Mavs Drop Suns to 1-5
In a rematch of last year's Western Conference Finals, the Dallas Mavericks again showed that they are the better team against a struggling Phoenix Suns squad. While this game wasn't like their others (take quick lead & lose it), it's still very disappointing for the Suns to lose another game on their homecourt. The game was pretty close throughout, including 6 lead changes in the 4th quarter, but Dallas did what they needed to at the end to win and Phoenix didn't. A late offensive foul by Amare Stoudemire wiped out any chance the Suns had to catch up.
Dallas was led by Dirk Nowitzki (35 pts) and Jerry Stackhouse (23 pts), while Leandro Barbosa had another outstanding performance w/ 30 pts. Steve Nash and Shawn Marion also reached 20 or more points, and Stoudemire and Diaw contributed effectively with 16 & 13 pts, respectively. Aside from Jalen Rose's 9 pts off the bench, there's was no bench for Phoenix - Kurt Thomas was the only other player to score (3 pts) and the reserves only gobbled up 5 rebounds.
The Suns are going to be in big trouble if they don't get more production out of their bench. Jalen Rose will prove to be a good pick up for the Suns because he can post-up and shoot from the outside well; everyone else... well, they better get it going.
Keys to another Suns loss: lack of a bench, no defense (gave up 119 pts), out rebounded (37-25) including 14 offensive rebounds for Dallas, too many foul shots for Dallas (39) - only 22 for Phoenix. The strange thing w/ the foul shots is that Phoenix only committed 1 more foul than Dallas did, but the Mavs apparently were in the act of shooting more often than the Suns were (go figure).
Next up for the Suns are the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday; this should be an easy win (knock on wood).