Amare Wants to Be the Man...Needs to Act Like One

I've been an advocate of waiting to see how this new coaching staff will make an impact on the Suns. When things got bad, I was the first to defend the team and their new style in that it will make them more equipped for the playoffs.

Now, I'm not so sure.

After scoring a season high 35 points in the first quarter, it got incrementally worse from there. The Suns had a dreadful 21 turnovers with 3 in the final minute (2 by Diaw, a horrible +/- of -18). We made 11/21 three pointers and shot 55% from the field.

But the Nets had Devin Harris and Vince Carter who were unstoppable. Harris had 47 points and Carter had 28 to lead the Nets.

The Suns stopped being aggressive in the 4th quarter and settled for jump shots. To make things worse, Amare got ejected with his 2nd technical foul after complaining about a travel call.

Note to Amare: If you want to be the man, you can't get a technical foul and be ejected in the clutch. Can't happen. You can't yell, "That wasn't a f*&^ing travel!" right to the ref and not expect to be ejected after already receiving a tech earlier in the game.

The Suns found a way to lose despite shooting better from the field, more assists, more threes, less fouls, and more rebounds. Again, this loss boils down to changing our play and not being comfortable knowing what to do. One thing became apparent to me tonight - we are the worst team in basketball in throwing the ball into the post. We must be. Maybe it's because we haven't done it in 5 years but good lord, this is junior high stuff.

What frustrates me the most is that we are so close to being an elite team. We just need to work on defense and turnovers. We don't need to slow down. We just need to have a backup plan in case the defense makes us play slower. We need to tweak our defense and work on weak side help. That's it. But we are playing like we need our offense to change and that's not the case.

We are sacrificing a mile to go a yard.