Kurt Thomas is the Key

Dirty.

He plays tough. He plays hard.

That's why the Suns tied the series with San Antonio. Kurt Thomas came in and did the dirty work. Irony at its purest.

All year long, when it came time to talk the Suns, experts from Michael Wilbon to Tim Legler to Joe Schmo hustling pool at the corner bar said that the Suns would have won the championship last year with a healthy Amare Stoudemire. It was high praise for Stat. He was seen as the difference between a Western Conference Finals wash out and an NBA title.

Everyone forgot about Kurt. Even Coach Mike D'Antoni. Boris Diaw was praised for his role in the series against Dallas, and was subsequently rewarded with a salary cap saddling contract. Boris played great replacing Kurt Thomas at center, he won the Most Improved Player award, so who could really complain much when he compromised his $10 million per year demand with the Suns offer of $8 million? It seemed fair. Sort of.

Fine. We knew it was a bad deal when it happened, we just didn't want the Lakers to grab him.

Lost in all this was Kurt Thomas' role in last season's ill-fated, injury riddled team. It was he, manning the middle as the Suns tore off to an unexpected 36-17 start, putting them on pace to win 55+ games. It was also in Kurt's absence due to a stress fracture in his right foot (thank you, Injury God) that the Suns finished the season on a 16-13 limp to the playoffs. Also in that stretch, the Suns defense went from yielding 44% field goal shooting and 101 points per game to allowing 47% shooting and 103 points per game.

Oddly enough, through the first 53 games of the season, the Suns were averaging over 108 points per game on the offensive side of the court.

Yet D'Antoni has been hesitant to use Kurt against the Spurs in the playoffs and regular season. Why? Tim Duncan is the sole purpose for Kurt Thomas' existence in purple and orange. Kurt was brought to the valley per Amare's request specifically to guard Tim Duncan. So what the hell took Coach so long?!

He wanted to run. Funny thing - D'Antoni is, for all intents and purposes, a brilliant coach. He has vision, he has insight, he has an ego. That should be excusable, as arrogance is the number one side effect of brilliance. We can forgive him, so long as he figure it out in time.

But it's not so much his arrogance that kept him from making the Thomas adjustment. He is so committed to running, to proving jackasses from Charles Barkley to John Hollinger wrong. It wasn't so much arrogance as it was induced ignorance. He got so committed to scoring over 100 points per game that he said 100 is the key number for the series. Score 100 points, and your chances are good.

If he just took a moment to reflect on the teams to whom his Suns are garnering comparisons, as well as his own from last year, he would have seen that using Kurt Thomas was not only safe, but absolutely essential.

A running team hasn't won a title in nearly 20 years. The last one to do it was the Showtime Lakers of Magic Johnson. Not coincidentally, that is also the team that this Suns team is compared to the most. Only three teams won a championship between 1980 and 1988, and they all had two things in common. They all had point guards running the show, and they all had big men in the middle.

Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles.

Dennis Johnson, Maurice Cheeks, Magic Johnson.

That's a serviceable trio of point guards, to say the least, but that's not the big one. The Suns have a two-time MVP, after all.

Robert Parish, Moses Malone, Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

These three teams put points on the board on their title runs, and they all had big, slow, paint rangers. Although no one would ever confuse Kurt Thomas with any of those three, his role with Phoenix is basically the same as theirs were for their respective teams. He's there to control the paint, grab 8-10 rebounds a game, make three or four 18 foot jumpers, let the guards and forwards run, and let the team play one on one defense with minimal double teams.

He did that when the 2006 Suns were running up 108 points per game in the regular season.

So was I surprised with last night's outcome? Not really. Was anybody? Probably nobody in Phoenix.

Kurt Thomas does something for the Suns that Malone, Abdul Jabbar, and Parish did for their teams. He brings the BIG playoff intangible. He brings versatility.

The Suns can continue to jack up the scoreboard with or without him in there. He doesn't slow the team down in a significant way - not in a way that opposing defenses don't already do. But if the Suns need to run against a smaller, more athletic team, like Golden State, for example? Kurt can take a series off, rest up those aging knees, and let the Suns run to their little heart's content.

When it comes time to bring the big hearts, though, then Kurt Thomas allows the Suns to play teams like San Antonio, Utah, and Detroit straight up.

According to my estimation, it wasn't the absence of Stoudemire that denied the Suns a championship last season. The Suns were close enough without him, and only the absence of Kurt Thomas and a hobbled Raja Bell kept them from reaching the 2006 Finals. Put a healthy Bell and Thomas on that court against Dallas and Miami, and you're talking a run away champion.

The Suns didn't need Stoudemire last season. They needed Kurt Thomas. And they need him again this season. He's doing a bang up job on Duncan, letting the other Suns play D (thank you Shawn and Raja for handling your respective assignments in championship fashion). And his jump shot is keeping the San Antonio defense honest. Well, in game two, it did.

Kurt Thomas is the key to the Suns winning a championship. Without him, it will not happen. With him, it absolutely will.