Channing Frye drives to the bucket. (AP Photo/Paul Connors)

PHOENIX — What exactly is a Phoenix Suns defense? In the past decade, we’ve never seen an exact identity of it, nor known how the various roster makeups could ever develop one.

But if there were any indication of what the definition of a Suns defense might be, the past three games would be the exact text in your basketball dictionary.

The Suns rolled out of the All-Star break with a different attitude, one that’s admitting that they’ll need to stick with their defensive muscle rather than any hope their offensive firepower can take them places with such little ammunition.

Through the current three-game winning streak that came from dominating rebounding and defensive efforts, a little more accountability from the Suns’ interior players has them clicking.

“We challenged the big guys to be able to guard their guys so we didn’t have to come down to double team,” head coach Alvin Gentry said. “They responded and did a great job. We challenged everyone, including our perimeter players. They have to be better rebounders … and they’ve also responded to that.”

Less double-teaming in the post thanks to Marcin Gortat and Channing Frye holding down the fort has allowed every Suns player to box out their man. Off of rebounds, Gentry said that making contact with every opponent on the floor and bumping them off straight paths to the bucket has been the priority.

It seems to be working, even against All-Star forwards in Kevin Love and Blake Griffin.

“Individually, we haven’t had to double, which means we haven’t been able to get in rotation, which has really helped our rebounding,” Gentry said.

The Timberwolves, Clippers and Kings that Phoenix has faced in the past week are all top-10 rebounding squads in the NBA, and the Suns have beaten all three on the glass. And keeping the Suns’ big men in one-on-one situations, even against talented players, has come without any negative side effects.

Phoenix has held its three post All-Star opponents below a 40 percent shooting mark during the current winning-streak. In fact, it could even be argued that the Suns’ going without post traps has baited the likes of Griffin, Love and Sacramento’s DeMarcus Cousins into taking more shots — and poor ones at that.

Against Phoenix, Love shot 8-for-25, Griffin shot 6-for-19 and Cousins only 7-for-20; add that up, and three of the NBA’s best big men only connected on 32.8 percent of their attempts against the Elston Turner-coached defense.

Of course, hitting the road to face the Western Conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder and the defending champion Dallas Mavericks doesn’t mean those numbers will keep looking so good for the Suns.

Still, they now have three games to refer to when they need a reminder about the definition of Suns defense.

Channing Frye’s game still in expansion mode

Nobody should discount that in 2009, Channing Frye’s career was resuscitated by joining the run-and-gun Phoenix Suns because of his offensive game. After all, it’s where the power forward fit into the stretch four position that works so well in a Steve Nash-ushered offense.

But while he’s become known as an offensive weapon who could get hot at a moment’s notice, it’s Frye’s defense that is largely behind the Suns’ current, although brief, success.

“For me, it’s the whole … just trying to be a complete player,” Frye said after Tuesday’s practice. “I figure, what do I have to lose? No matter what I do, (defense is) not going to be my stigma.”

Listen to a national broadcast, and that stigma still hangs over Frye’s head. It’s one that, in a way, assumes the seven-year pro has reached his peak potential. From the outside, it causes doubt in his abilities.

But in the past week, it was clear Love and Griffin had mounting frustrations as shots didn’t fall against Frye’s defense.

His presence has gone beyond his physicality, too. Frye says he’s grown the most this season in his mental toughness — where Love and Griffin openly showed their frustration, miss after miss, Frye continued to make a difference on the defensive end despite his own shooting woes (25 percent in the past three games).

“The sign of a great player is someone that maybe isn’t shooting well or maybe is really getting taken away on offense, who can still have an impact on the game,” Frye said. “You look at the great players — Rondo, Steve, Dwight Howard, even guys like Kevin Love, Tim Duncan — those guys impact the game not just on offense.

“I think for me, I understand that people are just going to come at me all the time,” he added. “It’s just making them work. If I got to work, they’ve got to work.”

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns have discovered a winning formula to open the second half of the season: fall behind by double digits early but hold the opposition below 40 percent shooting and win the rebounding battle to prevail in the end.

For the third straight game the Suns did just that in their 96-88 victory over the Sacramento Kings, a win that buoyed them to a three-game winning streak four days into the second half after doing that just once the entire inconsistent first half.

“We’ve still got a huge mountain to climb, but it’s a good start for us,” said head coach Alvin Gentry. “I thought we played really good basketball. I thought we played tough-minded basketball. Defensively that’s been kind of the difference.”

The Suns are still a long way from being back in the playoff race as they sit 3 1/2 games out in 12th place in the West, but they are finally taking care of home games, coming from behind and winning with defense and rebounding.

In fact they have now won five of six home games and are a Golden State toe stub away from a six-game winning streak and real momentum heading into the rest of this daunting schedule after entering this stretch with an awful 5-8 home mark.

Although the offense these past three games has looked “rusty” early on, as Steve Nash put it, the defense has allowed Phoenix to weather those droughts.

Tonight that meant holding Isaiah Thomas to eight points on 3-for-13 shooting as well as limiting Kings stars DeMarcus Cousins (16 on 7-for-20) and Tyreke Evans (17 on 8-for-18).

Gentry lauded the work his assistants did on that end during the practices after the break, saying they have done a nice job “of putting us in a situation where our guys believe in what we’re doing.”

In addition, the Suns feel the biggest key to their defensive success of late has come down to securing a healthy portion of defensive rebounds after being so porous in this area to start the season.

The Suns outrebounded Sacramento, 53-49, in tonight’s game as Cousins pulled down his usual 14 boards but everyone else was held in check. On the flip side, Marcin Gortat (17) and Channing Frye (10) cleaned the glass for Phoenix.

“Our defense has been pretty solid for most of the year, we just haven’t been able to come up with a good percentage of rebounding at the defensive end,” Nash said. “I feel like the last three games we’ve done a much better job rebounding and closing out possessions, and it gives us a good chance to win.”

Rebounding is an interesting topic to explore because it often comes down to positioning and effort, not to mention sheer size.

