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 The Suns' double-team defense against Tim Duncan didn't work as well in Game 3 as it did in the previous two games.
(Barry Gossage/NBAE Photos) RELATED CONTENT |
By Dustin Krugel, Suns.com
Posted: April 26, 2003
The Phoenix Suns have preached throughout their First Round series that they weren’t going to let Spurs forward Tim Duncan beat them single-handedly.
The plan all along has been to take the ball out of Duncan’s hands and put it in the hands of his supporting cast.
However, the strategy backfired Friday night as the Spurs’ won a convincing 99-86 victory at a sold-out America West Arena in Game 3 of the Western Conference best-of-seven series. With the win, the Spurs take a 2-1 lead heading into Sunday’s Game 4 in Phoenix.
“It’s very frustrating to lose the game, period, let alone lose the home court advantage, but we’ve been in this situation so we got to go back to the drawing board,” said guard Stephon Marbury, who led the Suns once again in postseason scoring with 25 points. “We’ve been giving those guys a steady diet, and two or three days to prepare for it, and now we have to come with something different. We wanted them other guys to beat us and they sure did tonight.”
Duncan finished with 11 points and 23 rebounds on his 26th birthday, but took only six shots in 41 minutes. He also led the Spurs with six assists.
“I think right now Tim Duncan is just taking himself out of the game like, ‘You guys have to win because these guys are doubling me hard and there’s not much I can do. My hands are pretty much tied,’” Marbury suggested. “I think as a team they really stepped up.”
Four other players scored in double figures for the Spurs, including guard Tony Parker, who scored a playoff-career high 29 points.
“We pretty much stabilized Tim (Duncan), but those other guys were knocking them down,” Marbury explained. “They were setting their feet up, like ‘La, la, la, la’ and just waiting for the ball to come to them, because they know it’s going to come. They know exactly where they are going to be shooting the ball at. Those guys are really good shooters and we are putting them in really great situations.”
After losing Game 1 in San Antonio, the Spurs have made adjustments to Phoenix’s trapping defense, which the Suns initially displayed in their final regular season meeting against the Spurs on April 13. Phoenix clinched a playoff berth that night by defeating San Antonio, 92-85, and won the season series, 3-1.
“(Duncan) was awful patient with his double-teams,” observed Suns center Scott Williams. “I think we’ve gotten a little too predictable the last two weeks. (They've had) too much time to prepare for exactly what we’re doing.”
Now that the Suns are trailing in the series, Williams said it’s time to mix things up. The veteran of 88 career postseason games said the Suns may have to front the post occasionally and play some man-to-man defense in an effort to stay at home on their perimeter shooters.
“We’ve got to throw them some different looks over the next couple of ball games,” he said. “Certainly over the next 48 minutes, we’ve got to try to get them off-kilter a little bit, because right now they’re in such a rhythm that they’re just tearing us apart.”
The Suns will have one more practice to rethink what went wrong in Game 3 before trying to even the series Sunday in Game 4.
“Am I concerned? Yes, I’m concerned,” Suns Head Coach Frank Johnson admitted. “But we’ve been in a position before where we’ve had tough losses and I expect us to bounce back Sunday. We’ve got a group of guys who have not stopped playing all year.”
Marbury said the Suns will be ready.
“I think Sunday we’ll respond. We’ll definitely fight back from the beginning all the way to the end."
