{"id":37,"date":"2006-01-21T15:22:52","date_gmt":"2006-01-21T22:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rynosoft.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/?p=37"},"modified":"2008-04-08T19:42:14","modified_gmt":"2008-04-09T02:42:14","slug":"suns-beat-lakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/suns-beat-lakers","title":{"rendered":"Suns beat Lakers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night and this morning I watched the Suns cream the Lakers. Nothing beats seeing one of your favorite teams beat one of your least favorite players. Here&#8217;s a few thoughts about the Suns I had during the game:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/playerfile\/kurt_thomas\/index.html?nav=page\" target=\"player\">Kurt Thomas<\/a> has turned into an excellent pick-and-roll man with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/playerfile\/steve_nash\/index.html?nav=page\" target=\"player\">Nash<\/a>. He slips perfectly and has a decent mid-range jump shot for the pick and pop. Of course, nobody is better at pick-and-roll than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/playerfile\/amare_stoudemire\/index.html?nav=page\" target=\"player\">Amare Stoudemire<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Even if Stoudemire doesn&#8217;t come back in time for the playoffs, I think they still have a decent shot of a deep run.<\/li>\n<li>They hardly miss <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/playerfile\/joe_johnson\/index.html?nav=page\" target=\"player\">Joe Johnson<\/a>. I wasn&#8217;t that impressed with him last year and didn&#8217;t understand all the hype. I thought <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/playerfile\/quentin_richardson\/index.html?nav=page\" target=\"player\">Quentin Richardson<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/playerfile\/jim_jackson\/index.html?nav=page\" target=\"player\">Jimmy Jackson<\/a> were much more valuable for them.<\/li>\n<li>The Suns made some excellent off-season moves this year. The aforementioned Kurt Thomas gives them a defensive presence in the paint that isn&#8217;t Stoudemire, but the bigger pickup has to have been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/playerfile\/boris_diaw\/index.html?nav=page\" target=\"player\">Boris Diaw<\/a>. I think he only took about 5 shots, but he was really huge in the game.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t think <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/playerfile\/james_jones\/index.html?nav=page\" target=\"player\">James Jones<\/a> has turned out to be the player they expected. In the games I have seen him play this season and last season (with the Pacers), he is not nearly the dead-eye shooter that a three point specialists needs to be.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/playerfile\/shawn_marion\/index.html?nav=page\" target=\"player\">Shawn Marion<\/a> is a really great role player. And I don&#8217;t mean a one dimensional three-point shooter or defensive stopper. I mean he is great in many roles: rebounding, defending multiple positions, three point shooter, finishing, etc. He is a truly uncommon talent. I wonder why they don&#8217;t use him more on the pick and roll? Perhaps small forwards are better at defending against it. Marion&#8217;s NBA ranking in some major categories:\n<ul>\n<li>Scoring: ranked 19 (21.2 ppg)<\/li>\n<li>Shooting: ranked 14 (51%)<\/li>\n<li>Blocks: ranked 16 (1.89 per game)<\/li>\n<li>Steals: ranked 7 (1.87 per game)<\/li>\n<li>Rebounds: ranked 3 (12 per game)<\/li>\n<li>Double-doubles: ranked 2 (29 in the season)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Update 2\/2\/2006: Kevin Pelton over at 82Games did an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.82games.com\/pelton14.htm\">extensive analysis<\/a> of the Suns&#8217; defense during this game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6a few thoughts about the Suns\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[18,828,814,1560,813],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-basketball","tag-lakers","tag-shawn-marion","tag-sports","tag-suns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peh6u-B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}