Phoenix Suns Team Page

Suns hand the Celtics thier first loss of the season

Jason Richardson bounced back from his worst game of the season to score 34 points with 10 rebounds, and the Phoenix Suns rebounded from their only defeat to beat the Boston Celtics 110-103 on Friday night.

Kevin Garnett had a season-high 26 points for Boston -- the most he's scored since missing the end of the 2008-09 season and the playoffs with strained ligaments in his right knee.Steve Nash had 16 points with 12 assists for Phoenix, shaking loose to hit a 3-pointer with 51 seconds left after Boston closed an 11-point fourth-quarter gap to four points. Amare Stoudemire added 22 points, while Richardson finished 6 for 7 from 3-point range.

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Suns 2009 Season outlook

Basketball experts are predicting the Suns to finish anywhere between 10th and seventh in the Western Conference. ESPN’s Marc Stein, perhaps in an attempt to receive extra Cold Stone at halftime, wrote that the Suns will be the surprise team of the Western Conference, finishing sixth overall. Thanks Marc!

“I just know that in the past, the core group of this team has been in a situation where they’ve won at least 10 straight games every year that I’ve been here except last year,” Suns Head Coach Alvin Gentry said. “Some kind of way we just have to play good enough basketball to so that we can get into the playoffs. We have to find a way to be better than one of those teams that finished ahead of us last year.”

When people wonder how the Suns are going to do this season, I tell them at as long as they all stay healthy, they are definitely a playoff team. Phoenix missed the playoffs by two games, holding the second-best record of all-time by a team (46-36) not to participate in the postseason.

The Suns would’ve been the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference, but has the misfortune of playing in the highly-competitive Western Conference. But the offseason brought with it a few advantages.

First, when you look at the final standings from last season, the Rockets ended up with the No. 5 seed in the playoffs. But they’re missing their top three scorers from last season and it’s going to be tough for them to manage enough firepower to sneak into the playoff hunt.