We're still cursing here. Let's get that straight right from the beginning. Anyways, I'm STILL knee deep in shit right now, so I'm going to have to keep this brief. Here's my thought on the series against PHX:
The Spurs won because the Spurs had the three best players. Not the three players that played the best in the series, but the three best NBA basketball players. Yes, I'm saying Duncan, Manu and Tony are all better basketball players than Amare and Nash. I don't even think this should be considered a controversial idea.
Defense matters. It's half the game. I don't understand why people don't get this about basketball. Baseball's different because pitchers are 90% of the defense; pitcher's obviously don't hit, so when you're talking about the best players (non-pitchers) you can focus on hitting and still basically come up with a good list. Obviously nobody plays two ways in football and nobody watches hockey.
Stoudemire is just no incomprehensibly bad at defense. He's horrible at one-on-one defense. He's horrible in the pick and roll. He's horrible at help defense. He's foul prone. He's not even a good rebounder; he's never eclipsed 10 a game playing for Phoenix (edit: as in, he's never averaged 10 per game during the regular season), a team that has played well above average pace since he's been there. He's 6'-10" with a ridiculous vertical leap, playing center on a team that jacks up a million shots a game... and he's never grabbed 10 boards in a season. That's pathetic.
And Nash? Jesus. His idea of defending Parker is to backpedal until he gets to the charge circle, make a guess and then fall down when Parker hits him.
Imagine if you had to play a seven game series where you got to pick your opponent. You got to pick different players for who you faced on offense and defense, but they had to be starters on playoff teams. Nash and Amare are no-brainers. It's obvious. Yet people ignore this and then get surprised when the Spurs score at will time and time and time again. And beat them in the playoffs time and time and time again.
It comes down to a simple elementary school level concept. If defense is half the game, and a player is defensively a zero, then at best you have an average player.