The Suns and Clippers played a chippy game that ended with Phoenix prevailing with a critical three-point victory. (AP Photo/Matt York)

PHOENIX — US Airways Center was sleepy.

It was a weird sight to see considering the Phoenix Suns had so much to fight for. The final playoff spot was on the line, and with the Houston Rockets inexplicably falling to the lowly New Orleans Hornets earlier in the night, a win would lock the Suns with the identical 33-30 record as the Utah Jazz, then give them the eight seed by holding the tiebreaker.

A few verbal fireworks marked key points that led the gritty Suns to a 93-90 victory on Thursday against the Los Angeles Clippers, who themselves are in pursuit of the Pacific Division title.

“It was a gut-check game,” coach Alvin Gentry said. “We did everything we could to hang in there and we found a way to pull it out in the end.”

With a 46-45 Clippers lead at the half, Los Angeles started inching away midway through the third quarter, opening up a 66-58 advantage with 4:30 to go in the period and looking like it was about to extend a winning streak to six games.

Then came the fireworks.

Jared Dudley got in the face of Blake Griffin after Kenyon Martin hit Dudley across the neck on the other end. The Suns forward was called for a technical, and Chris Paul’s free throw made it a nine-point Clippers lead.

“I thought that was a cheap shot,” Dudley said in the locker room. “(Martin) later apologized, but I was running on high emotion.

“Blake caught the ball, so if you’re going to go at a guy,” Dudley joked, “go at a big guy.

“(Against) Oklahoma City,” he added, “there were technicals that we got, we kind of let that get to us emotionally.”

They didn’t on Thursday, and from that point forth the arena was awake. Meanwhile, the Suns were focused.

Nash and Dudley hit consecutive threes to climb back, and finally the expected playoff atmosphere appeared. The Suns trailed 71-69 going into the final period, but both benches struggled to find the bottom of the net. The Clippers and Suns scored a combined 11 points through the first six minutes.

The score at 77-74, Griffin appeared to have a fast-break dunk, and Robin Lopez went up for the contest, but raked Griffin around the neck, causing a brief, yet tense period where the two teams had to be separated. Lopez was ejected and Clippers guard Mo Williams was assessed a technical for reacting after the hard foul.

A back-and-forth ensued and the Suns would tie the game with 1:15 remaining on a Dudley three-pointer, his final three points of a team-high 18. Nash scored on a running scoop shot over Griffin after a Clippers’ score, and free throws shot for both teams — after three combined questionable calls — put Phoenix at a 91-90 advantage.

Paul’s shot was blocked out of bounds by Sebastian Telfair with eight seconds left — Telfair was alongside Nash in the final two minutes to defend the All-Star point guard — and Channing Frye secured a Mo Williams miss off the inbound play, then hit two free throws to ice the game.

“It wasn’t our type of game really,” said Nash, who finished with 13 points and six assists. “It wasn’t a clean game by either team. We could have gone south a lot. Big win.”

Each team took two and a half quarters to feel one another out, and neither led by more than four points in the first half. Both struggled to shoot above 43 percent in the first half as well, but they finished with identical 44.6 percent accuracies.

The Suns got 14 points and 14 boards from Marcin Gortat, 16 points from Frye, and 13 from Telfair despite the point guard struggling with a rib injury.

Paul had 10 assists and scored 19 to lead the Clippers, but he only shot 6-of-19, a stat Gentry was proud to point out afterward. He was also pleased that, after Griffin had 14 points in the first quarter, the Suns held the All-Star forward to just two more points thereafter.

“(Assistant coach) Elston (Turner) has done a great job of making it so our defensive gameplan is to take all of the lobs and all of that away,” Gentry said. “Really, if you go back to the first quarter, the dunks that (Griffin) had came off our turnovers. We’ve done a good job of making him make basketball plays.”

Hard fouls aplenty

Robin Lopez’s ejection with six minutes to play in the fourth quarter did indeed warrant the toss.

Nevertheless the Suns’ backup center wasn’t worrying about his ejection or potential fallout from the league if it decides he should receive further punishment.

“Tried to go for the ball, tried to go for his arms,” Lopez maintained. “It’s my job to protect the rim.”

In addition, Lopez cited the Suns’ focus on disallowing dunks and layups from the Clippers’ big men considering their poor free throw shooting. That and a hard-nosed attitude were the topic of discussion after the game.

“I think, you know, people have kind of called Phoenix soft in the past,” he said. “Tonight I think we tried to do a good job of being the aggressors, especially near the end.”

Quotable

Steve Nash on his shot over Blake Griffin that appeared to touch the tip-top of the backboard before going into the net: “I saw him (coming) like Carl Lewis out of the blocks. I was like, I better kiss this soft off the top because he was racing to get there.”

Jared Dudley on Sebastian Telfair’s pesky defense: “The black Sasha Vujacic. Kind of someone you hate, gets under your skin.”

Clippers

Suns

Last night, the Los Angeles Clippers did the Suns a favor by defeating the Denver Nuggets. Tonight, Phoenix will try to avoid a similar fate.

