It may hurt to do so, but if he has permission from his doctors and the requisite prescription drugs, Joe Johnson may be given to a considerable smile.
The Phoenix Suns, who lost their home-court advantage and one of their best players earlier in the week, moved on Friday night and undid the only damage they could. Johnson, with a fractured orbital bone near his left eye, will not be healthy anytime soon. But the Suns' championship aspirations are sound again after a 119-102 thrashing of the Dallas Mavericks at American Airlines Center.
Amare Stoudemire dunked on everyone wearing white and blue and led the Suns with 37 points and 14 rebounds. Steve Nash, the enduringly popular ex-Maverick, had 27 points and a playoff-career-high 17 assists, and the Suns took a 2-1 lead in this Western Conference semifinal series.
PHOTO: EPA
"We got one for Joe," Nash said. "We all feel sick about what happened to him."
Game 4 is Sunday at American Airlines Center.
Nash finished off his old team with a brilliant fourth quarter as a wistful crowd of 20,896 -- the largest in the arena's history -- watched in near silence.
He returned to his old home for just the second time since defecting to the desert last summer. His every move seemed designed to taunt his former employer.
The Mavericks had cut a nine-point deficit in the third quarter to 97-96 by the middle of the fourth. Then Nash went to work. After he hit a free throw, he drove inside and hit the open shooter on the right corner on consecutive plays -- Shawn Marion and Jim Jackson for two straight 3-pointers to give the Suns a 104-96 lead with 4 minutes 11 seconds to play.
A Jackson tip-in made it a 10-point game, Nash slashed in for a reverse layup and the Suns pushed the run to 15-0 to put the game away.
Jackson, who replaced Johnson in the lineup, finished with 17 points and eight rebounds, scoring his last nine points in the fourth quarter. Marion finished with 21 points.
Dallas got 21 points from Dirk Nowitzki, but its offense looked out of sync all night. The Mavericks had just 18 assists, one more than Nash got by himself.
The game probably should not have been that close after the Mavericks stumbled out of halftime.
Avery Johnson, the Mavericks' feisty young coach, had a fretful third quarter. His team committed six turnovers in the first six minutes and fell behind by nine points. He called two quick timeouts out of exasperation, sent in the veteran Darrell Armstrong for a stretch when Jason Terry faltered and generally stamped a lot. Johnson also lost his cool over a referee's call and was hit with a technical foul.
Dallas had tied up this series after a tongue-lashing and a takedown.
The takedown was delivered by Jerry Stackhouse, whose midair foul of Joe Johnson in Game 2 left Johnson with a concussion and the fractured orbital bone. Johnson, the Suns' top perimeter defender and 3-point shooter, had reconstructive surgery Thursday and is out indefinitely.
The tongue-lashing came from Nowitzki, who berated the center Erick Dampier for a miserable performance in Game 1. Dampier responded with 15 points and 12 rebounds in Game 2.
It would seem another verbal spanking is needed. Dampier started miserably Friday, picking up two fouls before the game was four minutes old. He got his third early in the second quarter. By halftime, he had played just five minutes, scoring four points.
Alan Henderson followed Dampier but had the same problems coping with Stoudemire. When Henderson picked up two fouls, the Mavericks showed their desperation, sending Shawn Bradley to cover Stoudemire.
That threesome reached halftime with six points, seven rebounds and five fouls.
The beauty of the Suns' super-charged offense has been its versatility, with all five starters capable of a 20-point night. Jackson, a potent scorer in his prime, performed capably enough. But replacing Johnson was not possible.
The real blow was to Phoenix's bench, which became woefully thin without Jackson. D'Antoni used the young Leandro Barbosa when necessary and rode Nash for 42 minutes. All five of the Suns' starters played at least 40 minutes.
"We have a team that's young, and our guys can go 48 minutes," D'Antoni said. "If I've got to go 48, they'll go 48."
PACERS 79, PISTONS 74
Reggie Miller curled off a screen like clockwork, separated from his defender, grabbed the pass and arced a sweet-sailing shot. Swish. Vintage Miller.
Then came the postgame reaction about officiating from the opposing coaches: vintage NBA playoffs 2005.
Miller, the 39-year-old indefatigable captain of the Indiana Pacers, stunned Detroit, the defending champion, with his 21-foot jumper with 10.7 seconds remaining Friday night to stop the hard-charging Pistons in a hard-fought 79-74 victory.
Miller's field goal was the first for the Pacers in a final five minutes full of hard -- and not-so-hard -- fouls and clutch free throws, Indiana took a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series.
"He made a great shot, an unbelievable shot, I've seen him do it again and again," Pistons coach Larry Brown said in a rambling diatribe against the officiating. Brown coached Miller for four years in Indiana. "But tell me how the space was cleared to get that shot."
He implied that Miller had pushed off Lindsey Hunter to free himself. Brown railed against Richard Hamilton's fouling out on an off-the-ball call with 1 minute 21 seconds to play and against Hunter's foul of Miller in the backcourt -- all in the context of the league's having changed the rules to impede defenses this season.
"It hurts when you got to lose the game without people taking the shot and on the free-throw line," Brown said. "You go back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the season. They put it on the wrong people instead of putting it on the players."
Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, usually stoic, was steaming with the insinuation that his team did not win on its own merits.
"I'll tell you my opinion: You must be steadfast in your abstention from falsehood, which is the simple way of saying, you can't kid yourself," he said. "The truth is the truth.
"We're hanging on for dear life, really, our whole season. And we got to hear about how the officials blew the game? Come on. Seriously. I disagree, I think it's ridiculous to hear those things, not with the heart both of these teams put out there."
Miller was shooting 2 for 12 before making that clutch shot on a night when the Pacers' other two stars also struggled. Jermaine O'Neal fouled out with 2:30 to play, having scored just eight points. Stephen Jackson was 4 for 17 for eight points.
Jamaal Tinsley scored 16 points and had six assists for the Pacers. Jeff Foster made two crucial free throws with 35 seconds to play and grabbed 12 rebounds, bringing his three-game rebound total to 45. But it was Miller who saved the day, hitting 11 of 12 free throws, including four straight in the final two minutes before hitting his jumper.
"We haven't made excuses all year," Miller said. "We take responsibility with what happened this season. We take responsibility for what happened in Detroit."
These playoffs, however, have been marked by coaches complaining about the officiating, and Houston coach Jeff Van Gundy went as far as to suggest a league conspiracy against one of his players, Yao Ming. He was fined US$100,000, and Brown, no doubt has left himself and his wallet open to the league's reaction.
In his 18-year career, Miller has certainly heard from opponents that he pushes off his defender to get free. "It's common," he said with a shrug. "It's always something I'm doing."
Carlisle said that Miller did not do anything that Hamilton did not do. "They both push and shove a little bit," he said.
But even Hunter could not argue as loudly as his coach. "They didn't call it, so I guess it wasn't a foul," Hunter said. "I've seen him do it thousands of times. Reggie made a great shot."
The Pistons barely had a pulse through three quarters of Game 3, except, of course, when they were arguing calls or wringing their hands in frustration. They scored just 45 points and committed 15 turnovers through the third quarter.
Billups led the Pistons with 23 points, while Hamilton had 16 and their teammate Rasheed Wallace had 13. Wallace guaranteed a victory for Game 4 on Sunday.
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