Will the sun rise (again) in Phoenix?

Well, if you’re a Phoenix Suns fan, or a Shaq fan, like myself, the good new is, things couldn’t be any worse.  Less than 24 hours from now, Phoenix will enter game 3 of their first round playoff series against the mighty San Antonio Spurs down 0-2.  The bad news?  Phoenix let game 1 slip through their fingers.  More bad news?  Phoenix let game 2 slip through their fingers.  The silver lining around the dark cloud hovering over the Valley of the Sun right now?  Phoenix has not be man-handled, dominated, or overwhelmed by anything the Spurs have done.  Here is where the rubber meets the road for Shaq, Amare, Steve, and company come Friday night…

Number 1:  Charles Barkley said it best on the post game show on TNT Tuesday night.  He declared in typical Barkley fashion, “There is no more important game than game 3 of a 7 game series.”  He’s right.  The formula is simple and not impossible, that’s the thing to remember here.  Protect your home court and steal ONE….1…uno…game on the road, that’s all you have to do.  This is not a tall order, well maybe as tall as Tim Duncan, but surely not an insurmountable one for the Suns.

Number 2:  You have to do something about the lane.  This falls squarely on the shoulders of Shaq, Amare, and Boris.  The interior defense of the Suns must improve if they are going to advance in this series, there’s just no way around it.  Even if Shaq has to be less active offensively, the Suns aren’t having a major problem scoring, but they need a dominating defensive show in the paint.  The Spurs are enjoying way too many lay ups and easy baskets.  This increases San Antonio’s shooting percentage and hampers the Suns fast break.

Number 3:  Lastly, the Suns have to weather the “storm” in a game much better.  In Game 1, they let blown defensive assignments, bad rotation, and mental errors that kept givning the Spurs life in the 4 quarter and in all of the overtimes cost them the game.  In Game 2, the scoring drout of missing 11 straight shots in the 3rd quarter hurt them bad too, and I don’t think they ever mentally recovered fully after that.  That’s not championship basketball.  It’s during these critical points of the game that someone, anyone, is going to have to strap the team on their back and will them to victory.  At this point, it remains to be seen who that will be.

Three of the last four post seassons have been ended for the Suns by the Spurs.  I wouldn’t have this series any other way, well, maybe I’d like to be tied 1-1, but whatever.  The fact of the matter is, if the Suns can’t come back and get back this series on their home floor, they don’t deserve to advance to the next round and they certainly don’t deserve to whine about it either.  This series was there’s for the taking before Game 1, and it’s definitely still winnable, even at this point.  What happens Friday night is totally up to Phoenis, it has to be or this series will be over soon.

Go Suns!