets back on March 25 in US Airways Center would have brought them within two games of New Orleans in the loss column with this game still to go. Sure, the Suns’ stretch run has been daunting, but that’s a doable scenario since Phoenix would have owned the tiebreaker by winning on March 25 and tonight.

Instead the Hornets put the Suns’ season into checkmate in a game Alvin Gentry feels his Suns would have won if not for the unfortuitous collision between Steve Nash and Marcin Gortat that knocked the Suns’ center out of the game late in the third quarter with a fractured nose when he had already posted a double-double.

The bottom fell out after that with Phoenix losing six of seven starting with the Hornets loss before Wednesday’s win in Minnesota once realistic postseason aspirations had all but ended.

The Suns still have somewhat of a chance to play the spoiler role with New Orleans currently sitting seventh in the West, just a half game behind Portland for sixth and a game up on No. 8 Memphis.

The Hornets have posted a 4-2 mark since leading scorer and second-leading rebounder David West went down with a torn ACL, including Wednesday’s win over Houston that clinched a playoff spot.

That stretch started with New Orleans’ win over the Suns two weeks ago, a game in which Chris Paul took over late and Carl Landry replaced much of West’s production with 19 points and six boards, almost exactly what West produces on an average night.

On the Phoenix side it’s more of the same, just continuing to build continuity for next season.

It was nice to see Alvin Gentry leave his bench in Wednesday’s game until the finish to give those guys an opportunity to play in pressure situations (or as close to a pressure situation as you can get at this point in the year).

I’ve enjoyed getting a taste of what Josh Childress can bring to this squad. All along I’ve felt it was unfortunate that he became the 11th man in a 10-man rotation, the Earl Clark role if you will, although it was understandable since the other wings spaced better for Nash. Childress was all over the place against Minnesota, his best sequence coming in the second quarter when he scored a layup falling out of bounds and then recovered to steal the inbounds pass and dunk it.

We’re also getting to see Aaron Brooks develop more of a rapport with his teammates and most of the reserves start to find some of the rhythm they have lacked as a unit all season (except for Robin Lopez, of course).

With wins and losses no longer mattering, it will be good for the bench to log more important minutes tonight against a team in playoff mode.

UPDATE: Nash will sit tonight

According to The Arizona Republic’s Paul Coro, Steve Nash will miss tonight’s game “due to a hamstring issue that has come up on top of his recent flu bout and ongoing pubic symphysis problem.” That will allow the Suns to take a longer look at Brooks in this one as well as find some quality minutes for Zabian Dowdell. Coro also reported that Jared Dudley is “promising” the much-ballyhooed dunk No. 10 tonight.

Hakim Warrick helped the bench unit total 58 points in Wednesday's win over Minnesota. (AP Photo/Tom Olmscheid)

With the playoffs out of the question and nothing tangible to play for, it’s up to the Phoenix Suns’ bench and role players to rack up victories as the season comes to a close.

Although it came against the NBA’s worst team without its best player in Kevin Love, the Suns’ second unit rose to the occasion on Wednesday night as Phoenix defeated the Minnesota Timberwolves, 108-98.

Steve Nash and Grant Hill played a combined 39 minutes and every starter aside from Marcin Gortat sat for the entire fourth quarter as they watched Aaron Brooks, Josh Childress, Vince Carter and Hakim Warrick take care of the lowly T-Wolves.

Hill scored 17 points in 19 minutes and Gortat had a monster game with 20 points and 16 boards in a team-high 32 minutes, but it was the bench that should be credited with the win.

The second unit combined for 58 points, all of which came from Brooks, Carter, Childress and Warrick.

The bench mob that’s struggled at times this season did a nice job fending off Minnesota down the stretch as they never let the five-point lead they took into the fourth shrink down below four.

Brooks was a huge reason why, as he controlled the tempo and scored 10 of his 19 points in the final period, making all four of his shots while dishing out three of his six dimes to boot.