Both the Clippers and Suns are jostling for playoff position, but the sense of urgency — obviously — is most prevalent in Phoenix. After suffering a 109-97 loss at the hands of the Oklahoma City Thunder last night, the Suns find themselves tied with Houston at a half game out of the eighth seed, with four games left in the regular season. The Clippers, too, are a half game out of their goal of catching the Lakers for the Pacific Division title and the third seed in the Western Conference.

It’s always fun to lean on the narratives of desperation and resiliency, but tonight’s game, and the playoff race, will largely be decided, as has often been the case for Phoenix this year, by a battle of the frontcourts.

The Clippers are fourth in the league in offensive rebound rate differential (the difference between their own offensive rebound rate and how often they allow opponents an offensive rebound) in large part because of one of the most formidable front lines in the NBA. The Suns have shown flashes of solid post defense of late, with Channing Frye’s defensive contributions being of particular note, but trying to limit Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan and even Kenyon Martin represents a particularly daunting task.

Of this, the Suns are well aware. Marcin Gortat, who certainly has his work cut out for him, said, “It’s going to be a huge challenge. They have two very good big men inside.”

One can be sure that boxing out, securing rebounds and limiting points in the paint will be atop coach Alvin Gentry’s keys to the game, enumerated on the whiteboard of truth in his office.Jared Dudley, on the other hand, seemed fairly confident about Phoenix’s chances against the Clippers, saying, “We’ve got the Clippers, who we match up well with, we’re at home. We control our own destiny, we’ve got to come back and win. Win three out of four and we’re probably in the playoffs, so this is what we wanted, three of these games at home. Even though it’s against good competition to end the season you can look back on it and say, ‘Hey, you played your way in, you played your way out.’”

Indeed, Dudley is correct about the Suns controlling their own destiny. Their next two games come against the Nuggets and Utah Jazz, two teams against whom the Suns are competing for that last spot in the playoffs out West. But their playoff fate largely rests on tonight; with the Jazz idle, Phoenix has the opportunity to move back into the eighth seed ahead of those upcoming matchups.

Beyond the battle of the big men, there’s the always entertaining war of the Point Gods. Chris Paul and Steve Nash lead two of the top 10 teams in the league in offensive efficiency (the Clippers are third and the Suns ninth, according to Basketball-Reference). The possibility of Paul and company shredding the Suns is very real and very terrifying; Phoenix is likely to be without its defensive stopper, Grant Hill, whose ability to cover multiple positions would go a long way toward slowing the CP3 Show. According to Gentry, “[Hill] could play, but I don’t want to stick him out there unless I know he’s OK.”

Phoenix has defeated the Clippers nine straight times in US Airways Center, but their most recent victory came in a game where Los Angeles shot extraordinarily poorly from the line. Part of that can be credited to the Suns’ defense, but it’s also, at least to some extent, a fluke. Phoenix will need to lay it all on the line in order to overcome that regression to the mean and give themselves a fighting chance at the playoffs.

As usual, Nash put it best after last night’s defeat to the Thunder: “We’ve just got to go for broke tomorrow night and hope that all our hard work and determination will pay off.”

Hope is a good thing. Rebounding and defense are even better.

And 1

Nash recently joined KTAR in Phoenix to discuss his future with the Suns after this season. He was mostly noncommittal in his answers, sounding like someone who neither wanted to tip his hand and, in turn, rock the boat for a team in the middle of a playoff push nor was sure what the future would bring. There has been speculation that Nash’s family situation would play a big part in his decision making, but he generally dismissed the notion that it would be any more of a factor than the numerous variables that go into this type of conclusion.

“It’s one factor, but it’s not going to be the deciding factor. There’s a lot of ways around that, so the family situation is not me being number one or the only factor. It’s one of many factors to throw in the hat. The family situation isn’t immovable or a permanent one. That can be [one] that is sorted out as well, so that’s not something I am thinking about at this stage and frankly I’m not even thinking about free agency because it’s…besides tough games on the plate and us being in the No.8 seed that is more than enough to keep me busy these days.”

Blake Griffin unleashed a monster dunk on Channing Frye to punctuate the Clippers' victory. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

The Phoenix Suns had previously been able to frustrate Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin by using physical, rim-protecting defense to keep the athletic All-Star at bay. At least, it was enough to pull out two gritty victories against the Lob City Clips this season.

Griffin must’ve gotten tired of it.

The power forward scored 27 points on 13-of-19 shooting and led a late third-quarter streak that culminated in a ferocious, fourth-quarter dunk on Channing Frye and ultimately, in a 103-86 Clipper victory Wednesday night in Los Angeles.

In the end, despite decent rebounding and taking care of the ball, Phoenix’s 37.5 percent shooting for the game coupled with an emphatic burst from Griffin and crew doomed the Suns (25-26), who had a dinged-up roster and little room for error.

Aside from those skewed field goal shooting percentages, no statistical category stood out for the Clippers.

It was all about that little thing called momentum.

With a 64-60 lead with three minutes left in the third quarter, a subtle statistical run of 17-10 by Los Angeles through the next six minutes punched a large hole in the Suns’ sails. Eight of those Suns points were scored by Robin Lopez and that partially hid the sputtering of the second unit’s offense. Twelve of the Clippers’ points during that time were scored uncontested by Griffin or Clippers point guard Chris Paul, who finished the night with 15 points and 15 assists.