The Suns have been an abysmal rebounding team the last two seasons largely due to their lack of size, so I asked Nash why he thinks they have strung together three straight solid boarding efforts in a row.

“I don’t think it’s natural for our personnel so we have to make an extra effort,” Two Time said. “ Some nights we’re just going to lose that battle, but we’ve done a great job of trying to fight for it these last three games, and hopefully we keep that up.”

The Suns also continued their second-half prowess tonight, as Phoenix has outscored its opponents by 11.2 points the past three second halves while limiting their opponents to 36.2 percent shooting. Tonight the Kings hit just one-third of their second-half attempts while Phoenix used a 15-3 spurt to open the fourth quarter to win going away.

The Suns have now overcome double-digit deficits in three straight games for the first time since November 2002 and they’ve held three consecutive opponents under 40 percent shooting for the first time since January 2008.

“It feels good and definitely we made a plan, we said that we want to get those three wins and now we have them, so we have to keep going,” Gortat said. “We’ve got a great rhythm right now.”

Now the question is whether the Suns have finally turned the corner or whether they were able to get by without their fastball on offense because they faced two tired squads in Minnesota and the Clippers as well as bad team in Sacramento.

We will find out soon as after a trip to conference-leading Oklahoma City, the Suns play six of their next seven in Phoenix, with all but one of those games coming against a Western Conference playoff contender.

If the Suns can win, say, five of those six home games just as they won five of these previous six then all of a sudden they’re right around .500 and can at least start peering over at the playoff teams from their spot in the standings.

This run is also happening just as the Suns will have to make their final decision on whether or not to trade Steve Nash. All along I’ve felt like this only could happen if Phoenix was firmly out of the playoff discussion, at which time the front office could approach him about the possibility of seriously considering offers.

If the Suns start to finally click and move up the standings, I don’t see how that necessary change of events will occur.

But that’s not what the players and coaches are thinking about after this one. Instead they are celebrating really the first time all season that Phoenix can legitimately say it’s gotten on a roll behind a productive defense, solid rebounding and an offense that’s turned it on (relatively speaking) in the second halves of games.

Now the question is whether the Suns are due for the letdown they have suffered after every previous mini-run.

“If we have any chance of getting back in the playoff picture we have to win these games and give ourselves a chance to get back in there and get to .500 and see what we can do from there,” Nash said. “Hopefully we can take care of the games we’re supposed to win and take care of home court and then try to steal a couple.”

And 1

• Nash said he “felt a lot better” tonight after struggling through Friday’s game. “I think just the inactivity,” he said. “Going from my body’s used to playing and contact, but after the seven days off that first game back was a shock to the system and the next day I really felt it. The seven days off really messed me up.”
• Gentry credited Shannon Brown for “giving us a little bit of separation” as he scored a bench-high 13 points, including seven during Phoenix’s late 15-3 run.
• Gortat joked that he only played 30 minutes because Gentry “kind of sniffed out that I was getting close to our 20 boards and he didn’t really want me to shoot the three, so that’s why he put me on the bench.” Gortat has said Gentry will let him shoot a trey if he pulls down 20 boards in a game.
• The Suns have now won three in a row when trailing at halftime and are 5-5 in their last 10 such games after dropping their first 12 when behind at the intermission. … The Suns have won their first three games after the break three times in Gentry’s four seasons, a feat only accomplished three times in the previous 18 years. …  After their power forwards combined to shoot 3-for-26 on Friday, Channing Frye and Markieff Morris made just 3-of-19 shots tonight, with Morris missing all seven of his attempts. … The Suns have won as many home games in their last six contests as they did in their first 13 home dates.

Kings

Suns

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns are running out of chances to make a run to save their season.

There have been too many losses like the Golden State defeat before the All-Star break — a game that prevented a five-game winning streak after Phoenix’s last few victories — right when the Suns seemed to be gaining steam.

The Suns will aim for only their second three-game winning streak of the season when Sacramento comes to town tonight, and it’s a streak they must obtain if they plan on vaulting into the playoff picture.

This contest against the Kings is one of just five games the rest of the season in which Phoenix will play a squad with a worse record than them. Such is life with an unbalanced schedule and a deep Western Conference, and it means the Suns can no longer afford to stub their toe against teams they are better than, especially at home.

The Suns put together one of their better efforts of the season when they visited Sacramento on Feb. 11, leading throughout during a 98-84 victory in which Phoenix limited the Kings to 35.1 percent shooting.

Grant Hill once again put the clamps on Tyreke Evans, holding him to four points on 1-for-9 shooting after keeping him to an average of 14.0 ppg on 35.1 percent shooting last season.

On the other end, Phoenix made half its shots to cruise to an easy victory. About the only negative from the game came from the Suns yielding 16 offensive boards and losing the rebounding battle despite shooting so much better than Sacramento.

Rebounding has been one of the keys to Phoenix’s two victories after the break, as the Suns outrebounded a pair of top-10 rebounding squads in their wins overs the Wolves and the Clippers.

“We have to become a better rebounding team and do it consistently if we want to try to get back in a position to be in the playoff race or have an opportunity to be a playoff team,” Gentry said. “I just think you’ve got to be able to rebound it if you’re going to have a chance to be in the playoffs. There are very few bad rebounding teams in the playoffs.”

The Kings rank just 22nd in rebound rate, two slots ahead of Phoenix, but DeMarcus Cousins is the third-best rebounder in the game (with a rebound rate of 21.2) and he’s an absolute bear on the offensive glass with a offensive rebound rate of 16.3 (fourth in the NBA).

Cousins is coming off his best month as a pro after averaging 19.0 and 12.3 in February, and he’s a guy who has given Phoenix trouble before with a 26-9 game in their first meeting this season and 28-8-6 and 17-7-8 games last season.

If the Suns can hold Cousins in check they have a great shot at their second three-game winning streak of the season being that the Kings are an awful road team (they have won just four of 22 away from California’s capital) and boast the league’s 25th-ranked offense and 28th-ranked defense.

However, as Marcin Gortat warned after Friday’s win, the Suns have suffered many a home letdown right when things seemed to be clicking.