Tonight was Brooks’ best performance since his 25-point, eight-assist outburst against the Raptors, and easily his second most efficient performance as he made 8-of-13 shots and turned the ball over only twice in 26 minutes. It came against Luke Ridnour and a laughable Minnesota squad, but maybe the Suns have reason to believe in Brooks as the point guard after the Nash era.

Childress, Gortat, Carter and Warrick did the rest of the Suns’ fourth-quarter scoring, which was Phoenix’s downfall all season long. But it wasn’t only the fourth quarter where the bench mob shined.

After the starters limped through the first quarter to take a 26-23 lead at the end of one, the bench pushed the Suns’ lead to 15 — their biggest of the game — with 3:34 left in the quarter.

Much like the fourth quarter, Carter, Warrick, Brooks and Childress combined for all 30 of the Suns’ second-quarter points, even though they also allowed 30 points and took only a three-point lead into halftime.

The defense wasn’t stellar, but those four bench players — plus Gortat — got it done with the starters on the bench. Warrick played as aggressive as he has in a long time, scoring 17 points on 7-of-12 shooting including a few rim-rattling slams.

Carter also impressed, following up his 23-point game against the Bulls with 12 points and four boards. But it wasn’t his stats that turned heads, but rather a pair of dunks — one following a reverse spin where he planted both feet and threw it down with two hands and another one-handed slam off an alley-oop.

And finally there was Childress, who once again played an efficient all-around game, scoring 10 points off of 5-of-6 shooting while grabbing four rebounds, dishing out three assists and collecting three steals.

In addition to the four bench standouts, Gortat played another Gortat-like game, grabbing 36.3 percent of the Suns’ total rebounds and shooting 8-for-14 from the field to collect his sixth double-double in eight games. He’s averaging 11.8 points, 11.8 rebounds and 1.8 blocks over his last five games and continues to be one of the few silver linings to come from this season.

It’s hard to find positives out of a victory over the NBA’s worst team when the playoffs are out of the equation, but the play of the Suns’ bench and Gortat’s continual dominance give Phoenix something to smile about with four games remaining in a disappointing 2010-11 campaign.

And 1

Garret Siler, not Robin Lopez, was the first big man off of the bench for the Suns. Siler played only two minutes, however, committing a turnover and scoring zero points and grabbing zero rebounds. … Although it seems impossible to be worse than that stat line, Lopez was. He went 0-for-3 and picked up three fouls in six minutes. But the stats didn’t even tell the story. He airballed a 16-foot jumper, got swatted at the rim by Wesley Johnson on a ball that he should have easily dunked but instead went for a weak left hook, and got embarrassed defensively on a lob feed when he didn’t jump. The seven-footer’s regression remains the biggest mystery of the season.

PHOENIX — In Mathletics, former Mavericks stats guru Wayne Winston found that playing on the second game of a back-to-back makes an NBA team play two points worse than average.

If only Winston could come up with a formula that would determine how much worse a team would be expected to play when its best players log 57, 53 and 49 minutes the night before in a crushing triple overtime loss to their rivals and then their two best perimeter defenders can’t make it through the first half. Then we would know what the Suns were up against Wednesday against the Toronto Raptors.

In a game the Suns absolutely had to win to keep pace with the Memphis Grizzlies, who won in Boston to stay three games up for the final playoff spot, Phoenix required a total team effort to earn what Alvin Gentry called the squad’s best win of the season, 114-106 over the Toronto Raptors.

On the surface it may be a surprise for Gentry to say that about a game Phoenix didn’t play all that well in against a team that’s now 31 games below .500.

But he made the statement because the Suns used all 12 active players while the game was still in doubt and everybody from Aaron Brooks to Zabian Dowdell to Josh Childress made a contribution when called upon.

“Everybody always says it’s a team effort, but today it really was,” Jared Dudley said. “It was a team effort, and we did enough to win basically.”