Even when Phoenix’s starters re-entered the game, it was already too late — the Clippers had found a groove, and from then on they carved up the Suns’ defense and in the final quarter scored 14 paint points en route to a 29-point fourth quarter on 61.9 percent shooting. Meanwhile, Steve Nash, possibly struggling with a stiff back that also bothered him against the Spurs, couldn’t get the Suns’ offense back into shape to keep up. Phoenix shot just 31.9 percent in the fourth to turn the final score into a blowout despite the first half and nine minutes being a back-and-forth affair.

The implosive end of the third that bled into fourth quarter were further examples of how much Phoenix has suffered this season when the bench unit struggles.

Such struggles have often been left on the court for the starters to sort out, and in this one that included an abysmal 14-point second quarter that began with the bench.

Magnifying those issues, the Suns also dearly missed — at the very least — the bodies of Grant Hill and Markieff Morris. Hill sat out his second game in a row with a tender knee while Morris remained sidelined to illness. Hakim Warrick and Robin Lopez combined for 16 points and nine rebounds, but with Shannon Brown filling in for Hill in the starting lineup and having much quieter of a night than his 32 points from the prior San Antonio game, there wasn’t enough firepower to keep up with the Clippers.

Frye and Marcin Gortat kept pace with the frontcourt of Griffin and DeAndre Jordan for a while, as both frontcourt duos had 23 first-half points with Los Angeles holding a 43-41 lead at the break.

Nash did his part in recording 15 assists by game’s end, but the point guard went 0-for-4 from the floor and finished with one point on a night his team could’ve used the scoring.

Add in Sebastian Telfair’s 0-for-5 shooting, zero points, zero assists and two turnovers, and it was a recipe for disaster.

About the only thing the Suns had going offensively was Gortat’s 23 points. Frye scored 16, but it came on a 6-for-15 shooting night, including an ugly 2-for-11 mark beyond the three-point arc.

The Suns have now have lost three of their past five, and though they’re all defeats at the hands of decent-to-stellar ball clubs, time is running out.

Injuries to Hill and potentially Nash could signal the end of a playoff push, although both the Denver Nuggets and Utah Jazz fell Wednesday evening as well, keeping the Suns two games back of those two clubs and the Houston Rockets. And with the Suns set to face the Jazz and Nuggets in the next four games — and once more after that, each — time isn’t yet out.

But at some point, games against the likes of the Clippers and the Spurs, who Phoenix also will see again, will have to be won.

Even if the likes of Tim Duncan and Blake Griffin have something to say about it.

Suns

Clippers

Life doesn’t get any easier for the Phoenix Suns as they visit the Los Angeles Clippers one night after a tough loss to the Spurs at home. The Suns have cooled off as of late losing three of their last five games. While those losses have come against three of the top five teams in the NBA, this is the road that Phoenix must travel to get to the playoffs.

The Suns sit at .500, two games back of the seventh and eighth seeds. By my calculations, the Suns will need to win nine of their remaining 16 games to have a shot at the playoffs. That push for the postseason starts tonight against a Clippers squad which appears to have righted their seemingly sinking ship.

Just a few days ago, many people in the media were questioning whether Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro would survive the season after players openly questioned his offensive schemes and the team stumbled to three losses in a row. Now Del Negro has the backing of his GM and owner and the Clippers have won two straight. Those two wins bring the Clippers’ post All-Star break record to 8-10 – not exactly the same team that was dominating the Lakers in the Pacific Division in the early part of the season.

Even with its three recent losses, Phoenix is 11-5 since the break. This hot streak is not a fluke. The Suns have not been winning simply because they played a ton of home games or played bad teams. Everyone on the roster has stepped up their game and fully embraced their role within the team dynamic. The clearest case of this is Shannon Brown’s performance last night. Brown, starting in place of the injured Grant Hill, scored a career-high 32 points on 11-17 shooting. Shannon was the biggest reason the Suns were in last night’s game until the final minutes. It’s clear that Brown has built up his confidence over the last 16 games, and it was on full display against San Antonio.

I believe that confidence has come from Gentry solidifying his and the rest of the reserves’ roles. With Hill likely to miss tonight’s game and Steve Nash possibly playing fewer minutes because of a stiff back, Phoenix’s bench will be heavily relied upon again. The reserves will need a performance more akin to Sunday’s 54-point outburst against Cleveland than last night’s 22-point whimper against the Spurs.

The second unit will be matched up against a group of Clippers’ reserves that has also started to gel as a unit. Grantland’s Robert Mays recently profiled “The Clippers’ Other Guys”. He described a group of guys in white headbands who are excited to play together as a unit and take pride in their performance. They have built their own identity and have become a huge asset to a Clippers team that will need depth if it wants to make any kind of noise in the Western Conference playoffs. While the matchups between Steve Nash and Chris Paul, DeAndre Jordan and Marcin Gortat, or Blake Griffin and anyone standing in his way will grab more headlines, it is the matchup of the second units that will decide tonight’s game.

