Houston Rockets 99, Phoenix Suns 81

Suns

Rockets

Like the Phoenix Suns, the Houston Rockets don’t get much notoriety. They lack a great deal of star power and aren’t on a hot streak. Even when they are, it’s not by way of Lob City-esque passing or anything that can be called spectacular.

But Kevin Martin’s awkward jump shot and Luis Scola’s rugged inside game are dangerous, and to follow up a seven-game winning streak, the Rockets are 2-3 in their past five games. Approaching a six-game road trip, they’d love to get a home victory as a momentum-swinging send-off against the Suns tonight.

The latest struggles for Houston have been due to defensive lapses. Against San Antonio on Wednesday, the Rockets made strides in making the right fixes, but it’ll still be a work in progess against Phoenix.

“You’re not going to shore up everything,” point guard Kyle Lowry told The Associated Press. “You can fix a few things, tweak a few things, get everything back to where you want it to be. But you’re not going to shore them all up, because every team is different offensively, so you may have to make adjustments all the time.”

It’s the same story for the Suns, who happened to find their way to enough defensive stops to hold the New Orleans Hornets to 16 fourth-quarter points in the last game. The Suns also scored 30 or more point in three quarters against the Hornets, and while the opponent may have something to do with the best offensive game of the season for Phoenix, it was a positive sign that Steve Nash and company aren’t about to roll over. [Read more →]

Steve Nash

PHOENIX — Records mean little in terms of success or failure. Moreso do they validate long-term presence. In the Phoenix Suns’ history books, Steve Nash’s franchise assist record that he broke on Wednesday night acts as another punch in his Hall of Fame ticket, but it also offers a perspective.

A dinosaur by age but not by the way he evolved to stand the test of time, Nash’s game should be appreciated for how it all went down.

“His body of work speaks for itself,” said former teammate Vince Carter. “I don’t care for how long you’ve been in the league, I think you have that respect for my man because of not only the things that he’s accomplished and is accomplishing at his age, but the respect that you have to give him for doing that.”

Early in his career, this was a third-string point guard starting behind Jason Kidd and Kevin Johnson. Even when he was traded to the Dallas Mavericks, Nash took a few years to develop into a leader and one of the league’s better point guards.

Perhaps Nash’s metaphorical asteroid that could have destroyed his career was a series of injuries that left Mark Cuban thinking his point guard was about to break down. Of course, you know what happened next. Nash returned to Phoenix, won two MVPs and multiple times put the Suns on the doorstep of the NBA Finals. And he’s still going.

At 6,522 assists as a Sun and 9,441 in his career, Nash has the sixth-most assists for an NBA player behind only John Stockton, Jason Kidd, Mark Jackson, Magic Johnson and Oscar Robertson. In the franchise record-breaking game last night, he scored 30 points with his 10 assists, becoming the oldest player — he’ll be 38 years old on Tuesday — in NBA history to have a 30-10 game with points and assists. Only Nash (five times), Sam Cassell (two times), and Larry Bird (once) have done it at 35 or older since 1985-86. [Read more →]

Steve Nash charged ahead of KJ to become the Suns' all-time assist leader. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

For the past two-plus decades the Phoenix Suns franchise has been defined by superlative point guard play.

From the great Kevin Johnson to Jason Kidd to Stephon Marbury and of course Steve Nash, the Suns have always reaped the benefits of having an elite player running the point for them, with the torch being passed from star point guard to star point guard with but a few months in between since KJ arrived in the Valley in the late ’80s.

It will always be debatable which point guard shined the brightest during his Suns career (well, except for the fact that it’s not Starbury), but in Wednesday’s 120-103 victory over the New Orleans Hornets Nash laid claim to the franchise’s all-time assists belt, surpassing KJ’s record of 6,518 with a nifty fast break dish to Josh Childress early in the third quarter.

In a season that has seen a Steve Nash-led offense look mortal for the first time all decade, it’s fitting that Phoenix’s offense was prolific at SSOL levels in a vintage Nash masterpiece in which Two Time exploded for a season-high 30 points and 10 assists while shooting 13-for-16 from the floor, his first 30-10 game since January 2010 and the first in the league with just one turnover since Derrick Rose did so last March.

