During the Phoenix Suns visit to the Miami Heat when they faced off against a former important member of their team in Goran Dragic and before the night was over, the Suns and Heat got into it.
There was a total of 3 ejections, 4 technical fouls, 1 flagrant 2 called and another regular flagrant foul called as well in a span of 4 minutes in the third.
The tenaciousness and spark was alive in the Suns but there was one member of the organization that wasn’t very impressed with the teams intensity. Their coach, Jeff Hornacek.
From Paul Coro of Arizona Central.
“We have to find out who on this team is going to be tough,” Suns coach Jeff Hornacek said. “In terms of going after balls, we are soft going after everything. Teams just take the ball out of our hands. Maybe they grab your arm but you have to be tougher than that. I don’t know what it is but, when teams get physical, we look like a high school team. We have to get tougher and we have to find tougher guys who are going to battle. I get tired of watching us not go after balls. There is nothing worse to me than being soft and not going after a ball.
“In the second half, we showed some fight. We waited three quarters of getting pushed in the back before we decided to do anything about it.”
While Heat big man Hassan Whiteside tried to explain what exactly was going on, there wasn’t much of a reason behind all the anger and issue between the two teams outside of the Goran Dragic situation.
Hornacek’s real issue seems to be the fact that the team didn’t wake up to play until late in the third quarter of their 17 point loss to the Heat. The team lost 2 big men in the process due to ejections when Markieff Morris and Alex Len both checked out of the game and Miami capitalized in the fourth quarter.
It’s ok for a team to get some passion and fire for the team, but when it doesn’t amount to positive results, you have to understand where the coach is coming from.
