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Or could they?

Without Lopez the Suns went back to relying on their old favorite offense – the three-point barrage – and they drilled their way to a 121-116 win behind 35 points from Jason Richardson and 22 made threes as a team. With Lopez out of action the Suns turned once again to Channing Frye, who played so admirably during Lopez’s injury absence last season, and Frye poured in 20 points in 38 minutes of action.

Next up, the Denver Nuggets. Playing without Lopez again, the Suns dug a double-digit hole for themselves in the first half, but came storming back in the second. It wasn’t a three-point windfall that helped them this time, but Frye, now in the starting lineup again, turned in 15 points and seven rebounds in helping the Suns come from behind for a 100-94 win.

"We’ve still got to figure out exactly what we are and who we are," Suns coach Alvin Gentry said after the game. "We have our moments and stuff, but I think we still have to get to the point where, 20-25 games into this, we’ve got a really good idea of consistently what we’re going to be."

With Lopez out of action the Suns take a definite hit on the defensive end, as Frye isn’t exactly an intimidator in the paint. However, Frye is clearly much better as a starter than he is as a sub. He’s averaged just 6.9 points and shot 35% from the field as a sub, but in the last two games, playing starter minutes, Frye has given the Suns 15 and 20 points, respectively, while shooting 57% from the field and 43% from downtown. 

The Suns are expected to sign free agent center Earl Barron to take up some space while Lopez nurses his knee injury, but with or without Lopez one thing seems clear: the Suns are a better basketball team when Channing Frye plays his best, and Frye plays his best ball when he’s in the starting lineup.

Historic Night For Stojakovic

The New Orleans Hornets, the NBA’s final unbeaten team, lost their first game of the season on Monday night in Dallas. The lost footnote in the game, which featured MVP play from Chris Paul, solid play from back-up Jerryd Bayless and heroic efforts from Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry, was a record-breaking performance from Peja Stojakovic. Stojakovic recently moved past Rudy Tomjanovic on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, and needed 11 points on Monday night to move into position 165 . . .and past Vlade Divac. Divac is one of Stojakovic’s heroes, and a former teammate from their time in Sacramento. HOOPSWORLD caught up with Peja after he scored 22 points against the Mavs to talk about moving past Divac, being a driving force behind the integration of European players into the NBA, the influence of the NBA in Europe, and whether or not he feels like he will play beyond this season:

{AUTHOR_BOX}The Anti-Bruce-Bowen Shoe?

San Antonio Spurs forward Bruce Bowen was known as one of the top defenders in the NBA during his prime. As good as he was defensively, however, he also gained a reputation for sliding his feet up under shooters while they were in the air, causing them to sprain their ankles when they came down. Now there’s a shoe breaking onto the basketball scene that’s geared towards preventing that most dreaded of injuries: the sprained ankle.

"As a radiologist, I see more ankle inversions than any other," says Ektio inventor, Dr. Barry Katz. "$4.2 billion is spent annually on ankle injury treatments nationwide and the NBA loses $15 million a year due to this specific problem. These studies support my theory that ankle inversion may not be a function of how low or high the shoe is, but how the sole of a shoe interacts with the environment and with the foot.

"What happens is the shoes goes in one direction and the foot goes in another direction," explains Dr. Barry Katz, inventor of the Ektio shoe brand. "Instead of the weight going down and landing on the bottom of your foot, which is supposed to support your weight, when the shoe turns in the ankle is not turning in. It turns in just a little bit and all of the stress is on the outside ligament. That’s why the ankle injury is the most common injury in the world, 20% of all orthopedic injuries, because people weren’t meant to wear shoes. What people do to try and get around that is they use tape, but tape only lasts 15 minutes. After 30 minutes it has no effect whatsoever. It’s completely loose. After warm-ups an NBA, college or high school player has no protection. Even the little bit of protection they do get from the tape doesn’t change the fact that the foot and the shoe are still separate entities. So if the shoe inverts because you land on another players’ foot or slip on the floor, the foot is still not attached to the shoe and you’re still going to get injured. That explains why NBA players have ankle injuries constantly even though they’re taped."

To solve the age-old problem of taping, re-taping, and ultimately suffering through sprained ankles anyway, Dr. Katz came up with a shot design that incorporates the support of the tape, only without the short-lived benefit of the tape itself.

"What we did is we figured out exactly how to bring the foot and shoe together and also stop the shoe from rolling," Katz explains. "We did it in two ways. We built internal straps, sort of like having internal tape or braces that lock the foot inside the shoe so that they move as a single unit, like a ski boot. In a ski boot you can’t injure your ankle because the foot and the shoe are together and there’s no stresses on the outside of the foot. The stress moves up to your knee in a ski boot, but that’s because you have rotational force, which you don’t have in basketball. We don’t think this is going to have any effect on the knee because it’s just jumping straight up and down. We turn an inverted, abnormal landing into a square landing. If you land square you won’t hurt your ankle or your knee. We also put side bumpers on the shoe so that is somebody’s running along and hits a slick spot, this will stop the roll at 20 degrees. Ankle sprains occur somewhere between 50 and 60 degrees. We’ve encouraged people to try and turn their ankles when they’re wearing our shoes, and they can’t do it."

The one downside of the Ektio shoe will be the price tag, which is expected to be somewhere around $175 a pair. That’s more than the most expensive Jordans or LeBrons from the Nike line . . .and those are endorsed by Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Dr. Kat’z argument is that his shoes are actually less expensive when you consider how much money the typical basketball player spends on tape and costly ankle braces, which are not needed with the Ektio shoes. Further, he feels that once players try his shoes, endorsements won’t matter.

"At every level, every time we put this shoe on a player they want the shoe," says Katz. "I’m confident that no matter how much money these other companies have to spend signing superstar players, if those guys put my shoe on they’ll want my shoe. We have yet to have a player say they like the Nike better or they like the adidas better or whatever. It hasn’t happened yet. The best part is the players don’t even know the extra support is there. It feels like they’re running on a regular high top. There are six motions in the ankle and the shoe allows all of them except inversion. The other five motions are completely unimpeded."

Former NY Knick John Starks, who missed 40 games in his career due to ankle injuries, said, "I wish I had this information and technology when I was playing; maybe I could have dunked on Jordan twice!"

Ektio is a physician-designed, clinically-tested athletic shoe specifically created to provide rock solid ankle support. The brand was named after the two Greek words ‘Ektor’ and ‘Alexio,’ which mean to ‘defend’ and ‘protect.’ Though Ektio’s functional properties are totally unique to any footwear on the market today, the hip, urban stylings of the Wraptor and Post Up models rival any celebrity named athletic shoe available today. Announcements about the major U.S. retailers who will be carrying Ektio will be made in the coming week.

Find out more about this revolutionary shoe by linking here!