Suns-Spurs: Stats, Not Rings, Under Phoenix' Tree

The Spurs were able to continue their winning ways in the Spurs-Suns rivalry on Christmas Day—though it’s really more of a bullying than a rivalry at this point—when Roger Mason hit a clutch three in the corner to win the game and ruin every Suns’ fan Christmas.  

After the game, I called my stepdad—a long-time Suns fan—and all he could say was, “You know, I could handle it if it was Ginoboli or Bowen or even Parker that hits that shot, but who is Roger Mason?”

The thing is when it comes to the Spurs-Suns rivalry, there’s always a new Roger Mason. Over the years it’s been Vinny Del Negro, Avery Johnson, Sean Elliot, Brent Barry, Manu, and of course, Tim Duncan. There’s always a Spur ready to deliver the knockout punch to the Suns.

The thing that the Suns and their fans have yet to realize is that it’s not so much that the Spurs are doing everything right as it is that the Suns keep doing things wrong.

At this point it’s redundant to talk about how the Suns don’t play defense, but it has to be called out again given Jason Richardson’s feeble performance in the final four seconds yesterday. Tony Parker drives to the basket and Richardson leaves Mason to—well, I’m not sure what Richardson was doing.

Caught in no man's land between Parker and Mason, he did a nice job of jumping off the ground in the general vicinity of where Parker was. This, of course, gave Mason a good three feet of room to shoot unabated and knock down the game winner.

So we could blame the loss on poor Phoenix defense, just like so many losses in the past. Or we could look at what got the Suns into that situation in the first place—Amare Stoudemire.

Again, it’s been said over and over again that Amare needs to improve on D in order to become the true superstar that the Suns want to believe that he is. However, on Christmas Day it wasn’t Amare’s D that killed the Suns—it was his stubborn attempts at offense.

Time after time in the closing minutes, Stoudemire went into the paint and attempted to jump over Duncan, forcing bad shots at the rim time and again. Duncan’s stoic defense, maintaining position with his hands straight up in the air, simply overmatched Stoudemire’s supposedly efficient low post game.

It was as if Amare was just throwing the ball at the rim and hoping it would go in, as Steve Nash, Jason Richardson and Shaq stood by and watched.

Stoudemire is an exciting player, as great a physical force as there is in the NBA. He’s improved his game since he came into the league, adding a serviceable 15 -ooter to augment the pure athleticism.

However, until he and the rest of the Suns learn to play smart and trust each other as a team, they’ll continue to suffer losses like the one on Christmas.

When your team is built around a guy who likes to call himself STAT and pontificate that he’s the man, you’re going to continue to lose to teams that play for rings.