Suns Defeat The Jazz In Utah
Posted by Jerseychaser54 on
October 29, 2010
In a match-up of two of the better back-courts in the Western Conference, Steve Nash and Jason Richardson served Deron Williams and Raja Bell, as the Phoenix Suns defeated the Jazz 110-94 on opening night in Utah.
The Suns guard duo combined for 34 points on 13-24 shooting, while holding their Jazz counterparts to a suspect 20 points on 6-24 shooting from the field.
Hate to say it, but Raja’s best days are behind him – he’s nowhere near the defender he once was. Jason Richardson was running circles around him, making him look like he had cement in his shoes.
That’s going to be a problem for the Jazz…..
Deron Williams struggled shooting the ball, and was pressing trying to involve Al Jefferson in the offense. He looked frustrated at times and lit into rookie Gordon Hayward’s behind on several occasions. After the game, Williams tried to clear the air with the Salt Lake Tribune’s Brian Smith.
Suns Head Coach Alvin Gentry on the game:
“We played well, extremely well defensively in the first half. We did a really good job of keeping Deron out of the paint which always seems to hurt us. We played well but we are an undersized team and we will have issues rebounding. We don’t have the big strong guys like Al [Jefferson] and [Paul] Millsap.
I thought we fought hard and our perimeter guys did a good job coming back and rebounding the basketball. I just thought offensively we did a good job keeping the pace of the game that we wanted to have.
The big thing for me was when things seemed to being going bad for us, we came back. We were able to withstand that and make shots to keep the lead.”
Hakim Warrick added 18 points and 11 rebounds for the Suns, who won despite giving up 60 points and 24 rebounds to the Jazz front-line (Jefferson, Kirilenko, Milsap).
Warrick is no Amare, but displayed a level of activity on both ends that won’t have Phoenix missing STATS too much. Goran Dragic played solid for Phoenix, running the point efficiently and knocking down his shot. Hedo Turkoglu was the match-up problem Phoenix hoped he’d be offensively at the stretch 4, especially in pick and roll situations.
The Suns never trailed and answered a fierce 3rd quarter rally with a 9-2 run of their own, putting them ahead for good. Phoenix held the Jazz to 42% shooting for the game, including 35% in the 1st half. Grant Hill added 9 points and 12 rebounds for the Suns. Hill is 38 years old.