“We’ve had situations where we’ve won two, three games in a row and later on we’ve come in from shootaround relaxed, we’re not really focused and all of a sudden we get punked at home again by 20 or 30 points,” Gortat said. “The most important thing for us is don’t get excited, just stay focused on everything that we do, just play hard and make sure we take care of business at home.”

And 1

• After the Clippers game I asked Gortat why he’s optimistic this Suns team can make a run. His response: “I think we’re a really talented team. We have a lot of good players, and I think our system is perfect. We’ve got the best point guard in the league who can make the best decisions in the league, you’ve got a center who’s rolling to the basket and you’ve got shooters all over the place, so I can’t imagine why the system couldn’t work.”
• The Suns have added longtime NBA player Lindsey Hunter to their scouting staff. He will assess talent in the NBA, D-League and college. “We are very fortunate to have a proven champion like Lindsey on our scouting staff,” GM Lance Blanks said in a release. “With ownership’s support we are continually making investments in our future and having someone of Lindsey’s caliber to help us evaluate players and make informed personnel choices will be invaluable.”

Steve Nash and the Suns were outraged after their second-half collapse in Oakland. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Just as the Phoenix Suns started clicking, another letdown lurked right around the corner.

On Monday night that letdown materialized in the form of a 12-point blown lead in the second half, more struggles on the defensive glass and a heavy dosage of David Lee, as the Warriors ended the Suns’ hot streak with a 102-96 victory in Oakland.

The Suns entered tonight having won four of five while winning games in a variety of different fashions. Their bench come alive to beat Charlotte, they used a complete game that Grant Hill described as vintage “Phoenix Suns basketball” to take down Atlanta, and they exploded for stretches of electric offensive basketball to defeat the Bucks before Kings coach Keith Smart lauded the Suns’ defense after Saturday’s win in Sacramento.

They seemed to have regained their mojo, but thanks to their old arch nemesis rebounding the Suns allowed the Warriors to hang around long enough to take control at the end.

“You’ve got to finish games. You’ve just got to finish games,” Suns head coach Alvin Gentry repeated on the Suns’ postgame show. “We did a terrible job of finishing the game, and I said to the guys at halftime, ‘You can’t play around with a team like this that has that many weapons. One of their guys is going to get hot, and we’re going to regret it.’”

Although the Suns bottled up Monta Ellis (18 points of 5-for-20 shooting) and Stephen Curry (nine, 3-for-10), Lee was the man who got hot to the Suns’ regret tonight. Lee finished with a fat stat line of 28 points and 12 boards on 13-for-22 shooting, and it all started on the offensive glass, where Lee grabbed four of the Warriors’ 15 caroms.

This of course is nothing new, as the Suns entered the night ranked 25th in defensive rebound rate — and they were even worse last season — yet once again it’s a major reason they lost. The Warriors grabbed 10 offensive rebounds in the first half alone to stay within three points at the break despite Phoenix shooting 50.0 percent and Golden State 37.3.

“It all started in the first half when we gave up so many offensive rebounds,” Gentry said. “We did a really good job offensively, but we gave up so many offensive rebounds that they were able to stay in the game.”

Still, the Suns built a 12-point advantage midway through the third, only to see the Warriors roar back to take the lead with a subsequent 10-0 run as Lee scored 15 in the period and Ellis 11 following his 2-for-12 first half.

The Dubs led throughout the fourth, extending their advantage to a game-high 10 points when Nate Robinson capped a 9-2 run with a long three-point bomb. The Suns quickly answered back with a 7-0 run of their own, but Jared Dudley missed a potential game-tying three and then Ekpe Udoh hit a back-breaking bucket in the paint that sealed the game when Dudley could not knock down another open three down five with 30 seconds left.

“I def have to hit one of those shots at the end of the game!!” Dudley tweeted. “But now we gotta put that behind us and get ready for Denver tomorrow.”

Gentry left the arena “disappointed” because he felt the Suns had a great chance to win if they would have taken care of the things written on the team’s whiteboard, which he said included (as always) offensive rebounding, turnovers (the Suns committed 14) and the transition game.

“We didn’t win those battles,” Gentry said. “The last time we played them we won those battles, and we didn’t win those battles tonight.”

The Suns lost despite a monster game from Marcin Gortat, who nearly matched Lee with a career-high-tying 25 points and 12 boards while hitting 11-of-17 shots. Nash did his job with 14 assists complementing seven points, Channing Frye continued his hot stretch by chipping in with 18 points and Markieff Morris added 10 fourth-quarter points as the Suns made their comeback.

The Suns’ 29 assists also tied a Warriors opponent season high. On the flip side, no Sun other than Gortat pulled down more than five rebounds and the team knocked down just 5-of-25 shots from long range. It goes without saying that this is a completely different game if the Suns hit just a couple of them.

The loss was disappointing mainly because this was a winnable game against a below average opponent on a night the Suns controlled things through two and a half quarters.

It especially hurts because the Suns now must finish off this three games in a row stretch with tough ones at Denver and home against Atlanta before facing the Lakers twice in a row. Toward that end every Suns starter played at least 31 minutes (including 36 for Nash and 34 for Hill), yet it all went for naught.

Overall the past six games have been encouraging and the Suns certainly are playing at a higher level than they were earlier this season, but if they are going to make a surprise run back to the fringes of the playoff picture this is the kind of game they needed to take care of.

PHOENIX — Goran Dragic made a name for himself feasting on opposing bench units two years ago in US Airways Center.

The Dragon returned to the scene of the crime Thursday and pulled the trick once again, leading a Rockets bench that was the difference in Houston’s 96-89 win over the Suns as was so often the case for Phoenix’s special 2009-10 reserve unit.

“Their bench came in and did a great job as they did last night,” said Suns head coach Alvin Gentry, whose team’s three-game winning streak ended. “You have to match that energy level. Their second unit really is the one that controlled the game.”

Houston’s reserves outscored the Suns’ bench 57-13, with all but two of Phoenix’s bench points coming courtesy of Michael Redd.

