Amaré discounts Suns’ mental block vs. Spurs

Thoughts drive Amaré Stoudemire year-round, but he insists they aren’t thoughts of the Spurs. When he’s running extra offseason wind sprints, or powering through one more set in the weight room, or firing up a few hundred jumpers in the gym, the faces of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker never enter his head.

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That would be cliché, for one thing.

And besides, why overload yourself in the summer and fall with what you know you’ll get more than enough of in the spring?

“Every time I get here,” Stoudemire said of the NBA playoffs, shaking his head, “it’s against the Spurs.”

For the fourth time in five career postseasons, the Spurs are indeed the roadblock on Stoudemire’s path to glory, and Saturday’s Game 1 proved it isn’t becoming any less daunting.

Whether the Phoenix Suns have been banged on the nose by a celebrity-dating Frenchman, hip-checked out of bounds by an aging sharpshooter, taken to the rack by a miracle-working Argentine or felled from the 3-point line by a seemingly lost post player, they’ve found no shortage of ways to let the Spurs slip away.

Steve Nash said the only way to look at it is “with exasperation and a sense of humor.” But Stoudemire wasn’t laughing Sunday when he reflected on all of the close calls and near-misses.

“That’s got to be in the back of everybody’s minds,” Stoudemire said. “How can we beat these guys?”

But even with that said, Stoudemire was forceful in his assertion that the Suns have no mental block against the Spurs. As he pointed out, Michael Jordan once had trouble getting past the Detroit Pistons. And just 30 feet or so from where Stoudemire sat on Sunday, there was a man who knew about a more recent white whale-like struggle.

Suns general manager Steve Kerr was in San Antonio when it seemed as though the Spurs would never get past their nemesis. In both 2001 and 2002 the Lakers humiliated them with playoff drubbings, and now he finds his current franchise in a similar situation against his old one.

“When you’re trying to win a championship, there’s always going to be a great team to get through,” Kerr said. “That’s what makes it sweet in the end and that’s what makes it challenging.

“We (the Spurs) had to get through the Lakers. The Bulls had to get through Detroit, Detroit had to get through Boston. That’s always part of NBA history.”

And that’s why the Suns aren’t looking at their struggles against the Spurs – who have beaten them in 13 of the last 17 playoff games – as hopeless.

“We don’t look at it like ‘We can’t beat these guys,’” Nash said. “I look at it as the powers that be are littering our path with obstacles, and it’s just a matter of resiliency.”

Said Stoudemire: “We can’t dwell on the past. We’re here in the present.”

And as usual, the Spurs are with them.