Previous week’s games
11/27/09 SUNS 120, Timberwolves 95
11/29/09 SUNS 113, Raptors 94
12/01/09 Knicks 126, SUNS 99
12/02/09 Cavs 107, SUNS 90
Next week’s games
12/05/09 SUNS vs Kings, 7 p.m., Fox Sports Arizona
12/06/09 SUNS @ Lakers, 7:30 p.m., My45
12/08/09 SUNS @ Mavericks, 6:30 p.m., My45
Originally, I had planned in my head (because that’s where I plan things) to write this week’s Suns Spot about Jason Richardson. I was going to talk about the trade last year and how he performed then versus how he’s performed now. It was going to be good. Then the Suns played the New York Knicks and looked like the New York Knicks. OK, fine, one loss, no big deal. Last night, though, the Suns played the Cleveland Cavaliers and looked like the New Jersey Nets (at least in the first half; the second half actually had some positives — mostly the play of Goran Dragic). Needless to say, the Jason Richardson blog has been put on hiatus for the time being.
About halfway through the Cavs game, I came up with the idea for this week’s blog. Below is the first rough draft I had written for this week about the Knicks game:
No defense… lack of hustle on the boards… ever heard of boxing out? Danilo Gallinari scored how many points?! The freaking Knicks?!!!! Under 100 points?!?!?!! Seriously?
Here’s what I had for the Cavs game:
I hate Lebron James! Now Shaq gets those calls?! Grrrr!
After listening to City and Colour to calm myself down a bit, I decided to rethink my blog. I don’t want to be one of those negative Suns fans (and we’re going to start to hear from a lot of them now). All those chicken littles will show up talking about how we need to trade Amar’e or do this or do that or Robert Sarver is cheap or Steve Kerr is terrible, blah blah blah. Instead, I decided to put a positive spin on things. Here’s what I came up with.
One, the Suns needed some adversity. All teams face it. The good ones overcome it. Now the Suns have their chance. It’s only a two-game losing streak. Phoenix is still sitting at 14-5, which is nothing to hang your head about, especially considering the expectations for this season. The important thing is how the Suns bounce back. Luckily, the Suns get that chance at home (Saturday against the Sacramento Kings), where they’ve been dominate, especially in the last three contests. Last year, Phoenix didn’t do too well with adversity — they weren’t able to bounce back. With Gentry at the helm this time around, I think things will be different. As long as the Suns just shake off these last two games and move on, all should be well in the Valley of the Suns.
Two, we did get to see some positives in these two losses. In both games Goran Dragic never stopped fighting. He continued to be aggressive, even when his shot wasn’t falling and the game was well out of hand. He played his usual solid defense and when Knicks players looked to have some easy layups in the fourth quarter Tuesday night, Dragic wouldn’t have any part of it, committing good, hard, quality basketball fouls. Alando Tucker also shined in the fourth quarter of the Knicks blowout, scoring 14 points and getting to the charity stripe eight times. It was good to see Tucker come in and be aggressive. He could come in handy with Leandro Barbosa out two to four weeks with the ankle sprain.
Three, well… I couldn’t think of a third one, but those first two are pretty solid, especially that adversity one. Let’s see how this Suns team handles it.
