Last but Not Least, Suns Stop Clippers

They don’t make last-place teams the way they used to.

The Phoenix Suns, a playoff team last season, started Monday night in the West cellar with an 11-20 record, including 10 losses in their last 13 games, but looked like visiting royalty, drilling the Clippers, 113-105, before 13,045 in Staples Center.

Stephon Marbury led the Suns with a season-high 40 points, nine assists and five steals.

For their part, the Clippers started the night with the No. 28 defense, allowing 97.7 points a game, so this was a bad outing even for them.

“We didn’t do a good job early containing Marbury, keeping him from getting his shots or getting other people going,” Coach Mike Dunleavy said. “Then he caught fire.

“I don’t know what more we could have done after that. We trapped him. We ran guys at him to get the ball out of his hands. He capped it off by hitting that 40-footer. OK, what are you going to do?

“It happens. Great talents do that in this game.”

The Suns were a 44-38 team last season but started this one slowly. At 8-13 they fired Coach Frank Johnson and replaced him with assistant Mike D’Antoni, who was 3-7 when he arrived here.

The Suns were also without Amare Stoudemire, the second-year power forward who constitutes most of their inside game. Stoudemire has a sprained ankle, and his absence coincided with the start of their 3-10 slide.

Nevertheless, this was a shootout, and the hottest gun was Marbury, who made 15 of 23 shots. Three of them were three-point baskets, including one 30-footer he shot over Doug Overton.

It was the second home loss in a row for the Clippers, who were foiled in their try to get to .500 by the Raptors here Sunday and fell to 12-15 Monday.

“It’s a better team,” D’Antoni said of the Clippers before the game. “Probably the biggest surprise is [Chris] Wilcox, how well he’s developed.

“They definitely have a lot of structure this year. I don’t want to say anything about last year, but they do have structure. Mike has done a good job, and signing Elton Brand, signing Corey Maggette, you’re getting some stability and people know, hey, we can build on this and I think that shows in their play....

“When they did commit money to people, they said, OK, we do want a winner. When you get a rookie like [Chris] Kaman, who has done a good job, and Wilcox, all of a sudden, they do have a future.

“You probably have two of the hardest-working people in the league in Brand and Corey Maggette. And that helps. When your best players are your best workers, it makes it a lot easier.”

And when your best player is knocking down shots, as the Suns’ Marbury was, that helps too.

The Suns’ offense is mostly Marbury working off pick-and-rolls. Dunleavy said the tape of the previous game showed Phoenix running 70 of them, and so it was Monday night.

Marbury had nine points in the first quarter but, it turned out, that was just the warmup.

He exploded for 13 in the second period, all in the last 6:17 as the Suns finished the first half on a 12-2 run to take a 58-51 lead.

Then Marbury really took off, scoring 16 in the third quarter as the Suns romped to a lead that grew to 98-80 early in the fourth, and that was that.