Golden State Warriors Barely Weather The Phoenix Suns’ Storm
It was a tale of two halves for the Golden State Warriors against the Phoenix Suns tonight. The Warriors were able to build a 17 point lead at the end of the first quarter thanks to the play of David Lee who was outstanding and like Ekpe Udoh did on Monday night, Lee was scoring from inside and out and finished the first quarter with 12 points. Dorell Wright also broke out of his funk scoring nine points as well.
Yet, there was also bad news in the first quarter for the Warriors as point guard Stephen Curry injured his foot on a drive and was replaced by Nate Robinson and Curry did return to action except for a brief appearance at the end of the second quarter.
The Warriors were able to build on the 17 point lead and the reason the Warriors were able to jump out so quickly was because Monta Ellis did an excellent job defending Steve Nash and forced him into five turnovers. Eventually the lead grew to 21 in the second quarter, yet the bench play of the Suns specifically by Robin Lopez, Shannon Brown and Sebastian Telfair whittled the Warriors lead to 14 and Lopez chipped in six points and grabbed three rebounds in just over seven minutes of action.
In the third quarter Channing Frye got rolling hitting threes, making jumpers and even scoring down in the post on smaller players. If Frye managed to miss one of his shots it was Marcin Gortat taking advantage of the undersized Warriors and finishing for the easy baskets.
Frye and Gortat in the period combined for 18 points, which helped the Suns to a 10 point advantage over the Warriors in the quarter and brought the Warriors lead down to just four points. In the fourth it was more of the same for Frye and Gortat and the two combined for 17 points.
With their play the Suns were able to take the lead 96-94 and on the ensuing possession for the Warriors David Lee was fouled on a dunk attempt which resulted in two made free throws. Gortat gave the Suns the lead right back with a dunk and Robinson came back with a three to give the Warriors a one point lead.
Jared Dudley was able to score on an inbounds play by the Suns as Robinson was over aggressive on the play and the Suns retook the lead 100-99, Lee again got himself to the free throw line and only managed to split the free throws, so the game was tied 100-100.
The Warriors took a 104-100 lead and had the chance after the Suns scored to get the game back to a four point margin as Dominic McGuire grabbed a huge offensive rebound, yet Wright passed up a deep three and drove to the basket instead and attempted to pass the ball off to Lee in traffic and the ball was turned over.
A timeout by the Suns after the turnover led to a layup on a nice drive by Grant Hill to tie the game up 104-104. That left 11.6 seconds for Ellis to operate on Hill. The play started out with Ellis receiving the ball up top he drove to his right on Hill got to a spot, spun and went up for the shot while fading away. Hill played tremendous defense on Ellis and there was no doubt about the shot as it swished through the net.
In total the play took 10.6 second, so the Suns had one last ditch effort to either tie or win the game. Andris Biedrins was used for his length while the Suns inbounded and a time out was used. After the timeout Frye was able to sneak to the corner, yet Lee closed out on him and the game winning three was no good and the Warriors escaped with the 106-104 victory.
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