In their two previous meetings (both Phoenix victories), the Suns came out on top because of their defense. In the first matchup, Phoenix held LA to 35 percent shooting. They also won the rebounding battle (52-46) and kept the Clippers off the free throw line. In the second game, Phoenix played without Nash and Hill and was beaten in almost every statistical category, but still somehow, the Suns won the game. The Suns will need to buckle down on defense again and fight for every rebound if they want to leave the Staples Center with a victory tonight. The Clippers are 17-3 when scoring over 100 points and 3-7 when held to 90 or fewer. Although the Suns have shown flashes of their former selves in games since the All-Star break where they’ve scored 100-plus points with ease, a low-scoring game with a staunch defensive effort is their best chance at a victory tonight.

Three Keys to Victory

1. Keep the crowd out of it. As difficult as it might be to avoid getting posterized by the always-lurking Blake Griffin, keeping Kia’s spokesman contained needs to be priority No. 1 for Phoenix. If the Clippers get on a run and Blake finishes a few highlight-reel dunks, the crowd at Staples might spur the team to 110 points and a win. Thus the Suns must be physical with Griffin from the opening tip to the final horn and make this a boring game for the LA crowd. I’m not advocating any Jason Smith-style tactics, just strong physical play on defense and the boards. The Suns held Blake to 17 points on 19 shots in the teams’ first meeting. They will need that level of effort this time around. The good news for the Suns, Blake is a terrible foul shooter, and the Suns have lots of fouls to give. Look for Hakim Warrick to get some time in this game if only to send Blake to the line six times. By keeping Blake at the stripe and out of the air, Phoenix can slow the game down and grind out a win.
2. Defensive rebounding. Giving up offensive rebounds has been Phoenix’s Achilles’ heel all season long. Several games this year have turned for the worse on a single offensive rebound given up after a great defensive stand in crunch time. The players on the floor must realize they that haven’t made a stop until they’ve secured the rebound. I know from his sideline reaction to these plays that Gentry is frustrated by these lapses on the defensive glass. He no doubt stresses the importance of these plays to his players. They must buy in to what he’s saying tonight. This is especially important against a Clippers team that can elevate and slam home missed shots with the greatest of ease. The Suns must put a body on DeAndre Jordan, Blake Griffin, and Kenyon Martin on every single shot.
3. Always be closing. The Suns have lost more than a few games in the closing minutes of the fourth this year. The Clippers have the best closer in basketball in point guard Chris Paul. This is a recipe for heartbreak unless the Suns commit to playing all 48 minutes and are prepared to weather any run the home team makes. The Suns have already beaten LA in two close games this year. With both teams fighting to move up in the standings and this condensed season quickly drawing to a close, tonight’s game will likely be decided in the fourth. The Clippers aren’t just going to give the Suns a win, in the same way that the teams ahead of Phoenix in the standings aren’t simply going to step aside and wave the Suns by. Phoenix will have to fight for everything it gets the rest of the way.

The Suns had reason to celebrate after upsetting the Clippers. Copyright 2012 NBAE (Photo by Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images)

On the first day of the NCAA Tournament, the Phoenix Suns pulled off Thursday’s biggest upset.

Missing Steve Nash and Grant Hill as they rested during this middle game of a three games in a row stretch, the Suns battled back from a 17-point deficit to beat the Clippers, 91-87.

The Suns played a gritty second half to slowly chip away at the Clippers’ lead before out executing them down the stretch with Shannon Brown playing the role of go-to guy.

It is surely debatable whether this is the Suns’ biggest win of the season, but it is without question the team’s most surprising victory featuring yet again another major comeback in a game in which Phoenix’s largest lead was the final margin.

The last time the Suns decided to sit Nash and Hill in this situation they were thrashed by the Denver Nuggets to highlight a pitiful stretch of three losses in three games. The Suns fought hard for some time in that one as well but just didn’t have the firepower to finish off the Nuggets; tonight was a different story although it kind of felt like the Suns were a double-digit seed trying to shock a more talented foe.

With the Detroit Pistons coming to town Friday night, the Suns can actually get back to .500 for the first time since they were 4–4 if they can close out this three games in a row stretch with three consecutive victories.

On a first day of the NCAA Tournament that featured few major upsets, the Suns played like the prototypical underdog, slowly chipping away at the lead and then making some big plays down the stretch to finish it off.  The Suns even celebrated like a college team, with players pumping their fists and raising their arms in the air before a wild celebration (for NBA regular season standards at least) was set off on the Staples Center floor.

“It was a great win for us because obviously we didn’t have our two best players on the floor, and we didn’t have the guy who is the engine to our whole team,” said Suns head coach Alvin Gentry. “It was satisfying for the guys in the locker room because I think they wanted to prove that we are a good team all around, and that we can win games without Steve or Grant.”

Although I would not bet on the team the Suns put on the floor tonight on most evenings, it must be a big lift to their confidence to beat a good team on the road without their two captains.

Through three quarters the Clippers were shooting better than 50 percent while the Suns were down below 39 percent and Los Angeles was leading the battle of the boards by 10, making it a surprise the Suns trailed by just 11.

But the fourth quarter was a different story as the Suns outscored the Clippers 27–12, drilling half their shots while holding the Clippers to 21.4 percent shooting and winning the rebounding battle as well.

Nobody on the Clippers scored more than three points in the decisive period whereas Brown led the Suns with 10 points and three more guys scored at least eight.

I’m not sure this strategy would work on most nights, but the Suns let Brown go to work in crunch time and no Clipper answered. The former Laker took four shots and four free throws in the final four minutes, canning the go-ahead three-pointer with 2:25 on the clock as well as go-ahead free throws with 1:33 remaining after the Clippers scored their final points.