Added Gentry, “That was a total team effort right there. I thought everybody that came in did a little something to help the team and that’s what was really good about it. After last night and the emotional drain, then coming away with nothing really tangible to show for the effort that we gave, I just thought it was great to come back and put in that kind of effort and be able to win the game.”

Nothing about this game was quite typical, starting with Nash’s exit midway through the first quarter that resulted in Two Time sitting for the rest of the half. Hill took a rest then as well and was later sent home he was so exhausted, and two minutes into his stint Pietrus sprained his knee and walked off the court onto the baseline while an open Raptor scored a layup. He did not return.

Midway through the second half Gentry teamed Nash with Brooks in the backcourt, as the Suns went to a matchup zone to hide their lack of size at the guard spots. Brooks (team-high plus 21 in 34 minutes) remained in for the rest of the game as Vince Carter (-11 in 20 minutes) sat and the Suns went with a Brooks-Dowdell backcourt for almost nine crucial minutes of a second half the team had to win.

The Suns trailed 84-71 with 3:21 left in the third, but they reeled off a 15-2 run to end the period capped by a Brooks layup at the buzzer to head into the fourth quarter tied.

Things seemed lost once again when the Suns trailed by six with 4:25 remaining, but Phoenix raced out to a 17-3 advantage the rest of the way, hitting 6-of-8 shots while holding Toronto to 1-of-9 shooting.

Brooks was the catalyst, scoring 25 points on 9-for-16 shooting while dishing eight assists. He created plays, he attacked for his own offense, and he spotted up for threes when playing with Nash, including a dagger of a trey to put the Suns up five with 54.9 left.

“Obviously that was his best game as a Sun,” Gentry said of Brooks. “I thought he was just so aggressive and really feeling a lot more comfortable with what we’re doing.”

Gentry told Brooks to attack more and that he would likely play a bigger role in this one after Nash played 49 minutes the night before, but Brooks didn’t expect to enter so early in a game Nash played just 21:30 of.

This game typified why the Suns swapped backup point guards. On nights Nash can’t carry the load throughout a ballgame, Brooks is in the bullpen waiting to do some damage.

“This was a must-win game. We knew the importance of this game,” Brooks said. “We came in and we did our job. [The starters] carried the torch in the Lakers game for an hour, and it was our turn to come in there and do our jobs. We knew we had to keep it close for the end of the game, get Nash back in there to close it out, so that’s what we did.”

Gentry joked that Frye and Gortat are about to kill him after Frye played nearly 100 minutes on consecutive days (40 tonight) and Gortat added 33 minutes to his 53 a night before.

Dudley was the ironman of the night with 42 minutes of action for a Suns team that suddenly needed all that depth at the wing spot when Hill and Pietrus left early.

It was an unenviable task both physically and certainly mentally to move past a game in which so much emotional energy was invested to grind out a win against a bad team they just had to beat, and while it wasn’t always easy that’s exactly what the Suns did.

“Man, let me tell you, it was no joke,” Frye said. “Grant leaving, now our rotation got even shorter. I felt that Coach did a good job of just making sure guys were getting rotated in. For us it just shows guys are ready to play and they want to win.

“I guess that’s why you run all them lines in training camp, and I think this was one of our better wins. It’s just a good win for us, guys stepped up.”

A Sweet 16 wager

Hill likes to say he doesn’t pay attention to Duke basketball until April, but apparently he’s taking notice a week earlier this year.

Hill and the former Wildcat Frye will take in Thursday’s Sweet 16 showdown from the residence of owner Robert Sarver, another Wildcat alum, along with the rest of the team.

Frye and Hill have a friendly wager on the game that involves the player from the losing school having to wear gear from the winning school.

Frye made the same bet with Josh Childress before the UA-Stanford football this season and found himself in a Cardinal Snuggie when all was said and done.

