King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Bruce Bowen, playoff hero or dirty player? The answer is yes, and will be until teams like the Suns learn how to deal with the Spurs defender.
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May 14, 2007 | Surprise, surprise. A Don Nelson team is being picked apart because of its lack of a center and an inside game. Gee, who could have seen that one coming?
No team coached by Don Nelson will ever win a championship, though they're sometimes good at pulling off first-round upsets like his Golden State Warriors' win over the Dallas Mavericks this year. Eventually, all that small ball and creativity and hustle and jump shooting runs into a team that slams it down their throats like the Utah Jazz slammed it down the Warriors' throats Sunday, pounding out a 115-101 road win and a 3-1 series lead.
Those are the teams left in the later rounds of the playoffs, the ones that can pound it down your throat. The Phoenix Suns are trying to buck that too, though they're a much better team than the Warriors, and with Amare Stoudemire on the offensive end and Kurt Thomas on the defensive, they're much better prepared to at least compete on the inside.
How's that going for them against the San Antonio Spurs? We'll present our answer in the form of an interpretive dance, performed for us by Bruce Bowen of the Spurs and Steve Nash of the Suns.
In a related news item, the NBA is reviewing San Antonio's Game 3 win over Phoenix Saturday, with a fine or suspension possible for Bowen if the league determines that he kicked Nash in the nuts on purpose.
How do they investigate that, anyway? It's pretty clear what happened. Bowen kneed Nash right in the MVPs as he turned to face him. Nash had been crowding Bowen about 35 feet from the basket, a move defenders sometimes do when they want to get called for a foul for some reason, though in this case it didn't work out that way for Nash. Actually, it didn't work out for him in a couple of ways there, but he walked it off.
It you're from San Antonio you probably think Bowen was just turning around and trying to take a step and the knee was accidental. If you're from Phoenix you probably think it was the latest dirty move by one of the NBA's dirtiest players. The rest of us are probably split a little more evenly.
Next page: Bruce Bowen, wrestling villain -- and opponents should treat him like one