2010 NBA Playoffs: The Suns Try to Dethrone the Lakers

The Phoenix Suns are all extremely accurate shooters. All of them. The Los Angeles Lakers are all extremely tall. All of them.

If you’ve heard any previews of the Western Conference Finals, chances are excellent you’ve heard those two things. When you boil this series down to its most basic elements, those two facts are all you’ll be left with. Simply put, the Suns are a team built around offense, as is evident by their wealth of accurate shooters. The Lakers this year have been a lockdown defensive squad, perhaps most of all because of their three extremely tall big men in Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum, and Lamar Odom.

So which prevails here? Do the last 50 years of basketball orthodoxy win out as defense carries the day, or do we see offense pulling off the upset?

Matchups, of course, are critical here, and like every other playoff series we’ve previewed so far, we’ll break those matchups down for you with Spider Graphs. We won’t dissect every matchup for you, though – just the critical ones that the series is likely to turn on.

For instance, we know that Kobe Bryant is an offensive menace. He’s likely to put up a few 30+ point games over the next two weeks. We also know that Jason Richardson can score in droves, having torched both the Blazers and Spurs so far in the playoffs. We also know that both teams place a premium on those players’ ability to score, so it’s likely they won’t tire themselves out by guarding each other.

Fortunately, each team has a defensive specialist at the small forward position (Grant Hill for the Suns and Ron Artest for the Lakers) that will take on the task of guarding the shooting guard. It’s unlikely that they will put up identical (or even close to identical) numbers of points, but for the sake of brevity, let’s assume that these two cancel each other out. That’s going to leave players at the other three positions free to do their work. How do they stack up?

As you can see, Derek Fisher is going to have his hands full trying to cover Steve Nash. Not only has Nash been one of the league’s premier point guards this year, but Derek Fisher has been (statistically) one of the league’s worst. To make matters worse, he’s not likely to get much in the way of help defenders, since Kobe and Artest are going to be busy with their men.

Nash is spectacular at creating assists, but if Phoenix is going to win this series, he’s going to have to become a scorer. The more Nash scores, the more attention he will command on defense, drawing men away from Richardson and Hill, which creates opportunities for them to score. If Nash is going to be content to be a distributor, his team is going to find it difficult to get their offense going. Still, no matter how you slice it, the Suns have the edge here.

Advantage: Suns.

The power forward position has been where the Lakers have seen their greatest advantage in the postseason. Pau Gasol ate both Jeff Green and Carlos Boozer’s lunches repeatedly. He’d love to do the same to Amare Stoudemire, but he’ll probably have his hands full on defense. Stoudemire has become almost automatic with the ball in the paint in the playoffs. His quick dunks and putbacks get the crowd and team fired up and act as a catalyst for the offense. Gasol is going to have to work hard to prevent that.

However, Stoudemire’s fantastic offense comes a bit at the expense of his defense. Amare is not known as an expert defender, and his graph certainly reflects that. Gasol, on the other hand, provides a balanced game. He’s likely to be beaten on defense and appear on more than one poster this series, but he’s equally likely to do the same thing on offense. If I have to choose between these two, I’m leaning toward the one with a fully developed game on both ends of the floor, even if just barely.

Advantage: Lakers.

This graph is a little misleading, since Robin Lopez only plays 20 minutes a game compared to Andrew Bynum’s 36. Phoenix uses a committee of centers, rotating between Lopez, Channing Frye, and Jarron Collins. Still, it’s clear which team has an advantage. The concern is whether Bynum will be able to play to the best of his ability. Bynum has a slight tear in his meniscus which has only gotten worse over the course of the playoffs. If you’re wondering just how serious that injury is, ask Portland’s Brandon Roy, who had the same injury and was a mere shell of his All-Star self in four games against the Suns.

If Bynum is less than 100% and the Suns’ centers can spread the floor and hit threes, this could be the position that determines the series. If Bynum can play at full strength, though, it could just as easily tilt the other way.

Advantage: Lakers.

So it’s clear that the Lakers have the upper hand on paper heading into this series. The Suns have been dominant in their two playoff series so far, but the Lakers have been just as potent. In my mind, this could come down to each team’s bench players. The Lakers’s bench features super sub Lamar Odom, but falters beyond that, featuring notable players like Luke Walton, Jordan Farmar, and Shannon Brown. The Suns have a deep bench that can all come out and hit the three, but none are quite as talented as Odom. I would be surprised if bench play doesn’t make the difference in more than one of these games.

So who gets the nod? I wrote earlier about how Phoenix’s system is representing the future of the NBA. They took apart the Spurs, a team famous for defense and discipline, with their run and gun style. Can they do the same to the Lakers? Could we see the beginning of a new era in the NBA?

My heart says yes, and it says so emphatically. But my heart also told me that the Blazers would beat the Suns in the first round, and that the Jazz would beat the Lakers in the second. My mind says that there’s a reason the Lakers are the champs, and that they’re going to take this series in six.

I’ve never hated my mind more, but I’m going to have to trust it here.

Prediction: Lakers in six.