A St. Mary’s love tap

Jerryd Bayless received a flagrant foul for shoving Frye and both received technicals for the mini-altercation. Frye and Bayless know each other well since both players went to the same high school (Phoenix St. Mary’s) and college (Arizona), and Frye actually played high school ball with Bayless’ older brother.

Frye set some vicious screens on Bayless in the playoffs last season when Jerryd was a Blazer, so there’s certainly a bit of a rivalry between these two Knights/Wildcats.

Frye did not want to comment after the game.

And 1

This contest marked the return of Leandro Barbosa to the desert. LB went for 14 on 6-for-11 shooting in 22 minutes of action. … The Suns have won 14 in a row against Toronto, the club’s longest active winning streak. They have thus swept the series seven years running, ever since Nash returned to town. … The Suns are 6-2 after overtime games this season. Phoenix has won four games in a row that have followed triple overtime contests. They became the first squad since the Heat and Jazz on March 15, 2009, to win after playing in triple OT. … The Suns’ 12 threes are their most on the second game of a back-to-back this season. … Phoenix scored 114.2 points per 100 possessions Tuesday against the Lakers, far and away Los Angeles’ worst defensive performance since the break. Only their Miami loss (110.6) was particularly close to that mark.

Zabian Dowdell sparked the Suns during their fourth-quarter rally. (Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)

Nursing a three-point lead heading into the fourth quarter, I wondered how long Alvin Gentry would wait to re-insert Steve Nash into a game his team couldn’t lose as it clings to playoff hopes that took a major hit during last week’s four-game losing streak.

But the only tough decision Gentry ended up facing this fourth quarter was whether to leave his bench in longer than usual after the unit stymied the Clippers with a 10-2 run during the first five-plus minutes of the period to allow the Suns to take a commanding lead they would never relinquish in their 108-99 victory in Los Angeles Sunday afternoon.

The bench forced eight straight misses to begin the final period before Eric Gordon finally made a layup almost five minutes into the quarter and the Clippers never got closer than three possessions from there on out.

The crucial sequence started when a Mickael Pietrus block led to a fast-break follow from Jared Dudley off a Zabian Dowdell miss. But that duo wasn’t done as Dowdell made a steal in the backcourt and Dudley dished it right back for another layup before JMZ hustled back to his bench for the ensuing timeout to a greeting from a mob of giddy teammates.

It was the kind of hustle sequence that epitomized the spirit of last year’s bench, something that has occurred far too seldom this season as the bench did what it did so often last season by turning a ballgame in doubt into a Suns victory this afternoon.

With Aaron Brooks suspended for throwing a ball at an official Friday against Golden State, Dowdell played his second straight superb game after being a critical part of the Houston rally on Monday with 11 points, five dimes and four steals. This time he finished with eight points (six in six minutes of the fourth) and a pair of assists but it was his energy and scrappiness that lit a fire under the second unit in this one.

Dudley served as a co-catalyst, Hakim Warrick chipped in with six points and Marcin Gortat nearly outrebounded the Clippers in the final quarter with eight of the Suns’ 13 rebounds, while Phoenix’s defense held Los Angeles to 36.8 percent shooting in the fourth.

For the game the Suns got 47.2 percent of their scoring from the bench with three guys in double figures, and Gortat (+12) and Dudley (+11) were the plus/minus leaders for the team.

The Suns surely didn’t miss Brooks in this one and the bench even seemed to play more cohesively with the high-energy Dowdell running the point.

The bench made the final push, but Steve Nash put them in that position with another game that proved he’s got to be feeling a bit better. Nash finished with 23 points, 13 assists and seven rebounds while shooting 8-for-13 from the field and 3-for-3 from deep a game after tossing up a 17-10-6 line in his second game back Friday after missing a pair of games with pelvic instability.

Two Time went for 15-7-7 in the first half alone and showed few ill effects of the injury that hampered him so much before his rest.