Two Time sparked the Suns’ best offensive game of the season with an efficiency of 126.3, an effort that was 78 percent better than their putrid 71.0 performance in Portland five short days ago. The Suns had only posted offensive efficiencies higher than 111 twice this year before Wednesday.

Nash is a maestro at taking what the defense gives him, and it showed tonight. Throughout the years he has burned defenses that go under the screen on a pick and roll, dished it his roll man when there is an open passing lane and found open shooters when a third defender fills the lane to defend the pick and roll. That’s not to mention his genius in the open court.

In this game the Hornets seemed determined not to let Nash beat them with his passing in the first half so instead he attacked them with his shot as Nash scored 19 points on 8-for-10 shooting at the break.

“They were trying to step back when I was getting in passing position to take away the passing lanes so I was trying to be aggressive and was able to make some shots,” Nash said on the Suns’ postgame show.

That all changed in the third quarter as Nash charged out of the gates with three assists in the first two minutes after dishing two the entire first half. He then assisted on three Josh Childress layups in the matter of a minute, and just like that he was the Suns’ assist king.

That Childress — a player who didn’t even leave the bench in blowouts before last Friday — scored on Nash’s tying and go-ahead assists along with the next one for good measure must have been the biggest upset of the night, but it was a beautiful sequence of typical Nash.

On the tying assist Nash took advantage of a mismatch as he so often does with J-Chill posting up Jarrett Jack, and the swingman flicked in a shot before the New Orleans defense could rotate. Then the Suns forced a turnover and Childress leaked out ahead of the pack and caught a pinpoint pass from Nash on the move before laying it in for the record. On the Suns’ next possession both Childress and Marcin Gortat screened for Nash and the resulting confusion found Childress all alone for a bucket, which is so often the case off a Nash screen and roll.

“Ooooo, I gladly take that,” Childress told The Arizona Republic. “I’ll have to tell my grandkids someday.

“You have to make sure you’re not just watching (Nash). You’ve got to move and play with him. But it’s cool to see him do that and do it consistently is incredible.”

But Captain Canada didn’t come to New Orleans to set a record; he came for a victory. With the Suns once again struggling without him on the floor, that would have to wait until the fourth quarter.

The Suns led 95-94 when Nash re-entered the game with 7:59 remaining. Phoenix immediately exploded on a 21-2 run to turn what had been a close game throughout into a rout.

Nash orchestrated the spurt with seven points and two more assists, including a dagger of a three that put the Suns up 14 less than three minutes after he returned. [Read more →]

Phoenix Suns 120, New Orleans Hornets 103

Suns

Hornets

PHOENIX — There’s not much time to put filmwork into footwork this lockout-shortened season. Rest is more important than continuity in a way, and because of it a struggling team like the Phoenix Suns has little time to rework problems big or small.

They can only look at themselves in a mirror.

“I’m going to tell you, we have to find some ways to win some games,” Marcin Gortat said after the Suns got throttled by Dallas two days ago. “I’m not going to blame anybody. I’m looking at myself right now.”

Phoenix can bury the 23-point loss to the Mavericks in the depths of their memories with a road win tonight against the lowly New Orleans Hornets, and should Steve Nash be ready to go, this could be the game where he breaks the team’s all-time assist mark.

In what’s already been a season full of tipping points, this one could be a sign of how the Suns react to frustration. Acting as a catalyst, that frustration could lead to Phoenix playing with a redefined effort or a resigned attitude of failure. How long it will take to reach one of those points though, is hard to judge.

“I’m just going to say we got to play better,” Gortat said, “because honestly I don’t want to say anything else. I might get in trouble.”

The Suns center then went out of his way to say that this team would win if it had 12 copies of Josh Childress, who has found himself with increasing rotation time in the past three games. It was, indeed, a telling sign that the man who couldn’t fit into head coach Alvin Gentry’s plans — seemingly for the second year in the row — was playing faster and harder than some of his teammates.