Meanwhile, all five Rockets bench players (Dragic, former UA stars Chase Budinger and Jordan Hill, Patrick Patterson and Courtney Lee) reached double figures. Dragic was a career-high plus 27 in this one, while Budinger was a plus 25 and Patterson plus 22 as every Rockets reserve was at least plus 17 and each starter no better than minus 13.

The Houston bench wrested control of the game in the second quarter with a 13-0 spurt that helped the Rockets lead by 10 at the half. Kevin McHale went back to his bench five minutes into the second half when the Suns fought back to regain the lead, and then Dragic and Budinger joined three starters for a late 8-0 Rockets run that put Houston up seven with just over three minutes remaining.

Dragic finished with 11 points and a season-high-tying 11 assists while sparking the Houston reserve corps with the kind of energy Suns fans are so accustomed to.

“I think Goran’s been great, particularly two years ago for us he played as well as he’s playing now, so I think he’s always had it in him and he’s got a chance to be a really, really good player,” said Suns guard Steve Nash, his former mentor. “He played well tonight, I think he’s playing well consistently for them, but I think the best is still to come for him.  He’s got a lot of talent, he’s competitive and he works hard, so obviously a lot of us believe in him and are rooting for him.”

The Rockets’ bench prowess made the Suns’ off game off the pine all the more glaring. Due to their ineffectiveness, only Redd played more than 13 minutes as every starter logged at least 30 and Frye and Gortat were over 40. Robin Lopez and Markieff Morris played six and a half minutes, and Shannon Brown, Ronnie Price and Hakim Warrick once again didn’t even play.

Aside from the bench issues, Phoenix also lost this game on the backboards.

Gentry could not get over the fact that the Rockets scored 22 second-chance points (20 in the first half) off their 12 offensive boards whereas Phoenix scored just six off five offensive caroms.

“You can’t give up 22 points on second-chance points and have six,” Gentry said. “That’s just too much of a discrepancy there. The thing that’s so disheartening about it is that first possessions we played great, they shot in the 30s and second-chance points they ended up shooting 48 percent because of second-chance points. I thought we battled and did a good job, but we have to find a way to come up with the ball.”

No single Rocket destroyed the Suns on the glass, but as seems to be the case with everything about Houston they did this as a team. Five players grabbed either six or seven boards but nobody hit the glass for more than that (the two leading rebounders in the game were actually Frye with 10 and Gortat with nine). However, Luis Scola (five) and Samuel Dalembert (three) were bears on the offensive glass.

“We gave up tons of offensive rebounds,” Gortat said. “I’ve got to play better.

“Personally I don’t know what I was doing the first five minutes. I was sleeping out there, I guess. I didn’t play really hard. They had a couple offensive rebounds, we could have easily had 12-point lead, and that’s how it is.”

Added Frye, “They established they were going to get on the glass early.”

Despite all the rebounding issues and the bench disparity, the Suns actually led by a point with 6:10 left when Nash banked in one of his seven field goals (on seven attempts).

But poor execution that led to six turnovers followed to seal the Suns’ fate as they went scoreless for nearly four minutes.

“I think we just didn’t execute down the stretch,” Frye said. “We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make every play and be perfect at the end, and we can’t do that. We have to make sure we are in a good rhythm and establish how we’re going to play in the first half.”

Nash called this “a really disappointing loss” being that the Suns had seemed to find their mojo on the recent road trip whereas Houston was getting in late after a hard-fought game in Portland last night (you might remember how things ended up when the Blazers made such a trip on short rest).

Nash called it “a winnable game,” yet the Suns could not extend their winning streak to four because there were too many plays in which they were “mentally switched off,” as Nash put it.

Now the Suns must confront a reality in which their 5-7 home record is holding back a team that boasts a very respectable 6-8 road mark. Good teams go 6-8 on the road – in fact the Suns possess the West’s sixth-best road record ahead of teams like the Lakers, Spurs and Blazers — but only the lowly Hornets are worse at home.

This must be killing Gentry because every year he emphasizes how critical it is to take care of your home court yet the Suns could not follow up their stellar road trip with a key home win.

“It is terrible,” Frye said. “The fans are doing a great job, coming out here and supporting us and like I said, we just have to take advantage of the opportunities that we have here and definitely start winning at home.

“This is starting to really suck and I think the fans want to see us win; they come out, pay good money to see us play well and tonight we just didn’t do it, we didn’t execute, but we’re going to continue to work hard, go on this road trip and do the best we can.”

And 1

• The Suns have lost three in a row to the Rockets after beating them seven consecutive times. … Frye scored a season-high 21 points to pick up his third double-double of the season and first since Jan. 2. … Nash leads the league with 12 double-doubles of points and assists.
• Reader Neal did some digging on Basketball Reference and discovered a unique stat on Nash’s performance Thursday night. Two Time made the second-most field goals (seven) in a game in which the player dishes at least 13 assists, doesn’t miss a shot and doesn’t attempt a three or a free throw; Jeff Hornacek did the same thing while canning eight shots for the Suns in 1988. Avery Johnson, Nate McMillan and John Stockton are the only other player to put up such a stat line, just with fewer field goals.

PHOENIX — Before the season tipped off, Suns head coach Alvin Gentry proclaimed Robin Lopez would be the second most important player for the 2010-11 Phoenix Suns.

As it turned out, he was barely the second most important center on the roster.

It’s startling to think how far Lopez’s star has fallen from last year at this time when he proved to be the difference in a Western Conference Finals victory to now when it’s questionable whether the Suns see a future for him in Phoenix.

“I can’t put my finger on why he regressed this year, but you can look at it two ways,” Gentry said. “He is 23 years old and he has a lot of years left. I talked to him about let’s just call it a bad [third] year regardless of what it is, and let’s see if we can regroup and come back and get yourself headed back in the right direction.

“I thought last year the way he played for us in the playoffs and what we anticipated as far as him being the second most important guy on our team we felt like if he made that step and made those improvements we could have been real solid and possibly a playoff team, but he understands that and I think no one’s more disappointed than he is. I think you have an opportunity to rectify that by going out and working hard and coming back and improving next year.”