Gentry said before he sat out the two games that Nash had been either missing or failing to take shots that he’s been hitting his whole career, and Nash’s health can often be seen in his shot attempts, particularly from deep. Nash has now attempted three three-pointers in each of his three games since returning after combining for five in his previous four games before sitting out, and he’s hit 6-of-7 in the last two.

Perhaps some of Nash’s mastery in this one could be attributed to a porous Clippers defense that neglected to rotate time and time again on the pick-and-roll (the biggest no-no there is when defending Nash), but he looked like a different player than the guy we saw a week ago against Denver.

Along with Nash, Channing Frye’s shoulder sure looked healthy after a rusty first half in which he missed all four of his shot attempts (all threes). Frye exploded for all 19 of his points in the second half on 6-for-10 shooting with five long balls in the bunch, including a pair in the final three minutes to thwart any potential Clippers comeback attempt.

Today marked two weeks since Frye separated his shoulder in Oklahoma City and when he returned early I wondered if the aftereffects of the injury might alter his shot or lead him into one of the prolonged slumps he’s been known to be prone to. Those fears were exacerbated by clanking some open shots Friday and then missing his first five shots today, so perhaps his hot second half will prevent any kind of cold streak.

With so many tough games coming up against winning squads, the Suns could not afford a loss to the Clippers. The Hollinger Playoff Odds gave Phoenix just an 8.6 percent chance of reaching postseason play before this win that moves the team within two games of Memphis for the No. 8 spot, and they will need to beat many better teams as well in the coming weeks to have a shot.

The odds are certainly less than favorable with Houston and Utah in the hunt as well, but with a healthy Nash and Frye and a bench stepping up to win a few games in the fourth it’s not exactly time to start thinking lottery quite yet.

And 1

Nash took a trip to Vancouver on Saturday for the inaugural game of the Vancouver Whitecaps, the MLS expansion team Nash is a part-owner of. According to The Associated Press, Nash “banged a drum in the Empire Field stands while wearing a Whitecaps scarf and a No. 13 jersey.” … The battle of the boards was even, 38-38. … Blake Griffin fouled out on a monster posterization of Marcin Gortat, in which Gortat stepped over to take the charge with the Suns up 13 with just over four minutes remaining. Said Gentry, “That was one hell of a dunk. I don’t care if it was a charge. That might be as impressive of a dunk as I have seen in the NBA in 23 years. I think that was the best dunk he’s had since he was in the league.” … The Suns kept Griffin in check all game, holding him to 17 points on 6-for-18 shooting to go with a career-low two rebounds. Eric Gordon scored only 10 on 4-for-11 marksmanship against Grant Hill’s defense.

BOSTON — The Boston Celtics are widely known around the NBA as the baddest team in the land, and the Phoenix Suns stared them right in the eye without flinching Wednesday night in the TD Garden.

They did so both on the scoreboard, where they brought a 29-point second-half lead all the way down to eight without a starter on the floor before falling 115-103, and they did so by physically fighting back against a Celtics squad that wanted revenge following the overblown aftereffects of the teams’ meeting in Phoenix a month ago.

The Celtics came out with an edge and built their lead by playing at the fevered emotional pitch that they are best at. The Suns’ starters had no answers as they were largely held to the perimeter while Boston torched them inside. The Celts got five layups or dunks in the first four minutes alone and doubled the Suns in the paint for the game (52-26).

That emotion spilled over in the final seconds as Kevin Garnett earned a technical with 16 seconds left for jawing at the Suns’ bench and then Rajon Rondo shot a three-pointer at the buzzer in a game long decided. But Jared Dudley wouldn’t stand for that, so he fouled Rondo good and hard by the Suns’ bench to let him know how he felt about running up the score.

“I just did what I was taught since playing this game,” Dudley tweeted.