With less than four minutes to go, Gentry decided to go with the unorthodox strategy of playing Hack–a–Blake and Hack–A–Jordan.  The Clippers’ big men ended up drilling four of their six foul shots, but the strategy seemed to work since those were the only points Los Angeles scored in the final four minutes of the game as it seemed to take them out of the rhythm of their offense.

Brown paced the Suns with 21, but it was wholly a team effort as eight other players scored between six and 12 points.  That includes Robin Lopez — who was a team-high +18 and relegated Gortat to the bench in the fourth quarter — as well as Markieff Morris, who went for 10 and six along with a +12.

Don’t look now, but the Suns are suddenly within sight of the playoffs after running off this streak of nine wins in 12 games, as they finished the night tied for 10th with Utah just two games out of the loss column of the playoffs.

Perhaps most impressive is the fight the team has shown throughout the run in which they’ve made a comeback from double digits in nearly every game, each one bigger than the last. They had every excuse to give up in this one down by 17 without their leaders against a very good team on the road yet they still fought back to score another comeback.

It’s too early to tell if Phoenix will be the Cinderella of the NBA playoffs, but these past few weeks the Suns have extended March Madness beyond the college game.

And 1

• When the Blazers waived Greg Oden today my first thought was why don’t the Suns take a flyer on him and give their vaunted medical staff their stiffest test yet. There’s a reason the guy was drafted ahead of Kevin Durant (although it may not necessarily be a good reason), and if he ever gets healthy he still possesses the talent to make a difference. It seems like a win-win for Oden to sign with the Suns for the rest of the season and see if the medical staff can get him right before he becomes a free agent next season (in which case the Suns would probably have first dibs).
• So long as we’re on the topic of the Blazers, you guys know I have long been partial to Nicolas Batum as a free agent target. However, after the moves the Blazers made today it seems safe to think they will never let that restricted free agent leave their grasp (although that was likely always the case).
• Sebastian Telfair played a solid game in place of Nash, delivering seven points and eight assists to just one turnover in 34 minutes of play. He showed no fear defending Chris Paul and came up with the defensive play of the game when he stripped CP3 on a drive with 34 seconds remaining and the Suns nursing a two-point lead.
• As the Suns’ broadcast pointed out, Phoenix is now 18–2 when allowing 95 points or less and just 3–20 when allowing more. Talk about a magic number.
• Morris gave Blake Griffin a taste of his own medicine by throwing down a vicious dunk on the dunk champion himself:
  

Suns

Clippers

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns have enjoyed the friendly confines of US Airways Center since the All-Star break.

Fresh off a 120-11 home win against the Utah Jazz, the Suns are 6-2 since the break, having played seven of those eight games at home. During that stretch they’ve played only one back-t0-back set while traveling away from Phoenix only once. As a result the Suns are one of the hottest teams in the Western Conference, and life has been good on Planet Orange.

These next two days have the potential to change that, however.

The Suns will complete the final two games of a back-to-back-to-back over the course of the next two days, and the legs of Steve Nash and Grant Hill will be tested more than ever. For everyone from Hill to Nash to Marcin Gortat, it’s time to pull out all the stops in order to stay fresh.

“We’re going to obviously try to take a rest as much as possible, sleep well, eat a lot and try to get different treatments: cold tubs, hot tubs, steam rooms and all different massages just to make sure that we are going to be ready,” Gortat said. “Besides maybe two, three guys on the team, we are kind of a young team so we should be fine.”

The Suns jettisoned to Los Angeles last night after the Jazz victory and will have the Clippers in Staples Center tonight before turning their attention to the Detroit Pistons at home on Friday. For a team relient on nightly production from a 38-year-old and a 39-year-old, stretches like these are dreadful — just ask Nash.

“Good win. Taking off for LA. The NBA AAU schedule has us playing 3 in a row,” Nash Tweeted sarcastically last night.

Nash and the Suns know all too well about the effect of back-to-back-to-backs. Phoenix left its last — and only — back-to-back-to-back set winless after dropping games to Golden State, Denver, and Atlanta on consecutive nights.

But this three-game set is different. The Suns already have one win in the bag, tonight they take on a Clippers team also on a back-to-back, and the Detroit Pistons are 4-16 on the road.

If Phoenix continues its recent play while rediscovering some of the defense it flashed in its five home games after the break, the Suns could very well chip away at the 3.0 games that separate them from the Western Conference eight seed.

While the Clippers are a daunting task on paper, Lob City is anything but soaring. Chirs Paul and company did take care of the Hawks in a 14-point home win last night, but the Clippers are 4-5 since the All-Star break and 2-4 in their last six games.

Phoenix already took care of the Clippers on March 2 and the Suns have the pieces to steal another win in Los Angeles despite the fatigue that comes with a back-to-back-to-back.

“We beat LA once this year so we’re definitely confident with that,” said shooting guard Jared Dudley. “When you’re winning, you just want to play games. I don’t care if it’s a back-to-back. For us, the more games the better. I don’t know if G-Hill will mind, but for myself personally, let’s throw the ball up.”

