Speed kills

Box Score.
Game Flow.
Post recap.
Times recap.
The Big Lead on why John Mitchell didn't do the Times article.

Highest plus/minus: Nick Young (+6)
Lowest plus/minus: Antonio Daniels (-21)

First of all, check out Vanilla Gorilla's thoughts from the Verizon Center.  He put it about as well as I possibly could, and I agree with pretty much every word.

No matter how far we think our defense has come from last year, it still has a ways to go.  Phoenix can drop that many points as anyone, but what freaked me out was how easy they were scoring.  Amare Stoudamire absolutely abused Brendan Haywood with his quickness on pick and rolls, and though Andray Blatche played well offensively, he didn't do much better defensively.  Nobody stopped penetration, and it seemed pretty much every Suns shot was an open look.  That score could have been even worse had the Suns not missed 17 of their threes.

When that happens, and Caron Butler gets fewer shots than Antawn Jamison, we're toast.  Phoenix isn't that amazing of a defensive team, but they will force your supporting players to beat them.  No matter how well he's shooting, Roger Mason shouldn't get 12 shots.  Credit the Suns for making the Wizards do that.

I'm not too worked up over this, but it would be nice to see us defend better against the pick and roll.  We need to trap more instead of simply switching every single damn time.