Suns Set

The Rockets played the Suns tonight and won 116-112. That's the top and bottom lines. But there was so much in between. It was a wide-open, fast-paced game that was fun to watch.

Yao Ming played Shaq to a standstill pointwise, but Yao led the Rockets with six assists with some sparkling passing from the lane and outrebounded O'Neal 11-5. Yao seemed to enjoy playing against a man's man for a change. Not a flop in sight all night.

Aaron Brooks continued to both astound and frustrate. He had 30 points, including a critical running layup with :07 to play to put the Rockets ahead for good. He also had four turnovers and came up short (pun intended) on defense, allowing Steve Nash to post 32 points and 13 assists, but Nash does that to a lot of teams. Kyle Lowry, the other half of the Rockets' point guard tag team, played under control and led the team well. Carl Landry was also a force in the game hitting 6 out of 7 shots. He seems to thrive in the fast-paced style of game the Suns play.

Speaking of fast-paced, am I the only one who loves to watch a high-scoring run-and-gun game? It seems to be completely out of style in the NBA these days and I'm not sure why. There have been several rules changes to encourage opening up the game, but average scores are still down by 15 or 20 points per game. My theory is that players are not as basketball-educated as they used to be. The fast break is a ballet, not a race. A good running game succeeds with control, not speed, and with most players leaving college early, modern athletes are just not trained in the basics as well as they used to be. Remember the days of "Chicken Man"? Whenever the Rockets scored 125 points in a game, a local chicken franchise would give away free chicken and Mike Dunleavy seemed to be the one to hit the shot that put them over the top every time. These days, that would be a useless promotion. NBA teams rarely achieve that level anymore. I long for the days of "Showtime" with Magic and Worthy, the Denver Nuggets under Coach Doug Moe and the Spurs' George Gervin and his finger-rolls.