Suns not faring so well against NBA's elite
The Phoenix Suns are in a bit of a pickle... they couldn't beat the Western Conference powers w/ Shawn Marion, so they traded for Shaquille O'Neal. The result... two ass-kicking defeats in a row to Eastern & Western Conference powers - Detroit & New Orleans. Ok, so maybe the Hornets aren't a "power", but they are playing well and did hand the Suns a crushing defeat last night. The Pistons... well, they just ran up & down, played slow & generally played a perfect game in dismantling the Suns by 30 points on Sunday afternoon.
All is not bad, however, as the Suns have also scored wins over Dallas (pre-Shaq), the league's best team in the Boston Celtics, and a gimme against the Memphis "We Love the Lakers" Grizzlies.
In the last two losses, Steve Nash has scored a combined 19 pts - 2 above his per game avg of 17.5 pts. It seems clear that Steve is more willing to try and work Shaq into the system by shooting less and passing more. There are about 24 games left, so the Suns have plenty of time to find their groove and work on their low-post, half court game.
The defense for Phoenix has simply been horrible... they are giving up about 115-118 points per game since trading Marion away. Yes, the Suns are still scoring their typical 108-110 points, but that's a 5-10 point deficit in just about every game. The offense has also been turning the ball over at a very high rate, which has led to numerous fast break opportunities for their opponents, especially in the losses.
From what I can see, and the stat sheet doesn't lie either, the players who aren't carrying their weight right now are Nash (19 pts in 2 games) and Boris Diaw, who seems to have gone in a funk, despite the fact that his minutes are up and he's getting more opportunities. He played 22 minutes in the loss to the Hornets and only scored 2 points (on 2 shots), and 24 minutes against the Pistons w/ only 2 pts (1-4 FG) - that simply will not get it done.
The Suns are also giving good minutes to the recently signed Linton Johnson, who Phoenix had to sign in order to fill their roster. I can't imagine that the rookies are too happy w/ the time D'Antoni is giving Johnson (24 min last night), but Strawberry and Tucker aren't exactly showing they belong in the lineup either.
Phoenix will probably need about 8-10 more games before we really see how well they are going to be performing when the playoffs start. The Suns cannot afford to lose too many games though, because the 8th seed in the West only has 3 more losses than Phoenix currently does. A few more losses and they may find themselves on the outside looking in, or at the very least, chasing all of the other teams for homecourt advantage. At the same time that Phoenix is trying not to lose games, they also need to be wary of how many minutes that Shaq is playing... he's over the 20-25 minutes that the coaches anticipated he'd be able to play. Just hope that his body holds up and he's healthy when the playoffs start (cross your fingers).