That all comes down to identity. Childress has one with his old-school hair cut and his rugged style of play that might indeed have fit in the NBA of the late 1980s and early 1990s, where players had to give their opponents more than a tap on the back to get called for a foul. [Read more →]

Dirk and the Mavs scorched the Suns with 55.2 percent shooting and 14 treys. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

PHOENIX — Three Dallas players roasted the Phoenix Suns for 20 or more points, and the the Mavericks used the three-pointer to open up a lead that ended in a 122-99 blowout on Monday night.

Led by Delonte West’s 25, Vince Carter’s 21 and Shawn Marion’s 20 — all scored in 28 minutes or less — Marcin Gortat’s 17 points, 10 boards and four blocks weren’t nearly enough for the Suns.

Of late the Suns have struggled to defend the paint, and despite looking rather efficient on offense with Steve Nash sitting out with a left knee contusion, deepening those struggles at US Airways Center was the Suns’ failure to run the Mavs off the three-point line.

“They have a great offense, they have different counters, they have people who can score in different ways,” said Jared Dudley, who scored 15 points. “It’s just a tough team to guard, and once they start hitting shots the floodgates really opened.

“It was really tough for us, even when we had our hand up on good defense they were hitting it,” he added. “(With) bad defense, they made us pay every time. This is becoming a common theme around here.”

If you’ve ever seen a Clive Owen movie in which he totes a firearm, you’d seen this game before. Against Phoenix, Dallas built an 18-point halftime lead by shooting the Suns up for 10-of-16 three-pointers. The Mavs also controlled the interior with 15 second-chance points in the first half while outrebounding the Suns 23-13.

The Suns were trailing 40-37 with 7:38 left in the half, but by the time a 26-11 Dallas onslaught was over, the Mavericks just had to play keepaway in the second half.

“Tough loss,” Gortat said. “They were shooting the ball very well today, but you know what? End of the day, we let them do that.”

Somehow, the product on the court didn’t look so bad, and that was likely due to the Suns being relatively safe with the ball — five turnovers at halftime — and shooting a solid 48.6 percent. But next to the Mavs’ 57.4 percent shooting at halftime, that meant little.

All of Phoenix’s woes continued in the second half, and Dallas finished the game shooting 55.2 percent to Phoenix’s 43.8 percent accuracy.

The Mavs didn’t show signs of tired legs coming off a hard-fought, overtime win against San Antonio the night prior. Carter himself scored 21 mostly off catch-and-shoots to follow up a 21-point performance last night.

Phoenix found itself down 31-24 after the first quarter as both teams shot above 51 percent from the field, and Dallas didn’t turn the ball over once in the period.

Josh Childress provided a spark off the bench, scoring nine first-half points while guarding Dirk Nowitzki when Grant Hill sat. J-Chill ended the night with nine points, four rebounds and two steals in his third game back in head coach Alvin Gentry’s rotation, and his play received the only positive comments of the night.

[Read more →]

PHOENIX — Steve Nash won’t be in the Phoenix Suns’ lineup on Monday against the Dallas Mavericks after suffering a left knee contusion on the final play of the last game.

Nash ran into a Marc Gasol screen on the left side of the three-point arc while chasing Mike Conley in Saturday’s 86-84 victory against Memphis. Ronnie Price will take Nash’s place in the starting lineup for head coach Alvin Gentry, and Grant Hill, Channing Frye, Marcin Gortat and Jared Dudley will join Price as starters.

The news puts to sleep our make-you-smile preview, where the All-Star point guard would surpass Kevin Johnson as the Suns’ all-time leader in assists against his former team, the Mavericks. He needed just seven dimes to do so, and it won’t come against buddy Dirk Nowitzki, nor former Phoenix players Shawn Marion and Vince Carter.

“That’s a great accomplishment for him, I’m happy for him,” Marion said of Nash’s soon-to-be record prior to the game. “He’s one of the best ever to really do it. What more can you say? He can pass that rock. That’s what he does.”