Gentry: Early mistakes kept team from playoffs
Apr 26, 2012, 2:53 AM | Updated: 4:33 pm
The Phoenix Suns could have been in a much different
spot if this were an 82 game season.
A strong second half push put the team back in playoff
contention in recent weeks, once again surpassing the
expectations of those in the sports world. Unfortunately,
it was too little too late for a team that left themselves
with too big of a hill to climb.
Head Coach Alvin Gentry admits that mistakes early on in
the season are what held the team out of the playoffs.
“The thing that hurt the most were some of the home loses
we had early on,” Gentry said. “You look at the teams with
home court advantage, all their home records are really
good, and then you play as well as you can on the road. We
dropped some games at home that made it really difficult
for us.”
Those include losses to Cleveland, New Jersey and Toronto,
all at home within the first month of the season.
Going into the offseason, Gentry has said that the biggest
weakness the team needs to improve on is their lack of a
pure scorer. Marcin Gorat led the team with a respectable
15.5 points per game this season, but not enough to fuel a
team that has been built on scoring in the past.
“We have to have a guy at some position that we can throw
the ball to that can go to the basket or get foul shots,”
he said. “Like a Carmelo Anthony, or a guy you can throw
to, we have to have someone that can create that situation
for us.”
A 19-14 run since the All Star break, and a team that has
unquestionably played better from all aspects of the game
than they did in the first half of the season, Suns fans
are once again left wondering, what if?
