The Portland Trail Blazers won in impressive fashion with a 105-100 victory.
The Suns need to discover somebody who can cover Andre Miller. The Trail Blazers got off to a rousing start in their best-of-seven first-round series Sunday night by shutting down Stoudemire and the Suns on the way to a 105-100 surprising lost. The Blazers became the only one of the eight lower-seeded teams in the NBA playoffs to win their first playoff game.
They won Sunday thanks to Marcus Camby's defense on Stoudemire and the Suns' failure to cover Andre Miller. He shot 10-for-17 for 31 points, including an incredible 10-for-10 on free throws. In addition to his outstanding defense, Camby had 17 rebounds and three blocks. Camby made him work and didn't give him anything easy.
For the Suns, Nash had 25 points and nine assists. Stoudemire shot a modest 8-for-19 for 18 points. The Suns have had trouble scoring against the Blazers this season. They'd only averaged 98 points against them (compared to their league-leading 110 points per game overall).
The Blazers gave the Suns two chances in the closing moments of the game. The first was when Camby missed an easy break-away dunk in the final minute. Then Jared Dudley had a 3-pointer from the left corner that would have cut the Blazers' lead to one point. But he missed. The second was after Richardson hit a 3-pointer cut it to 103-100 with 12.5 seconds left, Bayless missed two free throws. That gave Nash one last 3-pointer from 28 feet up top to tie the game. He was well short, and the Blazers finally closed it out.
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