PHOENIX // Hold that foregone conclusion. The Los Angeles Lakers are in a fight out West after all. The Phoenix Suns, led by a hustling, scrappy bench and a zone defence that again disrupted the vaunted triangle offence, beat the reigning NBA champions 115-106 on Tuesday night to even the Western Conference finals at two games apiece.
The series moves back to Los Angeles, where a week ago a columnist was lamenting that the Suns would not provide the necessary competition to prepare the Lakers for Boston in the NBA finals. Game 5 is tonight, with Game 6 back in Phoenix on Saturday. Kobe Bryant and his teammates still are in control, with two of the three games potentially remaining in the series at home, but the margin of error is not what it appeared to be after the Lakers blistered the Suns for 128 and 124 points in the first two games of the series.
"I think people were overlooking them after the first two games," the Lakers' Pao Gasol said, "and just thinking ahead already. And so obviously that's a big mistake." Bryant followed his 36-point, 11-assist night in Game 3 with 38 points and 10 assists in Game 4. He put the blame for the loss squarely at one end of the court. "Our attention needs to be on the defensive end - period," Bryant said. "That's second-chance opportunities. Their bench came in and gave them a big boost in getting balls back and getting them extra possessions. We've got to cut that stuff out."
The Suns' reserves out scored their Lakers counterparts 54-20, but that is misleading because often the Phoenix back-ups were outplaying the Los Angeles starters. Alvin Gentry, the Suns coach kept all five subs - Channing Frye, Leandro Barbosa, Jared Dudley, Goran Dragic and Lou Amundson - in the game for almost nine minutes in the fourth quarter. After Los Angeles took a 87-85 lead, the super-subs responded with an 18-3 run that was the difference in the game.
"We may not be the most talented team," said the Suns' Steve Nash said, "but we've got depth." Phoenix's bench had been a major factor in the team's success all season but had not been such an advantage in the first three games of the series. That all changed in Game 4, when the reserves dominated the Lakers' starters as well as their back-ups. "We believe in those guys and they really believe in themselves," Gentry said. "I thought they were much better defensively than they were offensively, and they were great offensively." * AP