Defense wins championships, offense will just win you awards. The San Antonio Spurs played their style and came away with a road victory in game one of their series with the Suns. Steve Nash had a meeting of the minds with Tony Parker during the game and was bloodied for the remainder of the game. The South African point guard was even forced to miss some key crunch time minutes to get his nose bandage replaced. It didn’t stop him from scoring and looking like his usual lackadaisical self on defense though. It’s fairly obvious that Suns are nothing without Nash and I don’t see why teams don’t take advantage of this fact. If you can knock Nash out of the line up, you can knock the Suns on their asses. But then again, the Spurs are good enough to take out the Suns without my cheap tactics.
Cleveland didn’t have much trouble with the Nets and played stifling defense. LeBron, who was suffering from a head cold, scored 21 and his second fiddle, Larry Hughes had 17. Every shot the Nets took had a hand around it or in the shooter’s face; something you’ll never see from Steve Nash.