Dudley is champing at the bit as much as anyone as he’s been playing some of the best basketball of his career. Over the course of his last five games the 6-foot-7 Boston College product is averaging 20.6 points, 7.8 rebounds, 1.0 steal, and 1.0 block while shooting 53.4 percent from the field in 36.2 minutes per game.

Most recently Dudley is averaging 24.5 points in his last two contests and it’s no coincidence the Suns are winning. Dudley’s proudest accomplishment can’t be measured in a box score, however. The surging swingman threw down his first dunk of the year last night against the Jazz after talking a big game in the preseason.

“I don’t start fast, but I end with a bang,” Dudley said on Wednesday night. “You guys know how I do last year. Hopefully they start coming a little more frequently.”

In addition to Dudley’s play the Suns have also received a boost from Channing Frye, who scored 26 and 18, respectively, in his last two games after struggling mightily early in the year. Between Nash and Gortat, along with the major contributions from Dudley and Frye, the Suns are hitting stride at the right time.

Then again, three games in three nights could change that rather quickly.

Kevin Zimmerman contributed to this report. 

PHOENIX — Ever since training camp head coach Alvin Gentry has preached that the Suns must improve enough defensively to survive cold shooting nights.

The Suns are four games below .500 because that hasn’t happened often enough this season, but on Friday night their defense lifted Phoenix to an 81-78 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers despite an anemic offensive first half on a night that Steve Nash physically “didn’t have it,” as he put it.

“Grinded it out, we couldn’t make a shot early on,” Gentry said. “We played pretty good offense in the third quarter, but I just thought our defense is what rescued us.

“We just couldn’t get the ball in the basket but I thought we were doing everything we needed to do defensively to stay in the game.”

The Suns limited the NBA’s fifth-most efficient offense to a mere 78 points on 36.8 percent shooting. That includes an opponent season low of 14 points in the second quarter, a period won by the Suns even after scoring a mere five points in the first seven minutes.

That defensive effort allowed Phoenix to win a game in which the squad shot a stone cold 35.0 percent, the lowest field-goal percentage in a Suns win since they beat Cleveland on Nov. 1, 2002, on 33.3 percent marksmanship.

They have also now twice beaten a team when shooting below 37.0 percent this season after compiling no such wins during the past seven years (which, of course, is because the Suns rarely ever shot this poorly the rest of the Nash era).

Last season when the Suns battled the Clippers, Grant Hill found himself matched up against Blake Griffin, but tonight Gentry put him on Chris Paul — the kind of matchup switch few players in this league can handle.

Hill helped limit CP3 to 16 points and five assists on 6-for-15 shooting. Meanwhile, Channing Frye played perhaps the best game in NBA history in which the player in question clanked his way to a 2-for-18 shooting performance. That’s because Frye also tallied 14 rebounds and played tough enough defense to force Griffin into a 6-for-19 shooting night.

“I think Channing did a tremendous job today on Blake Griffin,” Marcin Gortat said. “We made him a jump shooter, so he wasn’t able to really do his dunks and drives to the basket. He did a really good job.”

Indeed Griffin, the NBA’s dunk leader, was held without a single smash tonight while his dunk brother DeAndre Jordan was limited to just one (they average more than five dunks a game combined).

As is the case with most teams, Dudley said the Suns’ game plan was to keep Griffin away from the rim, and surprisingly enough it worked.

“Channing was great,” Nash said. “He battled, he hustled, he took a lot of contact. He made it tough on him. It was key for us to try to make it difficult for him.”

That defensive effort allowed the Suns to beat a good team on a night when Nash wasn’t his usual All-Star self for physical reasons.

Two Time made just 1-of-4 shots for six points and racked up more turnovers (seven) than assists (six). Two late Nash turnovers keyed a 7-0 Clippers run that allowed Los Angeles to tie the game at 70 with four minutes remaining. Also, the former MVP has only once recorded fewer assists all season (way back on the second game of the year, when he also didn’t feel right).

“Today I felt like I was in a car wreck yesterday,” Nash said. “I just tried to have a great attitude and just be there for my team and hang in there and not get down.”

It’s no surprise that the Suns were pretty horrid offensively on a night when Nash wasn’t right considering what he means to that side of the ball.

It’s once again a testament to the defense that Phoenix could win a game without Nash directing the offense like the maestro he is, especially on a night when the power forwards combined to shoot 3-for-26 (the rest of the team by comparison wasn’t so bad at 48 percent).

Based on how lethargic the Clippers seemed to play, though, I don’t think we can count on Phoenix beating many good teams without Nash playing at his optimum level.

The Suns finally broke out of their doldrums during their 31-point third quarter outburst (at least for this game when the Suns scored 17, 15 and 18 in the other three quarters, this was an outburst).

Hill said the team was actually encouraged going into halftime because the players felt they shot horribly on good looks but that their luck was bound to change in the third quarter, as ended up being the case.

Gentry echoed that thought, saying the strong third quarter was just a case of the Suns making shots they missed in the first half.

“It’s just that simple really,” he said. “We had the same shots that we had in the first couple of quarters. We also picked up the pace of the game a little bit, too, and when we play with pace we seem to be able to catch the ball in rhythm a little bit more and shoot the basketball.”

After overcoming double-digit deficits in consecutive games against good teams, the Suns have now won four of five as they seek to make one last playoff push before the trade deadline.

