As if the Suns don't have enough to think about this summer, Saturday's overtime loss to the Jazz in Utah certainly will provide more musing material.
A Suns win and a Dallas loss in Cleveland would have sliced the Mavericks' lead in the playoff chase to 2 1/2 games with a face-to-face meeting in Dallas still on the horizon. All the momentum would have been with the Suns as they headed off Sunday to Sacramento -- a place where they have dominated lately. So how did the Suns respond? How about listless first quarter and a downright awful second (11 points) against the Jazz? Then with the starters having dug the lion's share of a 21-point deficit, the Phoenix bench put together an improbable rally in one of the NBA's toughest building, spurring the Suns to a seven-point lead with two minutes left.
And the Suns gave it all back. Suddenly the shots stopped falling. The defense sagged. Grant Hill flat out dropped and inbounds pass out of bounds just before he was about to be intentionally fouled. And when the dust settled, Phoenix had let a game it absolutely had to have slip through its fingers -- along with a chance to put some heat on Dallas and Mark Cuban's Twitter fingers.
Phoenix still can carve a game off the deficit if it can beat the Kings while LeBron James does his thing against Dallas. But there are only nine games left for the Suns, and chances are they won't get a better opportunity to apply pressure than they had against the Jazz.
JAZZ 104, SUNS 99 (OT): Down 21 points in the third quarter, the Suns put on a furious rally led by their bench and forged an 88-81 lead with two minutes left. But Phoenix couldn't close the deal, and Utah forced overtime and eventually pulled away behind 26 points and 11 rebounds from Mehmet Okur and 21 points and 13 assists from Deron Williams.
Steve Nash had 20 points for the Suns, and both Shaquille O'Neal (16 points, 10 rebounds) and Matt Barnes (14 points, 10 rebounds) recorded double-doubles. But the Suns blew a four-point lead with 30 seconds to go and folded after scoring the first four points of overtime.
