GameTrax: Stats and more
By Dave Lumia
FOXSportsArizona.com
It wouldn't be fair to rush to judgment on the newly remodeled Suns after one game, what with Vince Carter resting his ailing knee -- especially considering the opponent in said game was none other than the Miami Heat.
But at the very least, a sellout crowd featuring luminaries such as Muhammad Ali, John McCain, Jordin Sparks and Larry Fitzgerald had a right to expect some glimmer of spark, of excitement, of promise in a pre-holiday game that was likely the most highly anticipated of the entire Suns' season.
And with Dwyane Wade sitting this one out, presumably a strategic calculation by the Heat to save him for a more worthy challenge from the Lakers on Christmas Day, who's to say the newly energized Suns couldn't catch the Heat with their minds in another time zone.
So it seemed when Steve Nash dished out eight assists in the first eight minutes as the Suns bolted to a 21-10 lead. Alas, the glimmer lasted about as long as that wrapping paper is going to last on little Susie's Zhu Zhu Pet Hamster.
Over the next 13 minutes, with Nash sitting for most of them, the Suns managed one whole assist as a team, and the Heat went on a 30-10 run for a nine-point lead. The NBA's highest-scoring team scored 62 points over the final 40 minutes and finished with their lowest point total of the season in a 95-83 loss to Miami that left the Suns at 0-9 when scoring fewer than 100 points.
The Suns had an immediate transformation, all right, but not the one they were hoping for when they shipped Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Richardson and Earl Clark to Orlando for Carter, Marcin Gortat and Mickael Pietrus.
With Amare Stoudemire in New York and Richardson in Orlando, suddenly it might be fair to ask if the league's most prolific offensive team has enough scorers. The only Sun who had any success on Thursday night was Jared Dudley - a 6.8-point-per-game career scorer who took advantage of the lack of other options to post a career-best 33 points in 41 minutes. Nash finished with 18 assists, but with the Heat double-teaming off screens and hounding the Suns' point guard with long-armed aggression, he got off just four shots and scored four points.
"It's just a test for us and we've got to get better," Suns coach Alvin Gentry said. "That's the bottom line. We have who we have now, I think the guys will start to play (and) get better."
Carter might be part of the solution as soon as Sunday's game against the Clippers. He said before the game that his ailing knee was much improved and he hoped to be cleared for the team's next game.
The numbers for the other new arrivals were less than overwhelming. Gortat made his first shot, an 8-footer in the lane, and showed some understanding of the pick-and-roll game while finishing with four points (2 of 5 shooting) and four rebounds in 17-plus minutes. Pietrus missed all four of his 3-point attempts and finished with two points (1 of 6) and two turnovers in 12-plus minutes.
Not to worry, said Gentry: "He'll be able to make those shots. He got good looks; he just didn't get 'em in."
Gortat admitted to being "a little lost out there," especially on defense, but he, too, preached patience.
"I'll tell you one thing, this team has a lot of talent and a lot of potential," he said. "(There's) just a lot of room to improve, and right now, we've just got to work on our defense."
If the Suns (13-15) hope to make a serious climb above the break-even mark, they are also going to need better, more consistent play from their bench. Gortat, Pietrus, Goran Dragic, Josh Childress and Hakim Warrick scored a combined 12 points in 69 minutes on 5-of-23 shooting.
"We've got to get to the point where we've got a pretty good handle on what's going to happen when I take Steve out of the game," Gentry said. "I can't have Steve be a 45-minute guy. That's not going to work out for us."
Nash gave the party line, even on a decidely non-festive evening.
"I think we should be optimistic," he said. "We've just got to be tougher; making shots would have helped. We got a lot of great looks."
