Humble Pie

Ah humble pie, how I hate thee. Guess I got too ahead of myself with my prediction and the Lakers are really that good. God damn it hurts to type that.

There's really nothing much to rant about. They're just better right now. We played crappy (esp. Amare) and to beat this Lakers team, you need to play a near perfect game and we didn't do it. I have a lot of thoughts about the game, but everything is jumbled and its hard to make it flow so I'm just going to do it in bullet form. It's probably easier to read anyways.

• Amare had a horrible game. Worst +/- at -19. By my unofficial count he missed at least 3 easy layup/dunks that he should always make. Gasol's only 4 pts were off of him too and Amare just played miserable D in general.
• Amare needs to take more midrange shots in general. His midrange game is excellent. With Shaq clogging up the paint, when Amare drives it's just too crowded in there.
  
• When Shaq gets doubled in the post, Suns need to create more movement and make a better effort of getting a shot for the open man.
• Complain about the Shaq half court ball all you want, the Suns bench aren't really running either when Shaq's out. Why not? I don't know.
  
• Stop hammering it into Shaq on every possession. That's TOO predictable. Mix it up. Suns fans wanted PLAYS (as in plural). Not just one play.
  
• The whole offense is just messed up. Even the Nash/Amare pick and roll doesn't look crisp. Half the time, either Amare bumbles it and looses his momentum/positioning, or else it gets deflected/stolen. How the hell that happened, I don't know. They've been doing this for 4 years, even in a half court set with Shaq in the paint and Porter on the sidelines, they shouldn't forget how to do it.
• Diaw... great start, lousy end... typical jekyll and hyde performance. Damnit all we want is CONSISTENCY!
• Singletary got the nod off the bench over Dragic. First time it's happened. Can we call Dragic a bust now? Singletary is still very raw and he looks hesistant/scared when he shoots. But at least he's quicker than Dragic and I think his bball iq and passing are marginally better too.
  
• Lakers bench, just too friggin strong. Ariza for Bench MVP?
• Lakers defense, just too friggin strong. That double team on the post and 2 man zone for the weakside that was diagrammed by TNT... it's DEVASTATINGLY affective.
  
• City of Phoenix fans: PATHETIC. It's embarassing that the cheers for the Lakers were almost as loud as the cheers for the Suns. And the fact that they started a MVP chant for Kobe and it was loud enough you can hear it from the TNT broadcast, just sad, sad, sad, sad. It was like a Clipper game, that's how bad it was. I can only assume that Phoenix fans are bandwagoners because those cheers weren't there 1-2 years ago. And I really doubt THAT many LA fans from LA made the trip to make that big of an impact.
  

Alrighty, that's all I have for that game. It is after all just 1 game. We can bounce back, though some adjustments really need to be made. I don't see why we can't Run & Gun as well as play half court sets. Still run out on each possession, and if it's not there, then pull it out and wait for Shaq to come down. I hope Nash can have a sit down with Porter and get their systems sorted because with cheap Sarver's history, we don't have the assets (players or picks) to make any blockbuster trades to save the Suns.