Suns mix old, new styles to top Spurs in opener

SAN ANTONIO - Score one for the new coach — with a big assist from old faithful.

Terry Porter played nine players at least 14 minutes, and even went 10 deep for another nine. His defense held the Spurs to 16 points in the first quarter and got the better of San Antonio down the stretch. The set offense Phoenix has drilled on for a month produced shots for a wide variety of players.

But when push came to shove — as it always does here against the Spurs — the Suns went back to their tried-and-true methods and ran Steve Nash and Amaré Stoudemire on the pick-and-roll until a 103-98 season-opening win went up on the board Wednesday.

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“I’m not going to say I told you so,” said Nash, who had 13 points and 13 assists and told anyone who would listen that this team would become a marriage of old and new. “Let’s think about this: The pick-and-roll is the toughest play in the league to guard. We’re good at it. So it makes sense to go to it.

“If you asked Terry at Day One of training camp what he would want to go to down the stretch, he probably would have said that. Through the first month of preseason we had to work at the things we weren’t good at. That needed time. But at some point I thought we’d come back to the middle.”

The Suns survived another round of “Hack-A-Shaq” — rendered less effective when Shaquille O’Neal hit five of eight second-quarter free throws as part of a 15-point, 13-rebound night. They survived 64 combined points from Tim Duncan and Tony Parker, who threw in 32 each. They even survived a game-tying, 3-point attempt by — you’ll never guess who — in the final seconds.

This one was a line drive and never had much of a chance. And while this one didn’t cost San Antonio a postseason game, it marked the first time in Duncan’s 12 seasons that the Spurs lost a season-opener, dating back to a 1996 loss to Minnesota during the David Robinson administration.

“Tim’s spot is six or seven feet over to the right,” said Nash, remembering Duncan’s dramatic 3-pointer that forced overtime and led to a San Antonio win in Game 1 of last year’s playoffs here. “My thought was, ‘Go ahead and make it again big boy, we’ll find a way to win this somehow.”

And the Suns did, even after Stoudemire took only three shots in a passive first half. Even after Phoenix coughed up a seven-point in the final two minutes of the third quarter when their second unit collapsed under the pressure of a Parker hot streak. Even after O’Neal picked up his fifth foul with 3:08 left in a tie game.

That’s when the Suns flipped the playbook to the side and went back to what comes naturally.

“As long as we’re out there, playing our game and our style, we’re going to share the ball and be successful,” said Stoudemire, who had 11 of his 22 points in the final seven minutes. “That pick-and-roll … that’s our bread-and-butter. We have other things we need to improve with, but that’s something we can lean on.

A three-point play from Stoudemire gave the Suns the lead for good. A second Nash assist led to a Stoudemire layup and the third a Stoudemire dunk that put the Suns up 101-96 with 1:46 left. And while Phoenix was cashing in on their end, the Duncan/Parker version of the same play couldn’t keep pace on the other end.

“It was good coming out and getting a win against our nemesis,” said forward Grant Hill, who had 13 points in 19 minutes off the bench, including a 30-foot, 3-point banker to end the third quarter — showing what the Suns missed when injuries forced him out in the playoffs last year. “We kind of out San Antonio-ed San Antonio.”

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