Bright Spots: Suns Headlines (Friday Edition)

A couple of times each week, Suns Spot is proud to bring you “Bright Spots”, a showcase of articles from around the internet about the Phoenix Suns. Whether it’s a particularly interesting take on a game, or what kind of breakfast cereal Jason Richardson eats in the morning, you’ll never know what you will find when you read these articles.

-Thoughts on the Suns’ loss last night to Utah:

-There are two numbers that stick out in the mind of Suns fans from the game Thursday night: one was the absurd number of offensive rebounds the Jazz got (19). The other was how many turnovers Suns SF Grant Hill had (5).

The Jazz had 11 offensive rebounds in the first half of the contest, and it really set the tone for how they would play the rest of the way. Carlos Boozer had 15 rebounds in the game, and he, Mehmet Okur and Andrei Kirilenko combined for 14 offensive boards between them. This kind of domination on the glass not only leads to second chance points out the wazzoo, but also demoralizes a team that has been playing better defense, but was unable to get the ball after missed shots last night.

As for Hill’s five turnovers, there is simply no excuse why a forward should turn the ball over five times. Considering he took nine shots and had three assists, there is no way that he should be coughing up the ball so often. Steve Nash may have had seven, but at least he had 15 dimes and was clearly in a passing mode last night.

-For a recap of the game from the Jazz side of the court, check out this: [Deseret News]

-According to Mark Miller of Yahoo! Sports, Amare Stoudemire has said he is holding off on all contract negotiations and decisions about his future until after the season. He said he “doesn’t want the distraction.” [Yahoo]

-Are the Suns actually playing better defense, or is it just some sort of illusion being perpetrated on the fans? Trevor Paxton has some answers in an interesting blog piece on the topic. [Bright Side of the Sun]

-Ian Thomsen wrote an interesting piece about Turnover Jones aka Grant Hill concerning his injury-plagued past and current healthy status. [Sports Illustrated]

-Finally, for those of you active on Twitter (follow me at jim_neveau if you are), the Phoenix Suns have helpfully put together a “list” of all of their players who are on the social networking site. Don’t let the fact that the list only has 74 followers get you down. [Twitter]

Tags: Amare Stoudemire, Andrei Kirilenko, Carlos Boozer, Grant Hill, Jason Richardson, Mehmet Okur, Phoenix Suns, Steve Nash, Utah Jazz