this occured to me somewhere during the 2nd quarter when i found myself once again glued to a game involve the suns this playoffs. for one I cannot recall a single time in a few decades of watching basketball that a playoff team truly used a 10 man rotation.

gentry has actually extended the minutes his 2nd unit has played on a few occasions and this is the 2nd time I can recall where they really turned the tide. the 2nd unit was gigantic in the 4th quarter tonight. it really looked like LA was going to drop the hammer in the 3rd quarter when they roared back to take a lead. then good ol' Tragic Johnson, Channing and the boys went on a run.

i also have to take my hat off to kobe bryant in this game. he really was the only reason it was close. outside of bryant the suns badly outplayed the lakers but bryant seemed like he couldn't miss for the entire 2nd and 3rd quarter. i was a bit surprised that the lakers couldn't figure out a way to keep kobe heavily involved in the 4th quarter.

also i find the suns "let's give artest a wide-open 3 defense" intriguing. before the series started jared dudley mentioned in a Bill Simmons podcast that they were going to force Artest to hit some 3's before they guarded them. i thought he was being tongue in cheek. who knew this was an actual strategy.