Steve Nash tried mightily to prevent the Phoenix Suns from falling into a seemingly insurmountable 2-0 hole in the Western Conference finals.
Nash, the NBA's most valuable player, had 29 points and 15 assists to become the first player in league history to record at least 25 points and 10 assists in four consecutive playoff games.
But Nash, whose 3-pointer had forced overtime at Dallas in Game 6 of the conference semifinals, could not repeat his last-second brilliance Tuesday night.
The Suns trailed by three points with 4.2 seconds to play when Nash sped up the court and heaved an off-balance shot from the right side on a dead run, but his shot hit the front of the rim as the final buzzer sounded.
Game 3 will be played Saturday in San Antonio, where the Spurs were a league-best 39-3 during the regular season.
"I just didn't get a great look, and I couldn't get it to fall," said Nash, who played a game-high 46 minutes.
After making only 1 of 7 field goals in the first half, Tim Duncan shot 9 for 12 after halftime and scored 25 of his 30 points to lead the Spurs. Manu Ginobili added 26, and Tony Parker chipped in 24.
Perhaps the biggest basket of the evening -- surprise, surprise -- belonged to Robert Horry, whose 3-pointer from the right corner with 2 minutes 31 seconds to play gave the Spurs the lead for good at 102-100.
"It was huge," San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich said. "It's what he does. He's confident with it and he did it again."
Popovich took credit for calling the play for Horry. In the Spurs' locker room, however, Horry set the record straight.
"I was actually the second option," the 34-year-old Horry, who has made a career out of hitting key 3-pointers in the playoffs, said with a laugh. "I might have been the third option. I'm getting close to first option. I might be the first option, I think, now."
Horry said the play had originally been designed for Ginobili.
"Pop, I think, he takes credit when he shouldn't," Ginobili said with a laugh. "Robert came to my ear and told me that he was going to be open in the corner. But I didn't hear it in the timeout."
The Spurs could laugh after sweeping the Suns here. Only nine teams in NBA history have rallied from a 2-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series, and only three teams have done it after losing the first two games at home. No conference finals winner has come back after losing the first two games at home.
About the only thing in the Suns' favor is that they had the best road record in the league (31-10).
The Suns received a game-high 37 points from Amare Stoudemire. Nash, who averaged 15.5 points during the regular season, has scored at least 20 points for the seventh consecutive game, the Suns' longest streak in the postseason since Charles Barkley had 12 consecutive games of 20 or more points from 1993 to 1994.
Nash separated himself from rarified company by scoring at least 25 points and handing out at least 10 assists for the fourth consecutive playoff game. The Hall of Famers Oscar Robertson (1963) and Michael Jordan (1989) were the only players to do so in three consecutive playoff games.
But, in the end, it was not enough, as the Spurs, who had scored a whopping 43 fourth-quarter points in Game 1, outscored the Suns, 31-23, in the fourth quarter.
"We did not make a stop when we had to," Phoenix coach Mike D'Antoni said of the defensively challenged Suns.
Afterward, Nash was asked if he was surprised or shocked or both that the Spurs had won both games in Phoenix.
"Yeah, I guess a bit of both," he said. "But you can't say too surprised. I've just been very impressed with their performance in the fourth quarters."
After a season of injuries, the Milwaukee Bucks finally had something go right as they won the National Basketball Association lottery on Tuesday night and earned the right to pick first in the draft next month.
The Bucks had only a 6.3 percent chance of winning the lottery, but a couple of lucky charms provided by fans and carried by general manager Larry Harris helped Milwaukee jump over five teams to win its first lottery since 1994, the year they took Glenn Robinson.
Atlanta, which won a league-low 13 games and had the best chance of securing the No. 1 pick, will instead have the second choice in the June 28 draft.
Portland made the other big move in the lottery, jumping from No. 5 to third.
The big losers were New Orleans, Charlotte and Utah, which all dropped two spots in the order. The Hornets had the second best chance to win the lottery but they slipped to No. 4. The Bobcats, who also had the rights to Cleveland pick in the lottery, went from No. 3 to No. 5. Utah, which had the fourth worst record, fell to No. 6.
The lottery didn't change picks seventh through 14 with Toronto, New York, Golden State, the Los Angeles Lakers, Orlando, the Los Angeles Clippers, Charlotte and Minnesota keeping those spots.
Drafts are common in American sports leagues, allowing teams to select in reverse order of their finish the previous season from the available new talent, predominantly players who have completed their college eligibility and players from overseas entering the US.
The NBA instituted a its draft lottery among teams that fail to qualify for the playoffs in 1985. Its impetus was center Patrick Ewing, which nearly every team coveted. To remove the incentive to lose, and thus improve its draft position, the NBA places all non-playoff teams in a lottery to set the draft order.
TALKS TO RESUME
NBA commissioner David Stern said Tuesday that negotiations between the league and the players' union to reach a new collective bargaining agreement will resume soon.
A source close to the talks told AP on condition of anonymity that the meeting could happen later this week.
Stern admitted during a press conference before the NBA draft lottery that the league has spoken with the players association since negotiations broke off last week.
"If we said there were no ongoing talks we would not be exactly accurate," Stern said at the press conference that was dominated by labor questions because a lockout has become more of a possibility. "We continue dialogue with the players and we anticipate setting up a meeting in the relatively near future."
Dan Wasserman, a spokesman for the players' union, was not immediately available for comment.
Stern laid out the framework for a new collective bargaining agreement on Tuesday. He said the league will guarantee that the players receive 57 percent share of the revenues, the same amount they currently get under the agreement negotiated in 1999.
He said the league will raise the salary cap three percentage points -- from 48 to 51 percent -- and minimize the level at which the luxury tax clicks in, making more money available for salaries.
Over the course of a possible six-year CBA, Stern said the average player salary would increase from its current level of US$4.5 million to US$5.5 million.
If the players accepted the framework, Stern said the only key areas left to be negotiated would be non-economic -- the length of player contracts, drug testing and minimum age.
The maximum current length of player contracts is seven years. The league wants it lowered.
Stern wants to raise the minimum age for entering the league from 18 to somewhere between 18 and 21.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
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