What a Difference One Game Can Make

By Bethlehem Shoals
High heavens did I ever need that. I spent all day worrying that the Suns had sold their souls, and possibly torn the spine out of the league according to Shoals. People who hate basketball swore that Tim Donaghy would bring down the league; to me, the Shaq trade felt like Donaghy for those who actually love this game.
How right I was, sort of. It could be that, like Donaghy’s sins, this trauma won’t linger. Actually, all it took was one night of high-test basketball to clear my palette and get me back on track. And, ironically, one of the two games involved that big bad Judas, the Phoenix Suns.
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I called it yesterday: Boris Diaw lives! Yes, I was grasping then, but Diaw was a changed man in that 2OT loss to the Hornets. From a purely rational perspective, it makes no sense that he’s feckless off the bench. Remember though, Amare’s comeback only happened when D’Antoni inserted him, undeservedly so, in the starting line-up. Amare’s ego is itself a force of nature; maybe, at the risk of offending someone, Diaw’s got some Continental vanity thing at play here (cf Seven Seconds or Less).
I will miss Shawn Marion, and consider him a major contributor to the cause of advanced basketball. But Diaw’s his own kind of innovator, in his own way just as strange and versatile as Marion. Remember, dude entered the league as a presumptive PG, and now he’s a sort-of center. Double-huhs all around!
There’s that small problem of the defense and rebounding void. That might be a problem. But you know, Grant Hill’s a capable defender, Brian Skinner is tough, and hey, this is a version of the Suns offense we’ve never seen before. Now let’s just hope they keep Shaq on the shelf until the playoffs, when they run him out for ten minutes a game in peak condition. Right.
(For discussion, in case anyone cares: The Hornets didn’t have Tyson Chandler, but the Suns were without Shaq. How many things are wrong with this sentence?)
Let us praise Nash’s aggressiveness, even if part of it had to do with proving all us critics wrong that Phoenix would suffer. And sing more songs of Barbosa’s zip-gun release. The Suns lost the game, though, and it’s high time I say it: Chris Paul is the MVP. He leads like Nash, dominates like LeBron, and lives in the West. Watching him last night was like vintage Iverson, if AI actually fit into the accepted channels of the game and couldn’t be called “flawed.”
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Bethlehem Shoals is our newest blogger here at The Sporting Blog and will be covering all things NBA in this space about five times a week. He will also continue to maintain his personal site at FreeDarko.com. ↵