North Station Sports

The Celtics look to stop their two game losing streak in Phoenix on Wednesday night.  If the last two games have been any indication of what’s to come, it surely won’t be easy.

The resurgent Amare Stoudemire is leading the Suns in points (20.3) and rebounds (8.5) per game.  He is benefiting from the absence of Shaq since Phoenix doesn’t have to slow their offense down.  Amare runs the floor very well and will put KG to the test on both offense and defense.

Channing Frye is a center that likes to take threes for some reason.  Maybe it’s because he drains 43% of them.  At any rate, if Kendrick Perkins allows himself to be drawn out to play Frye at the arc it could be a long night if Amare gets to play KG one on one in the paint.

Rondo will again be matched up with Steve Nash except this time Rajon will be looking for his own shot with Pierce still out and will make Nash play more defense.  Actually, any defense would be more defense from Steve.

Grant Hill might pose a problem for the smaller Tony Allen although Hill has been taking mid range jumpers more than anything.  TA might just pester Grant enough to throw him off his game with his spastic defense  though.

I don’t think that this will be a low scoring affair by any stretch but I think the Celtics need to pick and choose when they want to run the fast break to try and slow the game down a touch from the frenetic pace they have been playing at for the past two games.

The Celtics need to get a win to get back to the .500 mark on this road trip and I expect them to press hard for it since they’ll have two days off before playing Toronto at home.  But then again, they are still on the West coast and it has not been kind.