Suns Charities "Slam Dunk"

Ah , what rings.

A quick note about a fun little event in downtown Phoenix on Saturday, October 11 (though actually the main reason I'm posting about this is to have an excuse to display the above photo with our fancy rings).

Getting ready to sit down for dinner on Central Ave.

Anyway:  CPG has been involved with the Phoenix Suns charity organization; they have a neat event starting with drinks and appetizers on the Suns basketball court, followed by dinner on Central Ave, followed by dessert and dancing (also on Central Ave but a couple blocks south of the dinner location).  So it's a pretty solid concept.  CPG, PJ, NOC, POC and I had a fine evening.

As the evening wears on.

Purple and orange attire preferred.

alley-oop

I just don't get tired of watching this sort of thing.  (It seemed pretty impossible when watching real-time, and still seems that way after seeing the replay angles.)

Shaq in town (and somewhat dangerous)

We pay quite a bit of attention to the NBA in general and the Phoenix Suns in particular. They surprised the heck out of us by taking a step away from the running game and trading for this extraordinarily large man named Shaquille O'Neal. It's not clear how well this trade is going to work out, but there are some encouraging signs and it's certainly entertaining in the meantime.

Anyway - Chris, Paul Jr. and Pat Herrara (the latter two home on spring break) were sitting around on Tuesday evening (3/11); Patricia made a large and wonderful spaghetti & meatballs supper for us. After eating massive amounts of food, we were talking and watching a Suns laugher against the lame Memphis Grizzlies. Shaq has developed a dangerous propensity for diving after loose balls (including almost taking out a couple rows of fans in a game two days earlier).

Anyway, the Suns bench must have paid attention to the previous game, and their desperate escape tactics (shown below) in response to Shaq's pursuit of another loose ball were pretty amusing to us.

The video is funny. It was a fun night in general.

Suns game (almost finished with Christmas)

Chris had given me two tickets to a Suns game as part of my Christmas gift. It was Sunday's game against the Dallas Mavericks (April 1) - an excellent choice. The tickets were located on the upper level behind the basket - not normally considered a prime location, but it is my favorite place to watch basketball. On TV, I'm always complaining that the camera focuses too closely on the ball, and after a made basket, focuses on the scorer while ignoring the entire setup of the next possession. From this location we had a great view of the entire sequencing of each possession.

And the Suns are the right team to make this particularly interesting. The best play was an oft-repeated favorite where Leandro Barbosa cuts back-door while Steve Nash throws a bounce pass through a keyhole. It was fun being able to see them peeking at each other down the court while setting this up. The short video below (from a Sacramento game) shows how well this works (complete with the camera missing most of a play while focusing on the scorer from a play that's already history). Three straight trips, Nash-to-Barbosa! This is how basketball is supposed to look. By the third time, the defenders appear to realize they have a problem.



By the way, the Suns won in a blow-out over the team with the best record in the league. So that was fun. Plus the section beside us had some mouthy-but-funny fans who said unkind things about Dirk Nowitzki. And the NBA is just awesome in general. (Don't get me started about the college game.) You can read about the game here.

The team handed out "thunder stix" to fans in our general area, and Patricia finagled a set. It's not clear that every fan should be entrusted with these devices. Look at the photo, you can tell she was having too much fun.

So now our Christmas gifts are pretty much fully realized. All that's left are a few cookies packed and shipped to Patricia from Iowa. But it's already April, so we enjoyed great mileage out of this year's gifts.

Suns are at it, again

No doubt - the NBA is far and away the best sports league going. And here in Phoenix we get to watch the most entertaining team in the NBA.

The Suns have been on an East Coast swing into the major media markets - Washington DC and New York City for starters - and so are riding a publicity blitz with regular comparisons to Magic Johnson's Showtime Laker teams of the 1980s. It helps that they have the best record in the league and lead in every major offensive category.

I liked this photo from nytimes.com because it shows a standard scenario: 1) Steve Nash running the break; 2) two teammates filling the lanes in classic formation; 3) sorry defender trailing behind, but at least in a good viewing position for the upcoming dunk or three. I also like how they superimposed the statistics, and that they took the photo from an interesting angle.

I'm hugely entertained by all this. Here's an entertaining (if somewhat fawning) Bill Simmons article that gets into much more detail about what the Suns are up to this year.

End of the line

For you NBA fans, the Phoenix Suns' season finally ended tonight. The NBA has been my favorite sports league since watching the Baltimore Bullets in the 1960s (Gus Johnson, Earl Monroe), but this Suns team was particularly enjoyable, at least for those of us here in Arizona. Not only were they forced to deal with the absence of critical players due to injury, it turned out that the injuries were concentrated among all of their bigger players: Amare Stoudemire, Kurt Thomas and Brian Grant. So they were forced into playing even smaller and faster than planned (which already was pretty small and fast). It's ridiculous that these guys got within two wins of the NBA finals.

Their success was so striking -- and fan-friendly -- that it clearly is influencing the style of play across the entire league. Just watch the personnel moves this off-season and the playing tactics next year. Actual skill will be important, rather than large men simply grabbing and beating on each other. So I thought it was worth a post.