Suns' players are trying to take the heat off Head Coach Mike D'Antoni, whose position in Phoenix may be in jeopardy, Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic is reporting.

"I've been around a lot of guys, a lot of coaches," Suns center Shaquille O'Neal said. "I think he's the right guy. He really is. He's an excellent, excellent man. He has a great relationship and a great rapport with the players. It's our job to make him look good. They've been looking good the last few years before I got here. They just could never get over the hump, but there are a lot of teams that have never got over the hump."

"Mike D is the excellent guy for the job. Luckily, I've been on four championship teams with some great Hall of Fame coaches. I've got to put Mike D in that category. It's never the coach. It's always the players."

"We win as a team," Suns' guard Steve Nash said. "We lose as a team. It's near-sighted to put all the blame on him. We've all got to share responsibility in our success and our failures. Look, we've got about 10 plays that could've gone the other way, and we would've won Game 1 and he would've been a genius. The truth is never as extreme as it's made out to be. It's always, I think, somewhere in the middle."