Brownie Points: Dudley brings his lunch pail and gets to work on the Spurs in Game 2

Just like his owner’s political views, Jared Dudley’s headband has always tilted a little left of center.

On a team revered for its smooth, sleek style, Dudley has as much polish as a grade school marching band. But on a night when style wasn’t working early, Dudley huffed and puffed his way to some substance and dragged the Suns back into a game that was slipping away.

When he’s not pimping his Twitter account or playing reporter (of his self-titled JMZ.com) in the locker room, Dudley along with center Robin Lopez has given the Suns just the type of lunch pail players the Suns have lacked in their quest to scale Mt. Duncan and finally get over on the San Antonio Spurs.

And while many came into US Airways Center talking about immigration and bilingual uniforms, they left talking about Dudley, Channing Frye and the foot soldiers who held the fort and beat the Spurs 110-102 to pack a 2-0 lead and all the momentum for their trip to Texas.

On a night when the Suns didn’t shoot well (42 percent), didn’t pass well (only 19 assists and 14 turnovers) and found fastbreak points hard to come by, 18 offensive rebounds and 19 second-chance points made up the stagger. And Dudley led the way in the second quarter, covering more ground and shaking more hands in downtown Phoenix than Al Sharpton had, he assumed the tasks of wiping out a 10-point Spurs lead and finding the “on” switch for a packed house sitting on its hands.

“I feel like that’s what we’re supposed to do – bring energy,” said Dudley. “We were down, obviously not shooting the ball extremely well and we tried to come in and slash and get offensive rebounds … defensively we got after it and got the team back in the game.”

The Suns leaned on their “Big Three” in Game 1, but Steve Nash, Jason Richardson and Amar’e Stoudemire played San Antonio’s three amigos (Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker) to a draw – which left it up to the supporting casts to decide the issue.

A pair of Spurs Richard Jefferson (18 points) and George Hill (14) stepped up, but the Suns had a better hand.

Grant Hill produced 18 points – attacking Duncan when the Spurs tried to hide him on defense – and put the clamps on Ginobili (2-for-8 shooting) all night. Frye scored all 15 of his points from beyond the arc and used his fouls wisely. But Dudley, pulling down rebounds, rolling on the floor for loose balls and, as usual, meeting everyone with courtside seats personally with either a high-five or a rolling block.

“(Dudley) was my player of the game – he made some huge plays for us,” said Nash, who found the going much rougher in Game 2 as the Spurs closed the lane and forced the ball out of his hands. “Our first unit struggled a little bit, our second unit came in and I thought they struggled a little bit and then there was a turning point where he got about three offensive rebounds, a steal and he did a bunch of things that more than anything gave us energy and confidence.

“He changed the game and enabled us to come back and tie at halftime just because of the energy and spirit.”

Dudley also forced the Spurs to win four of the next five games to keep their hex intact. And he saved owner Robert Sarver two days of questions asking if his grandstand “Los Suns” move had kept his team from keeping its eye on the prize (don’t worry, old slogans are always recycled in politics).

The Spurs roughed up Nash, they kept Richardson under the magic 20-point mark and made Stoudemire work for his 23 points. But 44 points from Dudley, Frye and Hill made all that work moot. Even an awful performance from Leandro Barbosa, who is playing himself right out of this postseason, didn’t hurt matters.

And with Robert Horry and Bruce Bowen now safely housed in the Home for Retired Cheap Shot Artists (HRSCA), the Spurs are going to have to give young DeJuan Blair a 48-hour crash course on thuggery and get Ginobili into some sort of facemask where he can flop properly for Game 3.

Now the scene shifts to that silver-and-black, tin shack, chamber of horrors in the shadow of the Alamo – the AT&T Center. But for the first time in recent memory, the Suns are Santa Ana and the Spurs are feeling a like Davy Crockett – there’s just too many of them.

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Tags: Al Sharpton, Channing Frye, Jared Dudley, Phoenix Suns