PHOENIX -- It was a quick -- and we do mean quick -- interlude of basketball anarchy near the midway point in a preseason event blessed with very little importance.
Thursday's Spurs-Suns date was so drenched in ho-hum potential that coach Gregg Popovich and most of his San Antonio crew stayed home. According to one report, the Spurs were even going into battle with the third-string equipment manager.
So the Suns' 121-90 triumph -- which included something of a public-address apology from team owner Robert Sarver due to the lack of competitive intrigue -- isn't exactly something to crow about.
"In the exhibition season, you're not worried about other teams," Suns coach Jeff Hornacek said. "You're just figuring out things you need to work on, find your rotations, so it doesn't matter who they put out there."
But speaking of rotations, it certainly can matter -- in the name of entertainment and provoking daydreams of future lineups -- which combinations the Suns put out there. With that in mind, let's hustle back to the previously-referred-to anarchy, which occurred over the last 3:12 of the opening half.
"Is that all they played?" asked Hornacek, the mastermind behind this intentional snubbing of position-defined hoop convention.
For the Spurs, who were competing without five of their top seven players, it probably seemed like an eternity.
By the way, considerable credit is due Hornacek, who last week promised/threatened to roll out a three-point-guard lineup at least once in this preseason calendar.
And with Tony Parker, Boris Diaw, Danny Green and a few junior-varsity Spurs still available to be victimized, Hornacek closed the second quarter by summoning Goran Dragic off the Phoenix bench to join Eric Bledsoe and Isaiah Thomas.
Perhaps it's best defined as an unleashing.
"We saw that it could work," Hornacek said.
That was an appropriately undersized statement.
Anyway, leading 49-45, Bledsoe opened the subsequent Suns storm with a point-blank bucket off a feed from Thomas. Marcus Morris pitched in by converting a slick, through-the-key bounce pass from Bledsoe into another layup.
Then Bledsoe knocked in a 3-pointer, followed by Dragic's 14-footer and a buzzer-beating, half-ending layup by the Dragon on Thomas' fourth assist of the half.
It should be pointed out that the Spurs managed only a deuce of their own in this span and trailed, 60-49, at intermission.
Although all of their damage wasn't unloaded as a cold-blooded, three-man gang, the Bledsoe-Dragic-Thomas lobby finished the half with 34 points and 11 assists.
Thomas, who's listed at 5-foot-9, also contributed four rebounds and a steal.
"If you can do that," Hornacek said in regard to surviving on the boards with size limitations, "we can get away with a lineup like that.
"When we got the ball, it was off to the races."
And the races were more like chase scenes.
Returning to the standard (well, for them) two point-guard lineup in the third quarter, the Suns punched out San Antonio by scoring another 32 points.
For the record, the Suns' blistering pace wouldn't have happened without a corresponding hike in on-ball pressure and early rotations on defense.
"You have to scramble a little bit," Hornacek said. "We have to be a scrappy team. We have to use our speed. We have to use our quickness."
On a night when the only thing that counted was the fun quotient, put a big check mark in the using speed and quickness boxes.
Over an entire game of work, Phoenix's PG3 combined to score 51 points (making 21 of 32 shots from the field), hand out 17 of the team's 27 assists and record six steals.
Dragic provided 20 points, Bledsoe added 16 and Thomas -- who knocked in 4 of 5 shots from 3-point range -- had 15. The Morris twins didn't exactly slouch around the building, either, making 13 of 21 shots and combining for 31 points.
But the fuel that fired most imaginations Thursday was seeing three card-carrying PGs on the floor at the same time.
"We definitely were having fun out there," Bledsoe said.
When asked for a personal review of how this lineup -- which included starting center Miles Plumlee for ballast -- performed, the guy who represented the "Blade" in last season's DragonBlade alignment didn't hesitate:
"Like we expected," Bledsoe said. "I thought we were small, but everybody got in and rebounded, we pushed the tempo and the lead went up."
