The Suns are reverting back to their old ways and that's not good. They started out the season on fire. Through November, they were 14-3. Then over December & January they finally cooled off and couldn't crack .500 over that span.
But now they've won 13 of their last 16 with some big wins at Denver and at Oklahoma City. They also knocked off Dallas at home.
In December and January, they gave up 107 & 112 points per game respectively. Yikes. And then, all of the sudden, they clamped down on D and gave up only 100 points a game in Febrhttp://www.sbnation.com/admin/entries/new?community_id=113&entry_type=GameThread&event_id=43624uary and just 93 points in the two games they've played in March. That would hardly seem fair for a team to keep rolling offensively and suddenly start putting the clamps on teams on the other end. That's a huge drop in points per game allowed. I don't know if the possessions have gone down or what.
According to Seth from the Bright Side of the Sun, they've been "dominatrixing" on the boards lately.
If they're rebounding well and pushing the ball after each of those misses, that's a frightening reality. The Jazz will need to get back quickly on transition D or give up layups and open threes all night.
The Jazz are just 1 1/2 games up on PHX right now with the Suns having played 3 more games than the Jazz so far this season. They're up one game in the win column on Utah.
All of the remaining games for the Jazz are must-win when you consider the West and how fast you can move from 2nd to 8th. Is there ever such a game that is a "it's an okay if we lose" game? The reason why all of these are must-wins is to avoid having late games in the season be must-must-wins as in, we must-must-win in order to avoid playing LA in the first round. So win things now so you can have your seeding taken care of later in the season.
Although, we do play PHX again on April 14th for the final game of the regular season and I have a feeling it's going to be a must-must-must-win.
Let's hope the warm Phoenix weather has loosened up Deron's wrist.