Wizards-Suns Recap

One day after The United States House of Representatives passed an historic vote on health care reform, Phoenix guard Steve Nash showed up in Washington to show that he can still pass with the best of them.

Nash, the NBA leader in assists, handed out 17 assists -- two more than the entire Washington roster combined -- to lead Phoenix (6-1) to a 102-90 victory over Washington. The Suns finished with 30 assists, exactly twice as many as the Wizards (2-5).

With the victory the Suns have improved to 6-1 on the season, marking their best start since they began the 2000-01 season with an identical record. More important to the Suns, though, is that they are now 3-1 on this Eastern Conference road trip. They can finish the trip 4-1 with a victory Monday in Philadelphia.

Nash, who added 11 points, said that the Suns were excited with the team's early season results, but added that they do not want to get carried away because the season is still so new.

"This is the type of team that has got to remain humble and play and be an underdog throughout the season," Nash said. "Whenever you start to say we are a certain caliber of team I think that's where you start to get into trouble. We have to look at it like we're a project and we want to continue to get better through the season."

Meanwhile the Wizards, still playing without injured players Antawn Jamison and Mike Miller, continue to struggle at the offensive end. They have now lost four games in a row by an average of 11 points. In those four games the Wizards have not scored more than 90 points.

"The ball was sticking too much at times," Wizards coach Flip Saunders said. "Guys are seeing guys struggling and somebody comes in and tries to do it on their own sometimes, and try to do a little bit too much instead of trusting other teammates."

Playing the Suns has never really been one of the more fun things for the Wizards to do. The Suns have won seven of the last eight against the Wizards, including sweeping them the last two seasons. The last time the Wizards did beat the Suns was back on Dec. 22, 2006. That night they got 54 points from Gilbert Arenas on the way to a 144-139 overtime victory.

That Washington victory also ended what was then the Sun's franchise-best 15-game winning streak. However, since then Arenas has undergone three surgeries on his left knee and is still trying to get the Wizards on track.

Arenas looked like he might be able to accomplish this by himself early on as he scored 12 of his 20 points in the first quarter and the Wizards staked a 29-26 lead.

But the Suns, the top offensive team in the league, made 57.9 percent of their shots in the second quarter to lead 56-51 at halftime. The Suns led by 10 points late in the third quarter, and took their largest lead of the game at 89-75 in the fourth quarter on Channing Frye's 3-point shot with 8:58 remaining in the game. Washington trimmed the lead to 89-83 on an Andray Blatche (20 points) layup with 6:11 to play but would get no closer the rest of the way.

The Wizards didn't help their cause in the fourth quarter when they were just 5-of-19 from the field. They were proud, however, that defensively they held the Suns from hitting their league-leading average in points (111.0).

"If you look, this is a team that averages [111] points," Wizards center Brendan Haywood said. "We held them to 102. I was happy with where we were. Defensively, I thought, down the stretch we had a couple of mishaps on rotations that led to easy shots. We gave up a bunch of offensive rebounds too."

Nash was one of four Suns to finish with a double-double. Frye notched 18 points and 10 rebounds, Amar'e Stoudemire finished with 17 points and 12 rebounds, and Grant Hill added 13 points and 13 rebounds.