A star is born!
While the team went down (just as predicted), not all is lost! Amare Stoudamire is a star. Don't believe me? Believe Tim Duncan:
He sat alone at his locker, his feet soaking in a bucket of arctic water, his knees wrapped in icepacks. After carrying his team into the NBA Finals, Tim Duncan couldn't stop looking at a statistics sheet.
Why? "Amaré," he said. "As usual."
Still don't believe me? Ponder this: in 5 games, matched almost exclusively against Duncan, Stoudemire averaged 37 points, just under 10 rebounds with 1 steal and over 1.5 blocks a-game. Last night as his team was being eliminated, he scored 42 while pulling in 16 rebounds.
As for the Suns as a team, much has been made in local media about how playing without Joe Johnson in the first 3 games hurt Phoenix. I believe that is all true, but I think another issue that hurt just as much, maybe even more was the disappearance of Quentin Richardson.
All his numbers were down across the board in this series. Regardless of whether it was a result of defense or just an ill-timed slump, Q is an important part of what the Suns did all year. Especially when it came to 3-point shooting. Last nights stat-line epitomized the situation: 0 points, 2 rebounds in 28 minutes.
Poor production from the '3' and Johnson's injury forcing changes to the rotation and on-court personality of the team hurt them severely.
1 comment:
Actually, Q hasn't been playing very well for a few months now. As someone who's watched him his whole career, nothing surprised me more than the consistency of his performance through, say, February. But since then he's been very inconsistent. Some of it was injury-driven but some seemed to be a reversion to his Clip-era inconsistency.
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