Alvin Gentry feigned not caring by saying, “That’s no big deal, you play to win the game. You’re supposed to play for 48 minutes, he wanted to shoot and he shot it. I don’t see anything wrong with that. He’s supposed to play 48 minutes, there was two seconds or four seconds to go, you play 48 minutes. I don’t have a problem with that, I really don’t.”

I would love to hear what Gentry really thinks in a candid moment, but he probably did not want to stir up KG and the Celtics anymore after his comments about losing a little respect for Garnett after he hit Channing Frye in the groin fired up the Celtics for this one so much.

Doc Rivers could see that fire burning in his squad at shootaround, and Paul Pierce felt there was carryover from the beatdown in Phoenix.

“It got kind of heated down the stretch and some words were said in the paper from the Phoenix side,” said Pierce, alluding to Gentry’s comments. “Coming into the game we felt that this was, we were hyped for this game truthfully. We couldn’t wait to get them back in our building based on what happened last time and some of the words. It was very refreshing to go out there and get this win how we did it.”

Rivers also had no problem with Rondo’s late shot, instead calling out the Suns’ bench for doing a bit too much chirping.

Whatever it was KG channeled the 2004 version of himself by exploding for a season-high 28 points on 12-for-14 shooting while also pulling down 11 rebounds and blocking a pair of shots. Perhaps proving a point after their tiff last month, KG abused Frye in the post, although Gentry wasn’t so sure it was because of the revenge factor.

“I’m sure if it is Doc hopes he gets pissed off at every coach in the league,” Gentry said. “I don’t see anything, I think we’re making a big deal out of nothing. In the grand scheme of things it’s one game that we play, and he played great, you got to give him credit.”

The Suns’ starters, meanwhile, did not play great, as all five of them boasted negative plus/minus ratings, with Grant Hill the worst losing 25 points in 27 minutes. The bench saved this one from being a laugher with everybody off the pine gaining at least nine points, led by Hakim Warrick’s plus 15 in 23 minutes.

Phoenix scored the last nine points in the third in large part due to three Dudley buckets and continued to pour it on in the fourth by scoring the first nine in that period for an 18-0 run that made this a 10-point game with 8:37 remaining.

Gentry rightly chose to roll with his bench to the finish as the reserve unit finally got the Suns out into the open court after the team lacked any rhythm the first two and a half quarters.

“I think we played extremely well in the second half, especially the second unit,” Mickael Pietrus said.

Added Marcin Gortat, “We didn’t have anything to lose.”

Aaron Brooks was the catalyst of the attack by scoring 14 of his 17 points during the second half run while also finishing with seven assists on 6-for-7 shooting in his 21 minutes of action. Dudley added 15, Pietrus 11 and Gortat 13 and 13 for a bench that had twice as many players in double figures as the starters.

“We have a good second unit,” Brooks said. “Everybody’s been a starter on that second unit before, they know how to play. It makes us dangerous.”

Playing with such a deficit may have helped a second-unit that has put together back-to-back impressive showings after blowing many a lead earlier this season as they could play loose without the pressure of protecting an advantage.

But on this night that wasn’t enough against a Celtics squad that came out as motivated as they were lethargic in their 88-71 loss in the Valley, even if Dudley did deliver the final blow.

“We’ve got some work to do to be able to play with teams like this,” Gentry said. “I thought our second unit did a good job. We’ve got to get our starters competing and playing at the same level and playing better than we have.”

And 1

Channing Frye and Vince Carter ran into each other and viciously bumped heads with 4:53 left in the third. Neither player returned, as Frye suffered an eye contusion and Carter a mouth laceration. “One of those freak things that happens,” Gentry said. … The Celts won the battle of the boards 45-33. After Gortat’s 13 the next highest Sun was Dudley with five. Speaking of JMZ, Dudley threw down his fifth dunk of the season tonight. Still waiting for a posterization, though. …. Phoenix lost its first game since the All-Star break after winning its first four. … Nash failed to record double-digit assists after doing so in 10 straight and 14 of 15. He finished with seven. … The rafters of the TD Garden look like a Sudoku puzzle with so many retired numbers in boxes up there.

