Blogger’s Note: This blog was written Friday night after Game 3 and before Sunday’s Game 4 and the Spurs’ rather large loss to the Suns. For my reaction to that, read my other blog for the week.

So from the beginning of this series I anticipated drama. A rivalry has formed between the Suns and the Spurs and there is no rivalry game that does not have its fair share of drama.

I figured Robert Horry would take center stage in this series even without playing many minutes at all. I knew that everyone would have to go back to last year’s playoff series and the body check Horry delivered to Steve Nash.

And now that we are on that subject, can all of you Phoenix fans drop it already? Horry was punished by the league for his actions and the Suns’ players who had to sit out a game, too got what they deserved. The NBA has rules and, you know what, if the rule about players stepping off the bench was not so well known more Suns players would have left the bench. But they didn’t! Because they knew they weren’t allowed to and the two players that did made an error in judgment and that error cost them and their team.

So, anyway, I knew that from the beginning this series would be filled with drama but, jeez, that Suns team can whine.

At the start of the series Suns coach Mike D’Antoni and his team seemed to have this overly confident, and not in a good way, swagger. And with that cocky swagger they lost Game 1, a game they should have had under wraps, and instead lost in double overtime.

Then Game 2 happened and it seemed Amare Stoudemire was right: the Spurs are not simply in the Suns’ heads, the Spurs live in the heads of the Phoenix Suns and, no matter what anyone says, hold that team in the palm of their hands.

So Game 3 was a must-have win for the Phoenix Suns and, well, let’s just say Stoudemire needs to stop kidding himself and find some way to help himself and the rest of his team get the San Antonio Spurs out of their heads because, if not, even with all the whining and complaining about the bad calls, about playing “Hack-a-Shaq,” and Manu Ginobli being the league’s biggest flopper, the Phoenix Suns will be swept in the first round of the 2008 playoffs.

And if that does happen, well, maybe D’Antoni will learn something from the leadership of Spurs coach Gregg Popovich; that sometimes it is the absence of words that makes more of a statement.