PHOENIX — A string of recent promotional activity
has escorted the Phoenix Suns through Fiesta Night, Polish Heritage Night and
No Defense Monday.
Unfortunately, that last one kicked off an unofficial event the Suns can call Moving
Week. The intended moving involves the Suns' attempt to climb in the Western
Conference standings. Things had been rolling lately, too. By winning their
previous five home games, the Suns had reached an 11th-place deadlock with the
Utah Jazz.
Monday's no-defense extravaganza co-starred the premise-embracing Minnesota
Timberwolves, but it didn't go so well. While the Jazz were taking care of the
Detroit Pistons, the Suns (19-22) were losing the first in a five-game week, which
includes four against teams sitting ahead of them in the conference.
The final was a robust 127-124 and featured a 56 percent shooting effort from
the ninth-place T-wolves (22-21), who are obliged to finish this season without
rookie point guard Ricky Rubio thanks to a torn ACL.
"I don't want to take anything away from them," Suns coach Alvin
Gentry said of the victors. "They played great."
Well, the Suns really didn't take much of anything away from Minnesota during
this battle of teams that seemed severely unequipped to deal with two All-Stars
working within the contours of NBA-caliber ball screens.
The T-wolves selected a method of pick-your-poison-and-roll defense that
allowed Suns point guard Steve Nash to turn the corner and have as many clean
looks at the rim as he desired. It was as if T-wolves’ strategy was to hope
Nash eventually tired from scoring so much. He may not have felt much fatigue,
but Nash did miss two big attempts late in the game.
"Both teams were just shooting the heck out of the ball," T-wolves
coach Rick Adelman said, "and we finally got them to miss a couple at the
end and ended up winning the game."
That particular let-Nash-shoot maneuver does diminish the roll portion of the
Phoenix pick-and-roll program. So does foul trouble. With the latter variable
limiting Suns center Marcin Gortat to eight points in just under 20 minutes,
Minnesota survived screen-roll.
But the Wolves did surrender 124 points, allowed the Suns to make 52 percent of
their field-goal attempts and gave up 28 points to Phoenix's Jared Dudley. Nash
still managed 10 assists (and no turnovers) to go with 25 points. He made 10-of-16
shots, but those two fourth-quarter misses with the clock under 1:36 prevented
the Suns from keeping pace in the hottest gunfight we've seen this season.
The Suns' pick-and-roll defense was considerably more aggressive, but no less
ineffective.
You have to wonder if the hard-hedge (or show) tactic was designed to trap
T-wolves point guard Luke Ridnour or corrupt his rhythm. Suns defenders put
little pressure on Ridnour, who was able to make a defense-shredding initial
pass that — thanks to tardy rotations out of the double teams — led to easy
buckets.
In the first half, slow recovery enabled T-wolves center Nikola Pekovic to bag
16 of his 24 points in the paint. While working against the blacksmith-oriented
low-post stylings of the 6-foot-11, 290-pound Pekovic, Gortat picked up his
second foul just six minutes into the first quarter.
"Pekovic really just kind of took control of the game early," Gentry
said.
In the second half, exploitation of the Suns' high pick-and-roll defense took
the form of five 3-pointers from All-Star Kevin Love. Minnesota's power forward
made 8-of-14 shots in the final two quarters, good for 23 of his game-high 30
points. The T-wolves shot 59 percent in the second half.
"We just have to do a better job of understanding rotation," Gentry
said. "He (Love) wants to catch and shoot ... we want to make him a
facilitator. We want to make him a dribbler instead of a catch-and-shoot
guy."
In addition to 54 combined points from two-thirds of its starting frontcourt,
Minnesota was handed 34 points from reserve forwards Derrick Williams and
Michael Beasley.
"I'm just trying to help this team, help the bench," said Williams,
the rookie from the University of Arizona. "We've got to play defense and
put up some points, too. We just do what we do every time we're out there."
The "defense" thing Williams referenced didn't quite translate
Monday, but Minnesota was able to make the late-game stops Phoenix failed to
produce.
"I think the pick-and-roll with Love and Pekovic, and how we were at one
point having wings try and rotate over to Love and the bigs," Dudley said
when asked to define what went awry. "He (Love) just got hot, and you have
to hand it to him."
It might be better to hand-in-his-face-it to him.
Next up for the Suns are the aforementioned Jazz with Al Jefferson, Paul
Millsap and a different set of defensive challenges.
Maybe the promotion will turn out to be Lockdown Wednesday.
