Suns Win Wild One Over Nuggets

PHOENIX -- There was a playoff atmosphere at the US Airways Center for Monday night's game between the Suns and the Nuggets, and why not? For Phoenix, who now sits three games out of a playoff spot with just 12 remaining, every game is critical to keeping its slim postseason hopes alive. And the Suns were able to do just that, at least for one more game. In a wild one that went down to the wire, the Suns squeaked out a 118-115 victory over the Nuggets.

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What made the game so wild? Consider the following:

-- The Suns led by as many as 14 points in the second quarter, before the Nuggets closed the gap and cut it to just three -- on a 35-foot, running one-handed bank shot from Linas Kleiza at the halftime buzzer.

-- Denver extended its lead to as many as 11 points in the third quarter, which completed a 25-point turnaround in a little more than 10 minutes of game time.

-- Denver's Nene was ejected with a little over seven minutes to play and the Nuggets clinging to a one-point lead. The offense: head-butting and then lowering an elbow on the Suns' Lou Amundson, that's all. Nene walked out of the locker room fairly quickly afterwards with both in-ear headphones and the large cans on, so he definitely wasn't in the mood to talk about it, but Amundson had this to say: "I play hard. I don't back down from anybody. A lot of these tough guys, they expect guys to back down. They don't like it when the other players don't back down. That frustrates them."

-- Grant Hill finished with 23 points, 10 rebounds and five assists, the first time he's had a line like that in nine years, when he was a member of the Detroit Pistons back in 2000.

And then there was the officiating.

Even though this turned out to be a hard-fought, fantastic regular-season basketball game, the officials did everything they could to try to ruin it. I'm normally not one to criticize the overall officiating of a particular game, mainly because it's a waste of time, and the calls tend to even themselves out over the course of a game.

But in this one, the refs were really bad, and not in favor of one specific team -- just awful all the way around.

In the first quarter, the officials called just seven total fouls, even though they realistically could have called more than twice that. There was a ton of contact on both ends of the floor with no whistles, which is fine -- if the refs are going to stick to that philosophy for the rest of the night. But they didn't.

The Suns shot a whopping 44 free throws, while the Nuggets shot a ridiculous 33. Shaquille O'Neal was called for his fifth personal foul with under five minutes remaining in the game, on a play where he cleanly blocked the shot of Carmelo Anthony. On the next trip down, O'Neal was strongly hacked by Chris Andersen, and as the shot went in while the whistle blew, O'Neal could be seen repeating, "THAT'S a G-d damn foul!"

For what it's worth, when I asked George Karl about the inconsistency of the officiating, he basically took the high road.

"We're the team that usually gets to the free throw line more often than the opponent," Karl said. "But tonight, I don't know how many were fouls, but we didn't control their penetration very well. Of course, Nash is always going to find open guys and create foul situations that way, but I actually thought we got a pretty good whistle from the referees -- other than losing Nene, that was a tough call."

Carmelo Anthony was a little more straightforward when I asked him if the officiating was tough on this night.

"Yes! Yes!," Anthony said with a big smile and a laugh. "Very tough."

Regardless of the officiating, this was a big win for the Suns. Remember, this is a team playing without Amare Stoudemire and Leandro Barbosa, and their bench is stepping up and contributing when it counts. Next up is the Utah Jazz, who haven't exactly been world beaters on the road this season.

With the Suns riding a season-high five-game winning streak, they probably feel as though anything is possible.