It has been just what was promised in the Western Conference finals, which resume Saturday in San Antonio with the Spurs leading the Phoenix Suns 2-0.
There are the behind-the-back dribbles and no-look passes, the little runners in the lane over the big guy with the shot clock still well into double digits, the no-conscience three-pointers and shots that make you rub your eyes in disbelief.
Oh, and the Suns have been interesting too.
This NBA final four–the entire playoffs, in fact–has gone pretty much according to form, with one major exception: the explosiveness and scoring power of the Spurs.
The Suns have been averaging 115 points in the playoffs and 111 in this series, both above a regular-season average of 110.4 that shocked the NBA. The Pistons, as expected, have been grinding through the playoffs, allowing a league-low 84.7 points per game. The Miami Heat is Dwyane Wade all the time. If there’s anyone else on that team besides Shaquille O’Neal’s thigh and Wade, it’s difficult to know.
And then there are the Spurs, the defensive playoff leader over most of the last decade with now-retired David Robinson and Tim Duncan. When they won the championship in 2003, they scored 94.8 per game and gave up 89.3. When they won in 1999, toward the end of the NBA’s dead-ball era, they averaged 88.4 and gave up 81.2. In last year’s brief stay, the Spurs averaged 89.3 and yielded 86.2.
This year the guys who once walked it up, dropped it in, passed it around and shot it only because someone yelled it was time have scored more than 100 in seven of their 13 games and are averaging 102.
Not the Suns.
“We run after makes, misses, rebounds,” Suns coach Mike D’Antoni said. “We’re going to have a shot up within six seconds, no matter what. It might be a bad shot, but we’re going to get one up.”
Perhaps it’s not the way to win a championship, as skeptics have suggested, but it works in the conference finals, which slow-it-down Stan and Jeff Van Gundy rarely reach. And it’s great fun to watch.
The Spurs, who once held opponents to a record-low 40.2 percent shooting over an entire season, have seen their opponents shoot 45 percent in these playoffs, with the Suns at 52.1.
“No, this isn’t the style we wanted to play in this series, and it isn’t the style we want to play,” Duncan acknowledged Friday. “We would like to have the game in the 80s or 90s because games like that are more to our liking.”
They’re not necessarily to the fans’ liking. Admit it: How much can you really enjoy those Eastern Conference taffy pulls with the Pistons straining to find someone to score as the shot clock runs down, running through pick after pick after pick?
And Wade, wonderful as he may be, bouncing off defender after defender like he’s a human pinball before he can find an opening. It’s truly excellent play. But when someone gets a six-point lead near the end, there’s little chance of the game changing.
Not so with the Spurs and Suns. Down the stretch they come, firing threes, as in Game 2. First Steve Nash, then Robert Horry, then Manu Ginobili scoring on a wild highlight drive and a stone-cold jumper and Amare Stoudemire answering. In this series the Spurs are averaging almost 40 points in the fourth quarter alone.
“Both teams are scoring like crazy,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “That’s potentially troubling to us because we are quote-unquote a defensive team. We’re supposed to be good at it, and we don’t look very good at it. It is a difficult way to play [against the Suns] because you want to run.”
Popovich doesn’t want to run. But it’s testament to his maturity and skills as a coach that he understands you don’t try to harness players like Ginobili and Tony Parker. Both have struggled at times under his harsh demands and structured system, but Popovich has recognized their talents.
Despite their predicament, the Suns are confident. They get Joe Johnson back, and he’ll start. That completes their dream team starting lineup that had been rolling through the playoffs undefeated until Johnson fractured his orbital bone in the second game of the conference semifinals.
The feverish Suns haven’t scored below 106 points in these playoffs. They didn’t have trouble scoring without Johnson, but they wore down some in the fourth quarter against the Spurs.
“They just score more points than we do,” D’Antoni said. “They are not cooperating very well.”
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sasmith@tribune.com
