The Phoenix Suns continue their series against the San Antonio Spurs at home on Tuesday, but they aren’t playing gracious hosts.
The Suns will continue to impose their up-tempo pace on the Spurs in Game 2, rather than letting the visitors bog down the proceedings at US Airways Center.
“It’s human nature to pull the reins back and get conservative,” Suns head coach Mike D’Antoni told the East Valley Tribune before Game 1 on Sunday. “For us, that’s not the way we need to play.”
“You can’t match up to (the Spurs) playing their style. They’re the best at it. They’re a three-time champion. We’ll play our style and do what we do. Then we’ll work it out from there.”
Setting a total for the Spurs and Suns was a tricky task for oddsmakers. The Suns’ first-round games received an average total from sportsbooks of 208.8 points, while the Spurs’ opening-round totals averaged 192.8 points.
The variance doesn’t bother Pete Korner of the Sports Club consulting service in Las Vegas.
“I think Phoenix is going to dictate the tempo in the series, but they’re not always going to score 110 or 120 points a game,” he said before the series opener.
“There are always ebbs and flows within a series, but we can adjust for that. Right now we’re just concerned with Game 1 and it hasn’t moved much since we sent it out at 200 (points).”
The total closed on Sunday afternoon at 199 ½ points, well below Game 1's final tally of 217 points.
Korner said his group would be quicker to adjust the total upwards than they’ll be to adjust it downwards for the rest of the series and it showed in the total for Tuesday night's clash.
“If the score for Game 1 ends up at 192, say, maybe we’ll drop it a point at most,” he says. “If it plays over by a similar margin, though, we’re likely to make a 2- or 3-point change upwards in the total for Game 2.”
True to form, the Tuesday game opened at 203 points after the 217-point total from Game 1. Heavy betting on the over has caused the toal to jump to 205 points by Tuesday morning.
The 200-point total for Game 1 might have actually seemed high considering the teams’ meetings earlier this season.
The Nov. 8 score of 111-106 played over the total of 206, but the contest needed overtime to do so. The two subsequent games both played comfortably under, with the teams combining for 190 points on Feb. 1 and 177 on April 5.
Consider as well the Spurs’ recent series with the Denver Nuggets. The total of 197 points for Game 1 dropped in consecutive games to settle at 188 ½ for Game 6. Books’ efforts to match the low scoring were in vain, as all six games played under the total.
The Spurs, however, said they’re willing to run with the Suns.
"It's an up-tempo game, so it fits me pretty well," point guard Tony Parker told the San Antonio Express-News before scoring 32 points on the Suns. "I always like to play against Phoenix."
Korner thinks the Spurs can successfully keep up with the Suns, pointing to a late-season 11-game stretch in which the Spurs averaged 107.6 points per game (all in regulation) and went 10-1 straight up and 8-3 against the spread in the process.
“As we saw in the Dallas – Golden State series, it’s sometimes not easy to make a transition of styles for a series,” Korner says. “That was a coaching error by (Mavericks head coach) Avery Johnson.
“But San Antonio has the talent and the ability to run.”
They proved him right, scoring 111 points on the road in Phoenix for the Game 1 win.
Game 2 tips off from US Airways Center in Phoenix at 10:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday.