Prior to Saturday’s Game 6, Phoenix’s Steve Nash guaranteed a win by his team.  But Nash made one critical mistake.

The team that he guaranteed a win against had Kobe Bryant on its roster.

The Lakers earned another trip to the NBA Finals by besting the Suns, 111-103.

Bryant went off again tonight, scoring 37 points on 12-25 shooting.  Kobe did what he’s been known to do – hit big shots late in the fourth quarter.  He nailed three tough shots during this period – including a free-throw line runner, and two deep fade-away jumpers from the wing.

After his much ballyhooed shot selection in Game 5, Artest proved that he is no stranger to putting the ball in the basket.  Artest capitalized on Alvin Gentry’s gameplan (to yield open shots to him) to score 25 points, hitting four of his seven three point attempts.  Los Angeles had minimal production from other team members, but they cleaned up on the boards (+10 advantage over Phoenix) which led to eight more field goal attempts than their opponents.

What a difference a year has made for Bryant and Artest.

Suns leader and two-time MVP Nash (21 points and 9 assists) extended his infamous streak of playoff appearances without making it to the Finals – it now stands at 118 games, which is the highest in NBA history.  A notable fact about tonight’s contest was that Nash only played four minutes in the final quarter.  The flow of the game seemed to fit into Goran Dragic’s style of play (he had made a couple of big plays to keep the Suns in the hunt), so he played for the majority of the quarter.

Amar’e Stoudamire struggled from the field, but made it to the line 15 times to push his point total up to 27 points.  But as we’ve seen before in this series, Amar’e didn’t get the job done on the glass.  Four rebounds in over forty-three minutes of action from a power forward is not going to cut it against the Lakers’ frontcourt.      

The Suns had a few others who made significant contributions in Game 6, but the Lakers were simply able to build a good lead and do just enough down the stretch to keep the Suns at bay.

In the end, the Suns had too much to overcome to pull this series out.  After the first two games, the Lakers had firmly established that it was going to be an uphill battle for Phoenix – and, indeed it was.