by Paul Coro - Apr. 13, 2012 05:00 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
C: Marcin Gortat ... Marcus Camby
PF: Channing Frye ... Luis Scola
SF: Jared Dudley ... Chandler Parsons
SG: Shannon Brown ... Courtney Lee
PG: Steve Nash ... Goran Dragic
Key Rockets injuries: Kevin Martin (shoulder) is doubtful.
Key Rockets reserves: Kyle Lowry, Samuel Dalembert, Chase Budinger, Patrick Patterson.
On to today's Orange Slices...
* Grant Hill must not be very superstitious.
Hill will return to action on Friday the 13th and play at Houston tonight, just two weeks after knee surgery. Hill last played a March 25 but his white jersey at shootaround indicates that he will come off the bench tonight for the first time since Terry Porter started Matt Barnes in front of him in November and early December of 2008.
"Good to go, ready to go," Hill declared after shootaround today.
Hill has been cleared for full participation in two shootarounds and a practice since Wednesday. He did extensive two-a-day workouts Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to gear up for playing tonight and tapered back the work Thursday.
Hill has only come off the bench 22 times in his 994-game career. Fourteen came under Porter while the others were for returns from injuries in Detroit or Orlando.
With Chandler Parsons and Courtney Lee as Houston's starting wings, there is no pressing need for Hill defensively until Saturday night at San Antonio, where Manu Ginobili comes off the bench.
The game's magnitude is self-explanatory at this point. With eight games to go, the Suns could pull within one game of Houston and even the season series, a potential tiebreaker, by beating the Rockets tonight.
"We've got to keep ourselves legitimate contenders for that eighth spot," Brown said. "The way we're going to do that is to beat these good teams we're running up against. It's definitely a must-win for us."
The last time the Suns let a chance to win on the road get away late - against Denver -- they responded with a resounding home win the next night against the Lakers. The Memphis loss might provide a similar reaction but Houston is coming off its own stinging loss, a home one to Utah that allowed the Jazz to pass the Suns for ninth place.
* The playoff scene tonight has all of the Suns' competition in action.
Utah is at New Orleans but don't dismiss that as a sure Jazz win. Utah is a bad road team and the Hornets are a different team of late, having reloaded with Eric Gordon back and the likes of Chris Kaman, Carl Landry and Trevor Ariza returning. New Orleans has won three of its past five games and lost to the Lakers by two.
Denver is at the Lakers and Dallas is on a back-to-back from its Thursday night win at Golden State to play again at Portland, which is 20-11 at home this season.
* Judging by the teams' first three meetings, the team that gets the better bench play tonight will win. Houston's bench was the difference in it winning the first two meetings but the Suns won the last meeting March 18 in Phoenix when its reserves scored 47 with 25 from Michael Redd.
Redd had a couple of those Redd-alert tears, when he scored 14 consecutive Suns points in the second quarter and eight consecutive ones in the third quarter. The Suns dominated that night but Houston did come in dragging from a game the night before on the road and gave up an early 14-0 run. Each team is rested tonight after neither played Thursday night.
* Houston has been good as a team but not great at much in particular. The Rockets' only top-10 categories are for scoring (98.3 points per game) and 3-point shooting (36.2 percent). But they do have outstanding depth when healthy and have pulled out the close games (7-4 in games decided by three points or fewer).
One of the things that Houston does the worst is protect the paint, something that has been improved with the addition of Marcus Camby. Camby has moved into the starting lineup for Houston, which ranks third worst in the league by allowing 45.2 points in the paint per game.
Since Camby had moved into the starting five, the Rockets had allowed 42.5 percent shooting over a 5-1 stretch before Wednesday night's home loss to Utah. The Jazz shot 51.3 percent in that win that pushed it past Phoenix for ninth place in the West.
* Jared Dudley has failed to score in double figures for three consecutive games for the first time since he was coming off the bench in January. On Wednesday night, he was involved early with four of his six shots coming in the first quarter and just one more until the final seconds of the game. Dudley did not try a 3-pointer in 27 minutes and has not had a steal in the past three games, in which he has averaged 3.7 points. Otherwise, Dudley has been having a career offensive season of 47.7 percent shooting and a 12.4 scoring average.
* The Suns frustrations are mounting as they Suns start to run out of time. Steve Nash was outwardly upset with Marcin Gortat during Wednesday night's game to the point that he turned around from a live-court play when Gortat caught a Nash pass under the basket and Boris Diaw'd it out to the 3-point line. It was not just Gortat but Nash has demonstratively pointed out that Gortat is in wrong places and likely has been steaming inside about some of Gortat's untimely late-game drops.
"I was lucky I kept it to a minimum compared to the inner," Nash said of Wednesday's nights frustrations during the Memphis loss.
* Phoenix Phactoid Pharaoh Vince Kozar's Phun Phact o' the Day: The Suns have held more opponents to fewer than 100 points this season (29 times in 58 games) than they did in all of last season (26 times in 82 games).
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