Series Thoughts and Observations

I couldn't think of anything to write after the Suns lost on Sunday. I thought it was because the loss put me in a mood less conducive to writing, but I don't think so anymore.

No.

It wasn't that it was depressing. It was just so cryptic. I was missing something. It was a classic game, I knew that. It just took a better-than-the-original sequel to put things in perspective.

Suns fans may not realize part of this yet, but I think that they'll come around eventually. That game one loss was a bit of a heart breaker filled with tons of ifs, wouldas, and couldas. There was an interesting subplot to that game that I have yet to see in the corporate media.

I noted before the series started that this series between the San Antonio Spurs and the Phoenix Suns would be all about style. The match ups were the big talk in the beginning among my privileged colleagues. But that talk has since turned to style - how this series is a clash between the league's best offense against the championship defense of the Spurs, or how the Suns are out to prove once and for all that up tempo, marginally defensive basketball can win the NBA title again.

That is, after all, what we are witnessing with this series. But did you notice this in game one? The Suns shot 50% from the field to San Antonio's 47.5% It was a half court game, though. The Suns played solid defense on Sunday all game long, and they were beating the Spurs in the half court. Then the second half came, and the Spurs showed the Suns that the Texans can beat the Suns at their own game - they ran off 60 points in the half.

The game itself was about two teams coming out to prove that they could win playing the other team's game. The Spurs beat the Suns at the running game after the Suns beat the Spurs at the half court game.

That's not the cool part, though.

The Suns came out in game two of this series, and they put a world class beat down on the former champions. They did it playing San Antonio's game by holding the Spurs to 42% shooting for the game. And they did it by playing their own game of shoot-the-lights-out offense, evidenced by their 64.2% torrid love affair with placing the ball within the net in varying degrees of delicacy, ranging from feather-soft touch to two-handed, rim rockin' jam, over the last three quarters.

So what has made this series a classic already?

The upstart Suns are a perfect offensive team. The champion Spurs are a killer defensive team.

Two styles.

Only one wins.

They duke it out on the streets of national television. Each jabbing and lunging, feeling each other out, finding the other's weak points and exploiting their own strengths.

And the Suns have shown through two games that they are better at both styles than the mountain they have to climb. This is going to be a classic series.

Suns in 6.