Since it’s rare to see such regression from a player who spent most of the year playing as a 22-year-old, the obvious question mark is his back.

Lopez missed the final 10 games of the 2009-10 regular season and the first two rounds of the playoffs due to a bulging disk in his back.

Back injuries for seven-footers are tricky propositions. The Suns took every precaution not to rush him back and vowed not to play him until he was 100 percent ready even if it meant starting Jarron Collins in the playoffs.

Yet even after all that time off and a full summer to rehab, Lopez lacked the explosiveness and athleticism that made him such an attractive draft pick for Phoenix three years ago. Lopez has lost a handful of inches from his vertical and often struggled to finish shots on the interior, getting swatted time and time again.

According to HoopData, Lopez was blocked 11.8 percent of the time last season (double the league average of 5.9) after being rejected on just 6.2 percent of his shots in 2009-10 and 9.5 percent as a rookie.

He only declined from 68.2 percent shooting to 66.4 percent at the rim but went down significantly from 51.5 percent to 36.2 percent from 3-9 feet. On the positive side his improved shooting stroke led him to shoot 46.3 percent from 10-15 feet after being at 29.0 the year before and 25.0 as a rookie.

“If you guys can remember one of the things that we liked about him the most is that he was very athletic, and he lost quite a bit of vertical jumping ability with the injury that he has not recovered from, and he’s slowly recovering from that, so that could have played a part in it, definitely,” Gentry said. “When you’re an athletic big guy and then all of a sudden you lose some of that and you have to rely on other areas it is a little bit of an adjustment as far as your game.”

Synergy Sports Technology tells us Lopez was an anemic post player, hitting just 36.5 percent of his shots and scoring 0.67 points per play in post-up situations, but he was solid as a roll man (1.11 ppp, 55.8 percent shooting) and when spotting up (1.04 ppp, 53.2 percent).

Then there’s rebounding, perhaps Lopez’s biggest weakness that is not exclusive to his down season.

Due to his size and athletic gifts, I always assumed he would blossom into a solid rebounder despite the fact that when it comes to rebounding players often either have a nose for the ball or they don’t.

Lopez ranked 101st in rebound rate this season among players averaging more than six minutes a game by corralling 12.6 percent of the available boards during his court time. He also ranked 132nd in defensive rebound rate at 15.6.

Last year he recorded a 14.2 rebound rate (72nd) and a 15.6 DRR (121st) and as a rookie he put up an 11.2 rebound rate (118th) and a 12.1 DRR (190th).

Even in college when few teams boasted a pair of quality bigs and he had help from his twin Brook his rebound rates didn’t impress. According to StatSheet, Lopez collected a 14.2 DRR as a freshman and a 13.9 DRR as a sophomore. He ranked 21st in the Pacific 10 Conference both years and 735th and 693rd nationally.

By comparison the offensive-minded Brook put up 18.9 and 19.2 DRRs, respectively, against the same competition (and he’s no stellar rebounder himself), and during Lopez’s sophomore campaign a UCLA freshman by the name of Kevin Love more than doubled his defensive rebound rate (28.5).

If a spry Lopez was a middling rebounder in the Pac-10, it’s hard to think he will ever be an above-average pro board man.

Even though Lopez was a very average rebounder in college, he was at least known as a stellar defender, something that was most definitely not the case this season.

Synergy ranks him 460th in the NBA in points per play defense after he yielded a team-worst 1.08 ppp to go with 52.8 percent shooting.

Lopez was particularly bad in post-up situations, as opponents shot 59.3 percent against him, scored 55.6 percent of the time and averaged 1.07 ppp. He also struggled to defend isolation plays (1.09, 51.4 percent shooting, 339th) and spot-up shooters (1.1 ppp, 47.8 percent, 315th) presumably because he moved too slow closing out on the jumpers.

All this added up to Lopez recording a team-worst minus 8.09 adjusted plus/minus, according to Basketball Value, in a season that was shockingly bad in all aspects aside from his improved mid-range jumper (which is not exactly why they drafted him).

“There’s certain expectations that you have for players, and you’ve got to be able to meet those expectations,” Gentry said. “We want him to be a better player offensively, defensively, and that’s what our expectations are.

“It’s just kind of one of those things that he did not have a good year, and I think he’d be the first to tell you that.”

That is an understatement and it brings us to the question of what to do with Lopez at this point.

The easy answer would be to trade him, but the rest of the league knows what the Suns know. As the preceding analysis shows, it’s no secret why Lopez averaged less than 15 minutes a game and became a starter in name only once Marcin Gortat got acclimated to the team.

If the Suns can find a solid offer then you make the deal with Gortat in tow, but it’s hard to believe that will happen. The Suns would be better off keeping him at $2.86 million next season than giving him away for a second-round pick. There’s no reason to give him away when his value is at its lowest point.

The next question has to do with whether he will regain some of that athleticism. Sure, he was never a good rebounder, but if he gets some of that burst back he figures to improve around the basket both offensively and defensively.

With Gortat entrenched as the Suns’ starting center they don’t need Lopez to be a featured player anymore, but they can’t afford to give him minutes if he plays as poorly as he did last season, a year in which he went from looking like a potential future All-Star to a potential feature D-Leaguer.

“I think a year ago he was very much on the right path of being the type of player that we anticipated,” Gentry said. “It’s just the idea of maybe it was just one of those years and now you can regroup and get yourself back on the path that everybody thought about or anticipated he’d become.”

It’s impossible to tell at this point if 2010-11 was an outlier that will soon be forgotten or the beginning of the end of Lopez’s NBA career, but one thing we know with certainty is that Robin Lopez won’t be viewed as the second most important piece on the 2011-12 Suns.

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns’ defense has been so good of late that only the Miami Heat have allowed a lower shooting percentage over their last 10 games entering Sunday.

So maybe that’s why the Suns felt like they would eventually string together a couple stops in the fourth quarter to finish a comeback that never materialized in their stunning 113-108 loss to the Sacramento Kings.

