Bordow: Suns can’t afford any more mistakes

 SAN ANTONIO - The sun came up Sunday morning. The Suns? Yeah, they got up too, although some were more well rested than others.

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Read Scott Bordow's blog

“We’ve lost tough games like that before in our career,” Grant Hill said. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. Just learn from it and move on.”

Suns coach Mike D’Antoni wasn’t quite as pragmatic.

He spent much of Saturday night tossing and turning, replaying the plays and decisions that didn’t go Phoenix’s way in Game 1.

Sunday was his day “of mourning.”

“By Tuesday I’ll flush it away, but I’m dying right now,” D’Antoni said.

The Suns maintained a stiff upper lip Sunday, saying all the Spurs did was hold serve by winning on their home floor.

“We didn’t catch a bullet,” D’Antoni said. “They dodged a bullet.”

The problem is, the lower-seeded team only has four bullets in its chamber. The Suns need to win a game in San Antonio to win the series, and you have to wonder if Game 1 was their best chance.

“We let one slip away,” Shaquille O’Neal said.

Phoenix can take some comfort in the fact that so much went wrong yet it still had multiple chances to win the game.

O’Neal and Amaré Stoudemire both were in foul trouble. Hill, bothered by a groin injury, scored just five points. Steve Nash was ineffective for much of the first half, weakened by the flu bug that had him in bed most of the day Friday.

“We’ve got seven games. We’ll be fine,” D’Antoni said. “If we’re the best team, we’ll win it.”

But that’s the problem, isn’t it?

Phoenix isn’t the better team. The Spurs are the higher seed, they have the home-court advantage and they’re the defending champs.

In order to knock them off, the Suns’ execution and discipline needs to be as close to flawless as possible.

That didn’t happen in Game 1, when Phoenix made several mistakes at the end of regulation and in the first overtime. San Antonio, on the other hand, doesn’t have those four banners because it gets careless down the stretch.

“You have to think of it as a process,” Nash said. “For whatever reason this is the path that we were meant to take and it will spur us on to something better.”

Either that, or the Suns won’t learn from their errors and the Spurs will get the best of them again.

Specifically, here are three things Phoenix needs to do in Game 2:

1. Stay out of foul trouble.

O’Neal was able to hold Tim Duncan to 15-of-40 shooting in their two regular-season encounters because he was able to stay on the floor and make Duncan work for his points.

But with O’Neal saddled by three fouls and on the floor for less than five minutes in the first half Saturday, Duncan was able to get into an offensive groove against Stoudemire and Boris Diaw.

“I thought that was one of the keys,” general manager Steve Kerr said. ... “The 3 Tim makes, if he’s not 15 of 23 at the point, he probably doesn’t make it. It’s a rhythm shot and when you get off to a quick start, every shot becomes easier.

“I think Tim saw the ball go through the hoop so many times early in the game that when he spotted up for the 3, the rim looked like the Grand Canyon.”

2. Keep Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker away from the basket.

San Antonio attacked O’Neal laterally with pick-and-rolls, a wise move given Shaq isn’t as nimble as he used to be, and he was never the greatest pick-and-roll defender to begin with.

The result: The Spurs scored 72 of their 117 points in the paint.

“I think staying out of foul trouble would help,” D’Antoni said. “We’ll tweak it a little, too. Having said that, that’s why they’ve won four championships, because nobody has figured out a way to stop them.”

3. Be smarter.

Stoudemire is a wondrous player, but he made two boneheaded gaffes that cost the Suns dearly.

First, he didn’t switch to cover Michael Finley at the end of regulation, and Finley was able to get off the open 3 that tied the score.

Then he committed a silly sixth foul when he barreled into Kurt Thomas instead of simply shooting over him.

He has to grow up this series and grow up fast.

The Suns are by no means done. Win Tuesday, and they’ll have what they came to San Antonio for — a split. But if they lose Game 2 and go on to lose the series, they’ll look back on the final few minutes of Saturday’s nightmare as the moment their season ended.

“I think we’re the best team here so we’ll have other chances,” D’Antoni said. “And you know what? If they prove us wrong, take your hat off to them.”