Sunday night's Game 3 between the Suns and Lakers was an important game for Phoenix . After two losses at Staples Center in which they looked largely incapable of stopping the Lakers' offense, the Suns used a zone to frustrate their opponent and got a great game from Amare Stoudemire after two average performances to start the series. In other words, they turned around the two biggest issues from their losses.

Yet how much has this series actually changed now that the Lakers have lost a game? Is it merely a case where the Suns have avoided the sweep? Or will they take Game 4 tonight and put the pressure on L.A. at home in Game 5?

These aren't easy questions to answer. While the Suns' zone was successful in Game 3, the Lakers also didn't play their best, often passing the ball around the perimeter and settling for long jumpers when they could have worked harder to get the ball inside to the dominant Pau Gasol. Zones are something of a controversial topic around the league, but it's typically the case that a team that works to beat them can do so rather easily. When you're lethargic, as the Lakers were on Sunday, they tend to work just fine.

So the response for the Lakers should be rather simple: work harder to get the ball inside and make the zone adjust to passes. That might sound like an overly simplistic solution to the problem, but that's only the case because the issue itself isn't a major one. It's a needed strategic adjustment rather than an immutable fact of the series.

In practice, most of those immutable facts favor the Lakers. They are always going to have the advantage in the paint with Gasol, Lamar Odom, and Andrew Bynum (even in his diminished state) on the roster, and the Suns still have no one who can effectively control Kobe Bryant. The matchups in this series almost universally favor Los Angeles , to the point where (as the TNT crew has said throughout the series) it's possible to imagine how the Lakers can lose the series, but not necessarily easy to envision how the Suns can win it.

As a thought exercise, let's imagine what can happen if the Lakers do in fact solve the Suns' zone. What is the next adjustment for Phoenix ? Do they play entirely man-to-man and change the assignments? Are there any matchups that would actually work? Do they stick with the zone and hope the Lakers simply fall back into bad habits?

There just isn't an easy solution for the Suns -- they must hope things go well for them instead of setting the parameters of the series. The Lakers, on the other hand, have clear solutions to their problems in Game 3. It is their series to decide.

The one way in which the Suns can significantly change things is if Stoudemire continues his stellar play from Game 3 for the rest of the series. As one of the most talented post scorers in the league, Stoudemire has the ability to become the kind of force Gasol has been for L.A. throughout the playoffs. He's someone other teams must change their plans to stop, and when the opponent is forced to get out of its comfort zone, other opportunities for success arise. If the Suns are going to win this series, they need Stoudemire to become an All-NBA-level force.

Not to get too dramatic, but this is their most realistic hope. Because while a team like the Magic is talented enough to beat the Celtics in a variety of ways even though they started the series down 3-0, the Suns do not have so many options.

That's why, even though the Suns looked very good in Game 3, the basic facts of this series have not changed much. The Lakers have received a challenge, but they're still the team in firm control, setting the rules for the matchups even though they're now a game away from being tied with Phoenix. They can certainly still lose three more games, but the number of ways that can happen seems rather limited.

Game 4 doesn't look much different from how Game 3 did before tipoff. It's just that the series is now 2-1 instead of 2-0.

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