The Suns surely are not good enough defensively to string together too many more wins in this fashion as if they were the Boston Celtics, but Gentry had no issue with winning one of the uglier NBA games you will see.

“It wasn’t a real pretty game, but I don’t really care,” he said. “We have to learn to grind out games and be able to win scoring 81 points.”

And 1

• Gentry opened his presser with this great quip: “My only reference to Jeremy Lin is this right here. I just told Channing Frye he is no Jeremy Lin, and by that I mean the last foul that he made. He is no Harvard grad on that one.” Frye fouled Griffin on a made basket in the final seconds with Phoenix leading by six at the time.
• Before the game, Gentry downplayed Phoenix’s victory on the boards over Minnesota, saying it’s just one game. He wanted to see what his squad could do against another excellent rebounding club in the Clippers. Mission accomplished as the Suns outboarded Los Angeles 52-46, led by Frye and Gortat both with 14. “I think we killed them on the glass,” Gortat said.
• The Suns improved to 68-1 in franchise history when holding opponents below 80 points. They have already done so four times this season, a mark they have not exceeded since 2002-03. … The Suns have won 12 of 13 against the Clippers, including nine in a row at home … Gentry is 10-1 as the Suns’ head coach against his former team. … One last Gentry joke: “We might bring Clipper Darrell in, we’ll bring him in on a 10-day and take a look.”

Clippers

Suns

PHOENIX — Upsets will become the name of the game if the Phoenix Suns hope to put together any semblance of a winning streak.

They started the second half of the season with a inspiring win over the then-18-18 Minnesota Timberwolves last night and hope that builds into momentum with the Los Angeles Clippers on deck tonight in US Airways Center.

If anything, the victory proved that Phoenix isn’t done throwing punches.

“Just encouraged that we fought, battled,” point guard Steve Nash said of the win. “We had some moments when we weren’t playing well. We came back from those moments.”

After a sluggish first half where they turned the ball over 11 times, the Suns tidied up their offense (only six turnovers in the second half) and continued to shoot the ball at a high mark to take control, all the while playing physical interior defense and holding the Timberwolves to 29.5 percent shooting.

Of course, it helped that the poor three-point shooting Timberwolves weren’t a threat from outside, hitting on only 1-of-13 three-point attempts. But overall for Phoenix, its effort and execution in the second half will be needed tonight if the Suns want to pull off another fast one.

“As good as we were, we can be better,” forward Grant Hill said after the Minnesota game. “Maybe in that first half, timing was off. I anticipate us being better tomorrow night. We’re going to have to be.”

We already know what the Clippers bring to the table — lobs, athleticism and one of the best point guards in the game.

But while Chris Paul tossing passes a couple feet above the rim — OK, OK he does a lot more than that — has helped the Clippers to the 3rd best offensive rating in the NBA, according to Basketball-Reference.com, their defensive rating only comes in at 21st place, one place behind Phoenix.

In other words, they’re vulnerable.

The very same Timberwolves team that Phoenix frustrated last night put the hammer down on the Clips on Tuesday, trailing almost all of the game before exploding in the fourth quarter without the help of Kevin Love, who left with a bruised rib. Bench players Derrick Williams and Michael Beasley combined for 26 fourth quarter points and 54 on the night in the victory.

Though not to the same extent, the Suns will need a strong bench effort to defeat Los Angeles. And after Thursday’s win, head coach Alvin Gentry still has hope that can happen despite his lack of options.

“Shannon Brown obviously came in and did a good job for us,” Gentry said. “Robin (Lopez) was a real force in there defensively, and Sebastian (Telfair) I thought did a good job. Markieff (Morris) didn’t shoot the ball good, but defensively I thought he did a good job.”

The Suns did enough to upset a .500 team, and now they’ll see whether that translates to toppling the Pacific Division leaders.

Three keys for Phoenix

Keep it physical. As an observer, the biggest difference on Thursday that gave promise to a revived Suns team was their physicality. In the past, this team didn’t want to get called for too many fouls — that slowed the tempo — but this year it matters much less considering the lack of fast breaking. Using all of their big men’s fouls and going deep into the bench didn’t appear to hurt the Suns to a great degree, and more importantly, it made for one of the most impressive defensive and rebounding efforts of the season. Against Blake Griffin, who hasn’t really liked the slimmer Grant Hill being physical with him in the past, getting Los Angeles frustrated could go a long way.

Post the guards. Since everything went so well against the Timberwolves, I’m again pointing to that game for solutions. The Clippers, like Minnesota, run with a small backcourt of point guard-sized players in Paul, Randy Foye and Mo Williams. Phoenix took advantage of Luke Ridnour being cross-matched with Hill, and whether it’s Hill or Jared Dudley, the Suns should exploit whomever the 6-foot-1 Williams or 6-foot-4 Foye are guarding.

Attack DeAndre Jordan. Once shot-blocking center DeAndre Jordan is off the floor, be it foul trouble or rotations, the Clippers don’t have a lot of size. Reserve Reggie Evans is more of a rebounder than a shot blocker, and power forwards Griffin and Kenyon Martin, while athletic, will likely not be deep in the paint as they worry about Channing Frye and Markieff Morris stretching the floor. That makes room for Marcin Gortat and Robin Lopez to do some damage in the paint on offense.

