"New" Suns lost game one in the "old" Suns way

The Suns lost game one of the Western Conference first round series against the Spurs in dramatic fashion.

Michael Finley 3-pointer to tie it (Barbosa on him? Why not Grant Hill, the Suns best defender?)

Tim Duncan first triple of the year (rotation?), Manu Ginobili amazing shot (help up the middle?) whatever...

Phoenix played poor defense in the second half, mostly because of the big men's foul trouble.
With Shaq, STAT (Jeramie McPeek/NBAE/Getty) and Diaw in foul trouble the Spurs "underlined" all the Suns defensive limitations on the perimeter. Ginobili and Parker often beat the first line of outside defense driving to the rim.

The Suns played well for the most part, on the road despite the fact that their initial game plan (protect the paint, attack TD, keep Manu and Parker out of the area) was denied almost immediately by foul trouble.

Suns and Spurs have now played each other in the Playoffs four of the last five season. Phoenix has actually been eliminated by the Spurs on every such occasion.

In 2004-05 (Spurs 4, Suns 1 in the Conference Finals) San Antonio won game 1 (121-114), in 2006-07 (Spurs+Stern 4, Suns 2 in the second round) SA won game 1 (111-106) and of course in 2007-08 Suns lost game 1 (117-115 in 2OT). On each of those three games Tim Duncan led the Spurs to victory.

During the D'Antoni era the Suns have played the Spurs three times in four years and in each of those occasions San Antonio took game one of the series. By the way, the Spurs eventually took the series in '05 and '07.

While all of our worst fears materialized on Saturday night's game 1 loss there's plenty of reason to believe this is going to be a tough and long series.

Go Suns !