“The truth of the matter is at the end of the game we couldn’t stop them,” Steve Nash said. “The negative side is we couldn’t get stops at the end of the game. The positive is it felt strange, like why aren’t we stopping these guys because our defense has been so good.”

Added Channing Frye, “When they were making all their shots at the end in the fourth quarter we were very uncomfortable. It wasn’t like, ‘OK, oh well,’ it was like, ‘We’re not used to this, it’s not how we play.’”

The Kings scored 35 points on scorching 63.2 percent shooting in the final period. They ripped off an 11-0 run to take a 10-point lead midway through the quarter, and after a pair of unsuccessful possessions that led to successive three-point trips on the Phoenix end to cut it to four, Sacramento scored on its next seven possessions to keep the Suns at bay despite constant offensive pressure from Phoenix.

During this stretch Beno Udrih hit a back-breaking three with a hand in his face to put a four-point lead to seven with three minutes left and Carl Landry and Donte Greene took turns successfully going at Frye and Jared Dudley, respectively.

The Suns just had no answer as shot after Sacramento shot found the net.

“We didn’t get any stops,” head coach Alvin Gentry said. “That’s a tough thing to do — you don’t have any chance of coming back if you’re exchanging baskets. The best you can do is exchange baskets, if they’re scoring every time.”

The Kings shot just 41.3 percent through three quarters, but they were saved by a dominant 42-26 rebounding edge that kept them within three at that point despite missing often after opening up a 17-7 lead that was quickly negated by a 20-2 Phoenix run.

Even with stud rebounder DeMarcus Cousins sitting at home, the Kings got 15 boards from Samuel Dalembert, 10 off the bench from Landry and seven each from Jason Thompson and Omri Casspi.

Marcin Gortat, who grabbed 12 of his own, eight more than any teammate not named Channing Frye (seven), said the Kings often sent three or four guys to the backboards to overwhelm the Suns. That was the story of the Suns’ Jan. 2 loss in Sacramento in which the Kings bullied them to the tune of a 60-32 advantage on the backboards as well.

“They dominated the boards,” Gentry said. “We struggled with them the last time when they dominated the boards. I think you need to give all the credit for them. We’ve done a pretty good job of taking care of the offensive boards and things like that, but they just dominated the boards and I think that was the difference in the game.”

Added Gortat, “They’ve got a lot of strong, athletic guys and they were hitting the glass really hard. We’ve just got to get better at that, be physical and try to go get it.”

The Kings’ prowess on the boards is no surprise as they average the league’s second-most offensive boards (13.2) and second-chance points (15.9) and got 18 offensive boards and 23 second-chance points in this one.

That negated another spectacular game by Nash, who went for 22 and 18 to give him his eighth 20-15 game of the season, compared to four for the rest of the NBA combined. He’s gone for 18.0 and 13.5 in his last four.

But this was a trap game if there ever was one directly in the middle of a home-and-home with the fading Utah Jazz, who appear ripe for the catching.

The Kings lost a late game Saturday night in Sacramento and then told Cousins not to even board the flight after an altercation with Greene.

That’s not to mention Sacramento entered the day with the least amount of victories in the Western Conference and had lost 10 in a row in Phoenix and five in a row overall, the longest active losing streak in the NBA.

In fact the Suns lost to a Pacific Division opponent at home that Kobe Bryant does not play for for the first time since the start of the 2007-08 season after winning their past 22 such games. Phoenix had also won its previous 11 Sunday home games as well, dating back to Feb. 22, 2009.

“Alvin warned us,” Nash said. “They’ve had some chemistry issues this year, they’re going to come out tonight without Cousins and feel like this is a great opportunity. We should have been more prepared just mentally.”

Like many Suns followers, I was already thinking ahead to the Suns’ great opportunity to get four games over .500 by the All-Star break if they can defeat the Jazz and Mavs at home, figuring a victory over the lowly Kings was a foregone conclusion.

The Suns never knocked the Kings out in the third quarter, and then never could make a comeback that seemed inevitable after falling behind by double-digits in the fourth.

Gortat said the Suns had been playing so well lately, winners of 11 of 15, that they were going to slip up eventually. It’s just hard to imagine it would come at home against one of the worst teams in the West.

Nash said there are always five games a season that you look back on as games that should be in the ‘W’ column, but you just hope it’s not 15.

Following in the tradition of games they should have won against the Bulls, Grizzlies, Kings on the road, Pistons and now Kings again, the Suns have more than reached their quota.

“It’s one of those losses that you are going to look back at and it’s going to hurt,” Gentry said.

And 1

Vince Carter has not played in the Suns’ last three fourth quarters. He walked out on reporters when asked about this circumstance. … Nash retained the NBA’s all-time leading free throw percentage despite missing a foul shot tonight. … The Suns have won five of six against winning teams but have lost four of seven against losing squads. … Dudley on his second dunk of the season and second in three games: “I’m starting to bang it out, baby, I’m starting to bang it out.”

Marcin Gortat and Robin Lopez may finally share the frontcourt against the Lakers on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Thearon Henderson)

PHOENIX — The trio of Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom historically manhandles the Phoenix Suns on the interior.

So far this season, the Lakers are shooting 33-of-48 (68.67) at the rim against the Suns, while outrebounding Phoenix 95-75 in two meetings (one loss, one win).

Gasol is posting averages of 24 points, 12.5 rebounds, 5.5 assists on 64.7 percent shooting against the Suns, while Odom’s gone for 20 and 14 on 60 percent from the field.

Phoenix has yet to take on Bynum, who spent the first few months of the season rehabbing injury.

For the first 27 games, the Suns never possessed the personnel to matchup with the Lakers’ bigs, but with both Marcin Gortat and Robin Lopez in purple and orange, they finally feature a pair of defensive-minded centers who can at least compete with the biggest team in the NBA.

The question is: will Alvin Gentry play Gortat and Lopez together? Gortat certainly thinks it’s a must.

“Obviously big teams like the Lakers where you’ve got two big men, you need to have two guys at the same time on the floor to protect the basket,” said Gortat at his introductory press conference. “If Coach will decide to play it like that, I’m ready.”