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns’ bench played such a stellar second quarter that it rivaled any of their efforts from a year ago.

After Atlanta opened the quarter with a bucket to tie the game, they decimated a shorthanded Hawks lineup heavy on starters by ballooning the lead up to 18 points at its peak as Alvin Gentry kept the lineup together all quarter save for the final three minutes of Nash.

Yet the Suns almost blew their eventual 105-97 victory when those same reserves yielded a 12-3 Atlanta run to make this a three-point game when Nash and Channing Frye were forced to come back early with 8:14 remaining in the game.

“I thought that group did a great job in the second quarter for us,” Gentry said. “I thought for the most part those guys did a good job for us and actually got us the lead. In the fourth quarter we didn’t execute, and that’s the Jekyll and Hyde part of what our second unit’s been this season. We’ve just got to get more consistency out of them. We have to feel like that’s what we’re going to get every time out, and so far we haven’t gotten that.”

Added Hakim Warrick, “As good as were in the second quarter we just didn’t bring it in the second half.”

Gentry nailed it by calling this bench a Jeykyll and Hyde unit, and it’s rare for a game to provide such a stark contrast.

Marcin Gortat nearly had a double-double by halftime (nine points and 10 boards), and Mickael Pietrus, Jared Dudley and Hakim Warrick combined for 26 for a Suns second unit that outscored their Atlanta counterparts 50-28 with Atlanta going shorthanded after completing a trade for Kirk Hinrich just before the game.

Most importantly they shut down an Atlanta offense that scored 31 on 56.0 percent shooting in the first to the tune of 16 points on 29.4 percent marksmanship in the second, and their 15-3 run midway through the quarter put the Suns in control of the contest. Save for Warrick’s presence at the power forward spot, this is a defense-first lineup that should be proficient at that end on a more consistent basis.

But then the fourth quarter started, and the Hawks played a zone that flummoxed the Suns. They scored on some atypical plays (a Dudley dunk and a Warrick three?!?) but could not muster any consistent offense while their defense got burned on the other end.

“They played great in the first half, in the second half they were just totally disconnected,” Nash said. “But what they did in the second quarter was really important to our victory. It gave us some breathing room, and we were able to overcome a lapse there at the start of the fourth quarter.”

Much like in their 118-114 victory in Atlanta earlier this season, the Suns let the Hawks tie the game but not get any closer.

When a Joe Johnson triple knotted the score at 92, Nash immediately led an 8-0 predicated heavily on taking advantage of mismatches down low to finish the Hawks off.

“It was a great win against a real quality team,” Gentry said. “I thought that we just went through that little stretch there where we didn’t execute. … But I think we bailed ourselves out.”

With superstars falling from fellow contenders for the last spots in the Western Conference left and right, the Suns know their path to a playoff berth looks better than it did a week ago.

But only if the Suns continue to take care of business against a brutal schedule heavy on road games and quality teams.

Gentry’s latest motivational ploy involves telling his squad it’s like a college basketball team fighting its way into the NCAA Tournament. There’s no conference tournament, they need to win enough games to garner an at-large bid.

“We are not trying to be the play-in game,” Gentry added. “We want to be anywhere from a five seed and up, which means we’ve got to have a good record the last 27 games. We’ve got to play our way in.”

With the win the Suns moved within two games of No. 8 Memphis and into a tie in the loss column with the Grizzlies and Jazz.

But continuing the college analogy, the Suns aren’t watching what the other bubble teams are doing as they feel that will take care of itself if they just continue to win.

“We’re still at a point where we can control our own destiny,” Warrick said. “We don’t have to hope this team loses, just take care of ourselves and get as many wins as we can.”

The Suns managed to survive this one despite a very lopsided performance from the bench, but if that unit can provide more level contributions on a nightly basis the Suns may yet get a taste of April Madness.

