For the Suns, it’s that simple: all they have to do is play the same way they’ve been playing over the last two months, and they’ll win the series. As the better team (or in this case, the healthier team), they have the luxury of showing up when and where they want to as long as they can do it four times. Be it in Portland or in Phoenix, the Suns will have the advantage whenever they hit the floor, particularly now that Nicolas Batum (strained shoulder) can be counted among the wounded. The Blazers had their card and they played it. Now it’s the Suns’ turn, and their offense is more reliable (than the Blazers’ without Roy et al), their pace is more coercive, and their healthy players more talented.
If I may, the Blazers are Ridley Scott’s Alien. The film is predicated on two things: the build-up of suspense through an extension of the ordinary and the grand reveal of the titular creature. A surprising amount of the film’s running time is designated to portraying the characters going through seemingly ordinary sequences of action, which naturally makes the audience uneasy because they’re (1) aware that they’re watching a movie in which something interesting is supposed to be happening and (2) cognizant of the fact that the damn movie is called Alien, yet there have yet to be any aliens. The injury-plagued Blazers are very much the same, in that even the team’s most talented players are seemingly ordinary. Andre Miller is hardly perceived as an elite point guard, despite the fact that he’s been incredibly effective in Brandon Roy’s stead. LaMarcus Aldridge is considered a solid four, but lacking in some fundamental element of superstardom and thus inferior. Marcus Camby is a nice shot-blocker, but he’s been deemed well into his decline and though he’s a difference-maker, he’s hardly considered a defensive anchor. Nicolas Batum, Martell Webster, Jerryd Bayless, Rudy Fernandez — all fine role players, but nothing more.
This is all, of course, before a little alien with Nate McMillan’s face comes bursting through your chest at the dinner table and ruins a perfectly good time.
It’s powerful and it’s shaking, largely because the status quo as it were only acted as a mechanism for the reveal to manifest itself. Miller wants you to think that he’s incapable of being a force, so he can can blow by you on his way to the rim by using the quickest slow (or is it slowest quick?) first step in the league. Aldridge wants you to think that he’s incapable of providing star-level offensive production as a primary option, so he can toss turnaround jumpers over your head from the low block, drop 20+, and call it a day. Camby will lurk behind on the break to rock a weak layup attempt, or emerge from the darkness to contest an otherwise open look.
The only problem is that once everything is in full view, the power of the reveal is gone. Portland may have caught Phoenix by surprise in game one, but now that the Suns know the secret, the result will never be the same again. That initial reaction can never be quite replicated, regardless of how expertly the Blazers execute.
The Suns, on the other hand, are more akin to James Cameron’s Aliens: the tension is built by putting highly combustible elements (trigger-happy marines, a literally explosive setting, and an entire alien species) in close proximity, and watching the sparks fly. It’s made with what seems to be an easily replicable formula, yet it stands above. The most important component of Aliens here, though, is what separates it from the first installment: there is no mystery. Everyone knows exactly what Phoenix wants to do. That doesn’t stop them from being effective or their performances from being repeatable, especially when they rebound and defend as well as they did last night. The Suns are just a different kind of product than the Blazers, and their success has little to do with what you don’t expect from them and more about what you do. If Phoenix is as persuasive as they’re capable of being — and as they were last night in stomping Portland 119-90 — then Portland will end up running with them. That’s not a good thing. I don’t buy the argument that the Blazers can play at the Suns’ pace over the course of the series. Not without Brandon Roy, and if Nicolas Batum misses any time as well (he considered himself 50-50 for Game 3), that certainly doesn’t help.
It’s not that the Blazers can’t run at all or even that they’re not effective in doing so. They’re just not as effective as the Suns, who practice this style and running their lanes and making the right passes in transition all year long. ‘Seven Seconds of Less’ may not rule the day, but just look at how quickly Phoenix was triggering the break last night. The Suns were down the court and set along the perimeter often before the Blazers’ defenders could even make their way into the broadcast view.
I’m not saying that Portland won’t win another game. They very well could. But the way this team operates is just too predictable and preventable. The Suns shift Grant Hill on to Andre Miller, and ‘Dre is held to just 12 points on 4-of-11 shooting and three assists, compared to 31 points on 10-of-17 shooting with eight assists in Game 1. Phoenix threw double teams at LaMarcus Aldridge to force the ball out of his hands, and he finished with 11 points on 3-of-8 shooting after dropping 22 in Game 1. I’m sure Nate McMillan will do a great job of making some adjustments for Game 3, and change up where Miller and Aldridge are getting the ball, where and when the offense should attack, etc. Unfortunately none of that will change the fact that the power and impact of their initial reveal is gone. The Suns may still be affected when the Blazer offense figures out new ways to showcase the same things, but they’ll be waiting for it. They’ll be anticipating it. They’ll stay frosty, clinch their fists, and sense it coming. The magic may still be there, but the mystery is gone.