“Ya we believe we can fit together, playing on this team at the same time,” Gortat added.

Does Gentry agree? He said that the Suns won’t go small ball against LA like they have been with Nash-Carter-Pietrus-Hil-Lopez as the starters.

However, he doesn’t seem too sure that Gortat (9.6 points, 5.8 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 1.2 blocks, 57.4 percent shooting in 29.2 minutes)  and Lopez (6.0 points, 2.8 rebounds, 0.4 blocks, 45.8 percent shooting in 15 minutes during last five) can play together, especially considering they have yet to play a single minute together through five games.

Although both Gortat and Lopez can bring defense and rebounding against the defending champs, there are concerns with offensive spacing as twe two not-quite explosive, non-jump shooting big men on the floor at the same time allows Steve Nash less room to operate.

“I can tell you something I’m not going to come up with something new and start shooting threes, that’s not what I do so don’t expect me to do that,” Gortat said.

Even though he won’t splash any triples, Gortat did play approximately 22 minutes with Dwight Howard last season and served as the screen and roll guy, with Howard anchoring the paint. He’s s a very good pick and roll player so it is feasible to have him constantly pick and roll while Lopez flashes to the ball and waits for Nash spoon-feeds.

The Polish Machine also thrives in transition for a big man, which is another reason he can play next to Lopez against the Lakers.

“That’s the first thing that comes to mind is that he runs the floor extremely well,” said Vince Carter of Gortat. “I think that will be a strength with Robin, or any other big.He’s earned the opportunity to play the four because he runs the floor, he rebounds and he’s a very good defensive player.”

While Gortat and Carter believe the Polish Machine is capable of playing next to Lopez, Gentry all-but said Channing Frye is the key to the game in terms of spacing the floor, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see him in the starting lineup, although he’s averaged 8.0 points and 4.2  rebounds on 34.7 percent shooting in 27 minutes over the last five games. If here’s one game to break out Phoenix’s twin towers of Lopez and Gortat, however, it’s against the Lakers.

Phoenix could even play Frye at the three, Gortat at the four and Lopez at the five to combat the Lakers’ Odom-Gasol-Bynum lineup. Don’t expect that to happen, but with the Suns struggling at 14-18 and facing off against a teetering Lakers squad, I wouldn’t put anything past Phoenix.

With the way they’ve been rebounding — losing the battle in their last four games — against a struggling, but huge Lakers team, going big may be the only answer.

“Playing a small lineup against them is not going to be good from a rebounding perspective. We could go with a bigger lineup,” Getnry said. “We’ll have a lot of screens out there.”

PHOENIX — If you want your son or daughter to learn how to play the point guard position, pop in the tape of Steve Nash Sunday evening against Washington. Two Time was downright transcendent.

Nash played the position about as well as you could play it, practically pitching a perfect game by scoring 20 points on perfect 8-for-8 shooting from the field and 3-for-3 shooting from the line to go along with 17 assists and just two turnovers in Phoenix’s 125-108 blowout of Washington.

Nash became the first player in NBA history to twice record 17 assists without missing a shot since the NBA-ABA merger in 1976-77. Only three other players have done this once and the list isn’t too shabby: Magic Johnson, John Stockton and Mark Jackson. Nash also pulled the trick April 3, 2007, when he hit four shots and dished 17 dimes in Memphis, and before that it hadn’t been done since Stockton in 1994.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Nash became the second player in the shot clock era (since 1954-55) to post a 20 points and 10 assists game without missing a field goal or free throw, and that hasn’t been done since 1985 when Lester Conner did it.

“About as efficient of a game as you could ever have,” head coach Alvin Gentry said of his star point guard’s performance. “When he’s feeling good he’s played as well as any guard in the league.”

Nash asserted himself scoring-wise in the first half as he tallied 16 points to go with “just” six assists, hitting shot after shot to help the Suns come back from a double-digit deficit for the fourth time at home this season and the second time this weekend.

In the third quarter he switched into distributor mode and started setting up so many alley-oops I could have sworn I was watching an All-Star Game.

Nash assisted on five alley-oops in the quarter to four different players, starting the half off with back-to-back alleys to Jason Richardson and the suddenly high-flying Channing Frye. Grant Hill, Hakim Warrick and J-Rich again eventually got into the mix as the Suns successfully opened up the middle for those lobs and Nash dished eight assists in the period.

“I think the more we get people involved the more efficient we become as a team,” Gentry said.

The Suns used a strong defensive third quarter in which they yielded just 17 points on 35.3 percent shooting to get out and run and essentially put the game away.

When the Wizards cut the lead to 12 with 5:13 remaining, Gentry called timeout and re-inserted the starters. Nash promptly handed out three more assists and in just over 2:30 the starters were back on the bench after an 11-5 run with the decision no longer in doubt.

This game also marked the return of Hakim Warrick to rotational relevancy after combining for just six points in 16 minutes the past two games. Warrick poured in a season-high 26 points on 10-for-13 shooting as Nash found him time and time again diving down the lane for easy buckets. All of Warrick’s makes were in the lane area and all but two of them were right at the rim.

“Whenever you play with that guy, he’ll find you,” Warrick said of Nash, who assisted on six of his 10 buckets. “Just knowing if you attack the rim he’s going to find you. Right before you think you’re open the ball’s in your hand. All I have to do is go to the rim and go up strong. It’s a big reason why I came here, to play with a guy like that, and I’m just fortunate to play with him.

“Not too many point guards can go and make the type of passes and get you the ball the way he gets you the ball.”

Gentry said that Warrick set more aggressive screens in this one, which caused the big man to stay with Nash for a split second longer, which thus opened up the middle for a rolling Warrick.

When Warrick himself wasn’t benefiting from a Nash pass he was opening up the perimeter for his teammates who knocked down 58.0 percent of their shots (even including Earl Barron’s 3-for-9).

“He was huge for us tonight,” Richardson said of Warrick. “He kept rolling down there. He actually got some open shots for myself, Channing, Jared, Grant by just rolling down there, Steve finding him and just opened up the floor for everybody.”

