Suns Stop the Bleeding
Grant Hill always felt that something was lost in the move up from college basketball to the N.B.A., that team commitment and unity was not quite the same on the professional level.
He once complained about it to Johnny Dawkins,
Energy saving lamps the former Duke assistant and the current Stanford coach, who replied that it did not have to be that way. As an example, Dawkins related an incident from his days with the San Antonio Spurs. One night before San Antonio played host to the Los Angeles Lakers, Dawkins took his wife, Tracy, to the movies. Nearly the entire Lakers team was there, taking up most of a row, Dawkins told Hill. They might as well have shared popcorn.
“The good teams have that,” Hill said this weekend as his Phoenix Suns swept its way to the Western Conference finals. “Look at San Antonio and the success they’ve had the last 10 years. I think this year, from Day 1, guys got along, guys enjoyed each other, the whole team.”
In the N.B.A., team chemistry is both underrated and overrated, and never that easy to quantify Still, while N.B.A. teams with subpar chemistry and star athletes can succeed, good chemistry can probably pole vault other clubs to greater heights than normal. The Suns are a case in point.
“We’re not the most talented team,” said Steve Nash, whose souvenir from the four-game sweep of San Antonio was an eye that was swollen shut. “But we believe in each other.”
It helps, of course, when a common enemy is in the crosshairs. The Spurs had knocked the Suns out of the postseason five times since San Antonio drafted Tim Duncan in 1997.
Energy saving lamps Before Sunday, the Spurs had lost only one playoff series to Phoenix, in 2000, when Duncan sat out with an injury.
So the Suns did not merely win a basketball series against the Spurs. They exorcised personal haunts. They healed themselves of bloody faces and malicious hip checks and demonstrated that their fast-paced offense could finally trump the disciplined Spurs, all while taking a political stand on the touchy issue of immigration.
“I’m proud that we’ve been tough,” said Nash, who was bloodied Sunday night by an errant elbow from Duncan and then returned in the fourth quarter, a bandage over his battered eye, to seal the sweep. “We’ve been tough, both physically and mentally.”
Of the Suns teams that have been in the playoffs in recent years, this was one of the more unlikely to keep its season breathing. Phoenix nearly deconstructed its core at the trading deadline, again soliciting offers for Amar’e Stoudemire. At that point, the Suns seemed iffy to even qualify for the Western Conference playoffs.
