Throw Some Bows

Back when I enjoyed watching the New Jersey Nets (Kerry Kittles!), they played the Lake Show in the Finals a couple of times. With the monster duo of Jason Collins and Todd McCullough “patrolling” the paint, they stood no chance of beating the Shaq-led Lakers. I figured their only way of putting up a fight was to literally put up a fight, so I devised the following strategy:

Early in Game 1, sub in some terrible bench player (probably Brian Scalabrine) to punch Shaq in the face as hard as possible.

At the very least, Shaq is severely impaired and rendered largely ineffective, and it’s likely that he wouldn’t play in the series again. Plus New Jersey would only be losing a Scalabrine caliber player. It seems like a can’t-miss strategy, like not eating before an extravagant meal.

Well, going in to tonight’s game 5, that’s sort of happened in a round-about sort of way. As has been discussed for way too long, Robert Horry tried to decapitate Steve Nash, which led to Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw both idiotically leaving the bench. It’s a hard and fast rule that if a player leaves the bench during an altercation, they are to be suspended for at least a game. Every player in the NBA knows this rule, and while it may need some tweaking, for now it’s what they have to abide by. This means that Stoudemire and Diaw are gone for tonight’s game (Horry will be out for 5 and 6), which sucks for fans. This is the marquee match-up of this year’s playoffs and it’s unfortunate that people that aren’t players might be affecting the game. However, I don’t see how Stoudemire and Diaw can’t be suspended with the rule being what it is.

Unfortunately for the Suns, not only do they have to deal with the suspensions. The suspensions that they have to deal with are catastrophic. It would be bad enough to lose Stoudemire, but to also lose his versatile backup Diaw is probably worse. Last year, the Suns game the Spurs all they could handle with Diaw running the 4 and Stoudemire injured. But now their big man rotation is shortened. Kurt Thomas will start on Duncan, but if he struggles or gets in to foul trouble, who comes in? It’s likely that Marion will drop down on Duncan to see what he can do, but that creates a mismatch in the Spurs favor somewhere else. I would bet that the Suns are really regretting doing nothing in the draft the last two years.

It really worked out wonderfully for the Spurs that Horry dropped Nash. He’s so clutch.

(Check out TrueHoop and Dan Shanoff for the best takes on this so far)