I wouldn’t be angry. I would not be angry.

I remember two specifically. They were loose ball fouls called on JT and Donte. In the first one the ball was rolling and JT bends over to grab it, has his hand on the ball and one of the Suns players, either Hill or Richardson, comes sliding into him and JT gets called for the foul. Then later almost the same thing happens to Donte.

After the first quarter, we played well, and had our fair share of play to be excited about.

I thought the officiating was bad, but not biased.

Tyreke continues down the road toward stardom, another night, another amazing stat line.

JT needs to get past the mental hurdles of foul trouble. He’s trying, you can see he’s making a huge effort not to let his emotions get away. I think he’s making progress, though there has been some backsliding the last week or two. His emotions took him out of the game a few times tonight though, which will hopefully go away.

Spencer shot terribly, but I thought played well. We need better team defensive rebounding. If Spencer is going to be the helper on penetration, then someone needs to put a body on Spencer’s guy.

Casspi seemed like he couldn’t quite catch up to the speed the Suns play at most of the night; he had a rookie night I thought, no big deal.

K9 once again impressed with his professional effort and attitude. He could so easily be a cancer and so obviously isn’t being one, that’s admirable.

Sergio made a lot of nice plays; I’m warming up to the guy.

Beno and Noc had some real nice moments, but some pretty abyssmal ones also for allegedly being the veteran “adult supervision”. When either of them attempt to take over, other than Beno freeing up for his mid-range jump shot, the results usually make you cringe, and they each had a few of those moments.

Good game for the good guys, it was decided in the last 6 minutes when Nash-Stoudamire ran pick and roll and we couldn’t stop them. On offense, we looked young and like a team without a battle-tested identity going down the stretch, which, of course, shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

We could have won the game. So this is encouraging. I give credit to PW for keeping his cool, too. I have seen guys like Scott Skiles, Mike D’Antoni, and Alvin Gentry just explode over bad calls. Like 2 year old childs who had their favorite toy taken from them. Coaches can’t expect players to keep cool and play through officiating if they are a total hot head themselves. Hopefully PW demeanor will rub off more on Hawes and JT. I think Hawes as cooled down a little from last year. Interesting too that are two rookies, Omri and Tyreke, seem least effected by the refs.

None of his stats necessarily stand way out, but he fills the stat line and plays 3 positions. For a rookie, essentially replicating Joe Johnson is pretty incredible. His ceiling is non-existent. That crap is bananas.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

I thought the officiating was terrible, worse for the Kings (expected as the visiting team), but I thought it was difficult for both teams to get into a flow. While it’s damning the King’s with faint praise, it did take a huge effort from Steve Nash, Amare, and excellent three point shooting for the Sun’s to topple them. It did remind me why I hate to play Nash, and he would literally make me nervous back in the day’s of being on Dallas and playing the King’s in the playoffs. He is so eff’’n clutch, literally raises his game when he needs too. I had no doubt everyone of his step-back jumpers in the last six minutes were going in. This has been several games in a row now where to me, it looked like they missed K-Mart. When we had a few minutes of offensive ineptitude, and couldn’t get a good shot off, it would have been nice to have his offensive brilliance take the load off of the younger players.

Lets start by reminding everyone that we lost in PHX last year by 48 and 28 points, against a team that wasn’t playing as well as this year’s version.
This game was not on my list of games we might win this month.

Let me re-start by (Woof! Woof Woof!) giving credit where credit is due. K-9 had an amazing throw back game, one to remind us why he was traded for so long ago. His trade value went Waaaaay up last night. 18 rebounds is something folks notice.
Tyreke was excellent, more than that actually. On at least one occasion rather than going into the crowd right at the rim, he pulled up for a little 6-8 footer. Those kinds of shots will eventually really open up the floor both for himself and the team. Growth.

Casspi didn’t put up a lot, it didn’t go as well as he/we might have hoped but his continued demonstartion that he will eventually be able to score not just from the perimeter but also posting up and in a variety of creative ways off the dribble . . . .
he has a great chance to a really complete player on both ends.

The team as a whole just hung in there, and hung in there -
and eventually were put away when shots just fell at the right time for Phx. Steve Nash is not just an All-Star, he’s a Hall of Famer. They’re just waiting for him to retire and tell them how long he wants the hair on his bust. he played like that last night, put his team on his back and brought them a much needed home win.

Donte’ has I think played himself out of the starting line-up. Its not suprising, I haven’t put him back in the doghouse, I just think starting is too much for him right now. Lets get him a little hungry to get in the game again rather than being nervous about the starting role.

We needed to hit our 3s, stop thiers and win the defensive rebound battele. We did OK on the first and badly on the second and not as well as we should have on the third. And you saw it, we just couldn’t quite get to all the loose balls.

But there’s a difference between complaining about the referee’s and expecting them to be perfect every game. I notice this a lot with fanbases everywehre: Why is it the officiating is so noticeable last night as opposed to the Indiana game?

I understand the criticism that the ref’s did a poor job in calling fouls when they should have been called. I was frustrated by that, too. On the other hand, Ref’s have off games. It happens. I’m not saying people can’t note the instances where ther ref’s aren’t doing their jbo’s. That’s perfectly fair.

But why is it we only note the negative side of the ref’s as opposed to the positive games where the ref’s do a good job? There are plenty of games where the refereeing is done well, and all that. Why don’t we notice that?

My theory is that we expect the referee’s to get the call right every time, and that expectation always falls short of the reality. It’s human to expect perfection I suppose; it’s also human to fail too. Last I checked I don’t think anybody here expects the players to be 100% perfect, or the coaches and what not.

Oh well. Rant over.

His inability to defend the pick and roll was exposed, and Nash had way too much game for him to contend with in crunch time.

The Kings and Tyreke needed to get the ball out of Nash’s hands and deny him the jumper. Their best efforts came when they doubled him towards the end of the game. They need to do more of that when they host the Suns in February.

I also thought Westphal again failed to ride the hot hand. In this case it was Kenny Thomas and Sergio. Dance with the one who brung you. Go to the well until they stop you. Instead he went back to JT and Beno, and we failed to close out the game.

Three guys beat us, and we really had no answers for any of three. But Sergio did a pretty good job on Nash, and Kenny handled Stoudemire pretty well. Frye? Well, stop the three and make him drive. Easier said than done to stop all three options.