By Kiki Vandeweghe
ESPN,com

The Suns sent the Lakers off in five games. At first glance, how do you like the Suns going into a Spurs series?

When these two teams met in conference finals two years ago, Amare Stoudemire averaged 37 a game. Now he's a much better defender, rebounder -- a complete player.

The way I look at the Suns, they have three guys who get you a nightly double-double (Stoudemire and Shawn Marion with points and rebounds, Steve Nash with points and assists), that's amazing.

What's the state of Amare?

I think Amare has everything back. Early in the season he didn't have the confidence to play full tilt. Now he's one of few guys who has come back well from microfracture surgery.

On the offensive end, he's developed the jump shot.

On the defensive end, it seems he has a better understanding of defensive positioning and is real presence in the middle.

Now we have the prospect of him facing Tim Duncan. That's a really interesting matchup.

Does Amare's presence and the Lakers' ill health explain why this year's Lakers-Suns series wasn't close?

Yes. The big advantage the Lakers had last year was inside. Lamar Odom could post up, and the Lakers' big people could get offensive rebounds. They could wreak havoc inside.

But this Laker team was not as healthy as it was last year. It just didn't come together this year for the Lakers. A lot of injuries. In the final two months of the regular season they beat one team with a winning record.

Marion ready to explode?

An extremely difficult matchup. He's physically a freak of nature, the way he elevates. One of the travesties of this year was that he was not on the all-defensive team. He should have been because he's a great defender.

Who do you pick, Suns or Spurs?

Picking the Suns in this one. The Spurs are obviously a great basketball team, but they're dependent on older players to play very well, having at least one or two of them step up. The Suns' team is a young team that has young legs.

The last time these two met in the playoffs, the games did not feature this version of Amare, who is older and better. This year is the Suns' best chance to win a championship.

Are they helped at all by the prospect of an early Dallas exit?

It's only natural to look at the best regular-season team in trouble and say this could be a little easier. But I don't think the Suns or Spurs think they can waltz into anything. They are not looking past the other, that's for sure.

Questions posed by ESPN.com editor Andrew Ayres.

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Spurs guard Michael Finley was out to launch against Eduardo Najera and the Nuggets in Game 5.

More Black And White Issues

While we're talking about this [race and officiating] study, one other item in it drew my attention: the finding that during the 13-year study period, teams with the greater share of playing time by black players won 48.6 percent of games. The authors seemed to imply some kind of mild institutional racism against black players by this result.

In fact, there's a much more obvious explanation -- the league imported a bunch of talent from Europe during the study period, almost all of it white, and the poorly run teams were the last ones to figure out there were good players on other continents. Thus, by default they ended up with more black players on their rosters.

Look back on the drafts of the mid-to-late '90s and you'll see what I mean. Players like Peja Stojakovic, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Manu Ginobili, Dirk Nowitzki and Andrei Kirilenko were all basically stolen in the draft by smart, forward-thinking teams. That their teams won more games than average is an effect of their superior front offices, not the officiating.

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