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns won a game without Steve Nash in convincing fashion, and no, that’s not an April Fools joke.

Sure, it was just the Los Angeles Clippers, a squad the Suns have now beaten in 11 of their last 12 meetings, but Phoenix’s sound 111-98 victory represented the first time the Suns have shown a pulse offensively without Nash this season.

In the Suns’ previous four games without Two Time, all losses, they mustered offensive efficiencies of 100.0 at Orlando, 106.1 at Charlotte (in a game the defense collapsed), 90.7 vs. Orlando and then 96.9 at Houston. Only the Rockets game was even close as the Suns seemed utterly lost without their floor general.

But tonight Aaron Brooks and Zabian Dowdell combined for 26 points and 11 assists and Grant Hill and Jared Dudley played strong games as well as the Suns led by as many as 25 in a game that was never close in the second half.

Along the way they recorded an offensive efficiency of 113.3 and earned just their fourth double-digit victory of the 31 games Nash has missed since 2004.

“I thought we played well from start to finish,” said head coach Alvin Gentry. “Aaron stepped in and did a good job. I thought between he and Zabian we did a pretty good job — obviously you’re not going to replace Steve, but I thought they did a pretty good job running the team and being aggressive offensively, and then making plays.”

Added Brooks, “We just moved the ball and played as a team.”

After the Suns took a 25-23 lead after one, the game turned during the second period when Dowdell sparked Phoenix with 10 points, three assists and effusive energy. The Suns shot 61.9 percent in the quarter and seemed to develop the kind of rhythm and flow they have often lacked without Nash, who missed tonight’s game with the flu.

Dowdell was itching to make an impression after his two-minute stint Wednesday against the Thunder was interrupted by his incident with Ken Mauer in which the official “disrespected” him and then tossed him from the game.

Dowdell answered the bell by scoring a career-high 14 points to go with five assists in 24 minutes as Gentry played his point guards in shifts, with Brooks taking the first and third and Dowdell the second and fourth. The one downside was his five turnovers, but Zabian was a difference maker in the Suns’ game-changing second quarter with his energy.

“That’s something I always try to do, bring energy to the game, try to be aggressive on both ends,” Dowdell said. “I had a chance to make a couple plays tonight and was able to convert.”

Hill said he was feeling great physically in this one, and it showed as Grant went for 19 points in his 25:31 of action. Hill chased Eric Gordon through screens all night and even ran into press row trying to corral a loose ball.

His energy was contagious for an otherwise young Phoenix team that showed the kind of fight I wasn’t sure we would see. The Suns have collapsed during their previous four fourth quarters to drop them out of the playoff hunt, but instead of suffering from an elimination hangover the Suns played this one as if it were a must-win game.

“We came out good tonight,” Hill said. “We came out with really good energy. Everybody contributed and played hard. The goal is – I don’t know if we’re mathematically out of it yet, but the goal is just regardless just to play hard and feel good about ourselves either going into the summer or going into the postseason. We can control that. We’ve just got to go out and play with a lot of effort, a lot of energy, compete and give ourselves hopefully a chance to win some games.”

Dudley chipped in as well with 16 points, seven rebounds and five assists, giving him five straight 15-point efforts for the first time in his career. Four have come since he joined the starting lineup, and this from a player who had scored 15 or more in just nine games all of last year.

The rest of the season is now about looking ahead to next year, and Jared Dudley is certainly playing like an NBA starter, even if his teammates teased him pretty good about a layup the official scorer ruled a dunk.

For the Suns’ backup point guards, the rest of the year is about proving they deserve a contract with Phoenix next season either as a backup to Nash or as part of the solution in replacing him.

Although you can’t draw many conclusions from a victory against a Clippers squad that just dropped to 8-29 on the road, tonight the Phoenix point guards helped the Suns show their first signs of life without Nash.

“Overall it was a big win in the sense that it’s good to get a win without Steve here, it gave us confidence,” Dudley said. “You see when opportunity comes knocking, certain players, they stepped up. I thought Zabian played tremendous for us coming off the bench, giving us a spark and kind of helped will us to get this win.”

And 1

The Suns held Blake Griffin to 6-for-15 shooting and through three quarters when the game was still in doubt limited the Clippers to 39.7 percent shooting. Three of their four opponents during their losing streak shot at least 50 percent. … Gentry had not heard anything on the subject of the league disciplining Mauer for disrespecting Dowdell during Wednesday’s game, and he said the Suns did not call the league about the issue either. … Former Duke track coach Al Buehler, the subject of Grant Hill’s movie “The Coach Buehler Story,” attended Friday’s game. You can see the film, of which Hill is an executive producer, on Monday at the Harkins Cine Capri. … The Suns are 10-21 without Nash since the start of 2004-05. Tonight was their third-largest victory in such games. … Hill has scored 18 or more 19 times, his highest single-season number since doing so 21 times in 2006-07.  … The Suns have won eight home games in a row against the Clippers. … Mr. ORNG was Mr. GRN, decked out in green Suns gear, with tonight being Green Night in US Airways Center. … Dudley on whether he dunked: “I’m a prideful dunker so I would say no.” As for Hill: “What dunk? He dunked?”