Warrick played 28:47, Dudley played 25 and Hedo, Goran, Childress and starting center Earl Barron all played 16-20 minutes in the latest edition of lineup roulette.

Last game Jared Dudley was the big bench contributor, and in Golden State Turkoglu saw significant time off the pine.

“I don’t see this as a team like last year we pretty much knew what the set rotation’s gonna be,” Gentry said. “I don’t know if this team’s gonna be that this year. I think we’ll have guys who need to step up. At the end of the day if you get the same results then you’re in good shape.”

The Suns do like having Barron in that starting lineup for the activity he brings, and Gentry expects him to eventually hit some of the makeable shots around the rim he missed tonight.

After winning the battle of the boards 43-37, the Suns have now outboarded the opposition twice in his three starts after doing so just once in their first 17 games. The team is also undefeated since starting Barron.

“I just think we have made everyone conscious of that as a coaching staff and we say we’ve got to pursue the ball, and we’ve done that,” Gentry said. “Also I think we’ve done a little bit better job of boxing out, keeping guys from flying in and rebounding the ball for second shots, and because of that we’ve done a pretty good job.”

With just enough progress on the rebounding and defensive side of things, the Suns improved to a season-best-tying two games over .500 thanks to another superb offensive performance buoyed by Nash’s Hall of Fame game.

And 1

Warrick on adjusting to sporadic playing time: “You’ve got to know no matter what when your number’s called you’ve got to be ready to execute and perform.” … J-Rich has scored at least 20 in seven straight, his longest streak since 2008 with Charlotte (nine games). … The Suns have won six of seven in US Airways Center and eight straight overall against Washington. … The Suns are 3-0 in December for the first time since 2007-08. … Warrick has recorded four 20-point efforts off the bench this season. … Barron tallied seven points and eight boards (six offensive) in just 16:31. … Frye’s career-best streak of double-digit scoring games ended at 11 after his seven-point effort on 2-for-8 shooting.

Rebounding and crunch time execution won this game for the Suns. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

When the Suns got hot during the second half last season, they were practically invincible when they won the rebounding battle.

You could say the same thing about this year’s Suns, but the sample size is so small it hardly qualifies as a trend.

Still when you consider Phoenix’s offensive prowess and its ineptness on the boards, any game the Suns win the rebounding battle in figures to go their way, and thanks to some quality crunch time execution while Golden State faded that board work led the Suns to a quality 107-101 victory over the Warriors on a night you may have been watching the LeBron circus or the missed extra point disaster in Tucson.

“It was a great game for us,” Jason Richardson told TNT. “We came out and did the things we’re supposed to. This is a step forward in the right direction.”

Phoenix won the rebounding battle 37-31, marking only the second time all season that was the case, with the other being their come-from-behind win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Nov. 5 when Zach Randolph tired.

Channing Frye led the way with 10 boards, making this only the second time all year he reached double digits (the other was the aforementioned Memphis game), while Hedo Turkoglu chipped in with seven off the bench and Jared Dudley five.

Beating the Warriors on the boards isn’t necessarily a huge accomplishment since last year they were the only team in the league worse than the Suns in this department and even with the addition of noted boarder David Lee they are still in the bottom sixth of the league. But for this Suns squad it’s noteworthy any time they outrebound the opponent.

In the end, though, the Suns won this game just by being a veteran club that out-executed the Warriors down the stretch and then nailed all their free throws at the very end to prevent a comeback. Free throw shooting was superb all game with the Suns knocking down 21-of-22 (Frye had the only miss).

Trailing by five after Steve Nash missed a jumper, Monta Ellis got called for a double dribble trying to pass to Lee, who wasn’t expecting one, leading Ellis to catch his own pass.

Jason Richardson answered with a jumper in Ellis’ grill with a second on the shot clock to push the lead to seven, and after a couple Lee free throws, Grant Hill was fouled by Dorell Wright with a second left after the Suns had nearly lost the ball. When he knocked down both to push the lead to seven with 40 seconds left, Phoenix’s free-throw shooting iced the game.

Leading by three entering the fourth, the bench opened the quarter on an 18-7 run to push the Suns’ lead up to 14. It’s worth noting that the bench gave up seven of those points before exiting midway through the quarter, but during that push they resembled the unit of last year that’s been missing much of this season.

Goran Dragic sparked the run with seven points and Jared Dudley did Jared Dudley things to score another seven points during the spurt.

Shoring up the rebounding is certainly a key, but if the Suns want to reach their potential they need this second unit to develop into one of the best benches in the NBA. There’s no question it has that talent for that, and as Frye said last week perhaps one day the unit will mesh and we’ll all wonder where it came from.

Stretching a lead during the fourth quarter in a hostile environment while an opponent like Monta Ellis is going bonkers has got to make you believe that day will be sooner than later.

The Suns’ newest starting lineup also enjoyed a solid outing in this one. Richardson played another fine game in his former home by pouring in 25 points on 10-for-15 shooting, including that dagger in crunch time. Grant Hill’s sprained foot seemed just fine as he scored 24 points on 9-for-11 shooting, and Nash dished a season-high-tying 16 assists (an outright season high in games he didn’t play 49 minutes in).

Then Frye had his big game on the boards and new starter Earl Barron put up a team-high-tying plus 10 in 25 minutes of action. I do wonder why Hakim Warrick played just nine minutes, perhaps to give Barron a longer look, but in any case Warrick’s porous season away from US Airways Center continued. Hedo Turkoglu went for nine and six and once again looked very comfortable with the bench unit.

Aside from Monta Ellis’ 38-point explosion and Lee’s 25 and eight, the Suns limited the rest of the Warriors with Wright being the next leading scorer with 10.

You could tell that the Suns’ practice time this week as well as the opinions Alvin Gentry likely shared in the aftermath of the defensive massacre in Denver made a difference for this basketball team. Although the Warriors hit half their shots, this was not the shootout most Suns-Warriors games are as Phoenix sent Golden State to its ninth loss in 11 games after a 6-2 start.

The win also improves the Suns to .500, and if they can start to produce more rebounding efforts like this one that’s a mark they should far surpass in no time.