And 1

• Nash was asked for the final time about a trade before Thursday’s trade deadline. “I haven’t thought about it, but obviously anything is possible,” Nash said. Nash won’t be the next superstar traveling east, at least not this season. Paul Coro tweeted that it’s very doubtful the Suns make any move, and if something were to happen I would assume it would be a small move involving a wing.
• Coro also reported that Fox Sports Arizona will be the exclusive home of the Suns starting next season, with the network slated to broadcast about 75 games next season after splitting coverage duties with My45 the past several years. Fans in Tucson must be rejoicing because now they will be able to watch every Suns game.
• Steve Nash passed Eddie Jones on the all-time three-pointers made list with his first long ball tonight, moving into 10th place with 1,546. …  Marcin Gortat’s ninth double-double off the bench gives him the most in the league and one off the record for a Suns reserve. … Channing Frye has scored 20 in three straight games for the first time since his rookie year. He’s averaging 25.0 in his last three. … The Suns have won five of seven and eight of 11 after sweeping the Hawks. … Phoenix has won four in a row following losses.

Suns

Clippers

PHOENIX — Inconsistency.

It’s an issue that’s plagued the Phoenix Suns for countless seasons. For a quarter they look like the best team in the NBA, but soon enough the wheels fall off and all hope is lost.

In past seasons, however, the Suns have been able to remain a respectable team despite that inconsistency. But this season it’s worse than ever, continually holding the Suns back from capturing big-time wins and maintaining leads against teams they should take care of.

“My goal right now is that we’ve got to try and find a way to get consistent, consistent in what we think we’re going to be able to do night in and night out,” said head coach Alvin Gentry. “I don’t feel that we’ve reached that yet.”

That inability to sustain runs and find a solid identity as a team stems from the bench struggles. The Suns scored only 12 bench points in Thursday’s loss to the Heat, and no Phoenix reserve scored more than four points.

Steve Nash and the starters jumped out to a 21-12 lead against Miami, but when Nash went to the bench the offense stalled. The Suns scored only three points in the next six and a half minutes and the Heat held a 32-28 lead by the time Phoenix’s starting five was back in action.

The Heat loss magnified the Suns’ bench issues that have been a problem since the season opener. While they’ve shown flashes of the unit that propelled the Suns deep into the playoffs last season, the inconsistency remains.

“The thing we still keep harping on is the consistency with the second unit,” Gentry said while shaking his head.

“We’ve been struggling all year. We struggled last night. We turned the ball over, taking bad shots, defensively we’re terrible,” added Jared Dudley. “I think we miss Lou’s energy, his blocks, making up for our mistakes. Hopefully now with Gortat, he can help fill that role. Offensively we just need to get into a better rhythm because the rhythm is terrible out there.”

That lack of rhythm has a lot to do with the new faces in new places, and that may not improve quickly with Marcin Gortat, Vince Carter and Mickael Pietrus now in purple and orange. But ultimately it falls on the shoulders of third-year point guard Goran Dragic, who’s scored only seven points on 3-of-11 shooting in the past two games.

“I can’t play Steve 48 minutes, I can’t play Steve 40 minutes because that’s unfair to him to try to ask him,” Gentry said. “As much as he does and as hard as he plays, it’s hard to play him 40 minutes. Somewhere along the line we’ve got to get somebody running the team and getting it done, 17, 18 minutes.”

Dragic is clearly that “somebody” but he has yet to show it. But the third-year backup point guard and the Suns can find that consistency against the Clippers — winners of three of their last four — on Sunday afternoon. They’re still working out rotations with the new guys, and it becomes even more difficult if Carter plays as he’s a game-time decision.

But as Dudley said, the Suns are running out of time and for Phoenix to become a complete team the bench needs to right the ship against Blake Griffin, Eric Gordon and company this afternoon in Staples Center.