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Some may question the mental toughness of this team, but I don’t think anyone can doubt the physical toughness of the Phoenix Suns.

Is there any other NBA team that gets beat up more in the playoffs? Year in and year out, the Suns seem to suffer injuries during the playoffs that seem to send their hopes of a title straight to the wayside.

Let’s take a stroll down injury-prone lane shall we?

In 2005 Joe Johnson suffered an eye socket fracture-that’s hurts just to TYPE! This was one of the nastiest injuries I have seen in a while (Bogut’s recent elbow fracture etc however does take the cake for an NBA injury).

In 2006, Raja Bell suffered a partially torn calf muscle and tried to play despite the obvious pain.

There is of course the famous 2007 series with the Spurs in which Nash had a gash opened on his nose at the end of Game 1, took a Bowen knee to the groin, and a hip check into the scorer’s table from Robert Horry amongst others.

In that same series, Amare Stoudemire had his heel stepped on by Bowen as well.

But forget playoff series past; let’s look at this year’s playoffs.

Nash had his right eye cut open and required stitches in game 4 versus the Spurs. He came back and played the remainder of the game with his eye swollen shut. Just call him “Nashclops”.

Leandro Barbosa “fell” onto a sideline cameraman’s equipment and required five stitches to the back of his head in game 2 versus the Lakers.

In Sunday night’s game 3 in Phoenix, Amare was cut between the eyes on a foul from Odom, and Nash had his nose dislocated by an errant and inadvertent head butt from Derek Fisher. Nash then channeled his Canadian NHL counterparts and readjusted the nose on the court as if there was nothing wrong. I admit it-I cringed. You have to love Nash’s press conference after the game where he stated it wasn’t “broken, it was just rearranged”. Hrmm…last time I checked, that would still be broken/dislocated.

My favorite part of that video is Grant Hill’s face. The look of disgust on his face pretty much says it all.

I can’t recall any other team shedding as much blood on the basketball court as the Phoenix Suns. Aaron Nelson must love the fact that he has such job security.

That’s not to say no other team is as tough. But we know the Celtics have some of the best “actors” in the league. Can you imagine Paul Pierce or Kevin Garnett coming back to play with only one eye, or readjusting a dislocated nose while running down to the other end of the court and sinking 2 free throws? On a Celtics Blog a fan there questioned how another NBA player would have reacted had it been them with this quote “If it was Vince Carter he’d still be on the ground rolling around”.

Celtics Blog

Can you imagine Kobe doing that without first some major whining to the ref’s? I heard a great quote the other day from the national broadcasters in regards to Kobe when he was called for a foul and immediately threw his hands up in a classic Tim Duncan “Who me?” expression. I believe it was Doug Collins who said, “Has Kobe ever committed a foul in this league?” I about fell out of my chair laughing!

Now I will give Kobe some “toughness” credit as he is playing quite well (darn it!) with a dislocated finger on his shooting hand as he has much of the season.

I still have not figured out exactly why the Phoenix Suns get beat up so much, especially in the playoffs. But I will say, they all seem to take it in stride. We fans watch each game expecting to see blood coming from one of our players. It wouldn’t be Suns basketball without some sort of bizarre injury or blood spewing forth.

We’re already taking bets on what part of Nash’s face gets injured tonight. Anyone??

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