The second round of the NBA playoffs have just begun and already some familiar faces are absent.

So who's missing from the team picture?

The Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks and every other fast-break team that has led the offensive resurgence in the league in recent seasons.

Unfortunately for those who prefer run-the-floor, fire-up-the-3, don't-bother-to-defend basketball, the NBA playoffs were, are and always will be a walk-it-up game where defense rules. If a team can't make critical stops in the playoffs, it won't be ordering championship rings.

This year's first-round flame-outs by the Suns, Mavericks and Denver Nuggets are further proof of that.

Sure, all three were underdogs in their first-round series. But seedings weren't supposed to matter in the wild, wild Western Conference, where nine teams won 48 or more games and no team was head and shoulders above the rest.

It didn't matter. The Suns, Mavericks and Nuggets, among the biggest proponents of the offense-first style in the NBA, had a combined 2-12 record in their first-round series. The Suns couldn't stop San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker, the Mavericks couldn't stop New Orleans Hornets point guard Chris Paul and the Nuggets couldn't stop anyone wearing a Los Angeles Lakers jersey.

All were gone in five games or less, done in by helpless defenses and offenses that failed to match their regular-season averages. Phoenix, which scored more than 110 points per game during the regular season, cracked 100 only twice (once in regulation time) while losing four out of five games to San Antonio.

This wasn't the first year that regular-season success failed to carry over into the playoffs, either.

In the seven seasons from 1999-2000 to 2005-06, the run-and-gun Sacramento Kings averaged 53.3 wins. Yet, the Kings never reached the NBA Finals and made it to the Western finals only once.

Over the last four years, four teams have dominated the regular season. San Antonio and Dallas have averaged 59 wins a season and Phoenix and the Detroit Pistons have averaged 57.5 wins a season.

Guess which two won NBA titles in the last five years? That's right, the Spurs and Pistons, the two teams that built their foundations on tough, unrelenting defense. Meanwhile, the Mavericks reached the NBA Finals once and the Suns never got that far.

Over the last five years, Denver ranks sixth in the NBA with 46.2 wins per season. But despite their November-to-April success under coach George Karl, the Nuggets have lost five straight first-round playoff series.

One of the most appealing aspects of college basketball is that teams play so many different ways and most games are a clash of styles. It was a welcome development a few years ago when a handful of NBA teams started playing an uptempo game after years of declining point totals.

But even though the fast-break style fills buildings and draws television viewers, the truth is it doesn't win playoff games. Championship teams have to do more than just play defense, but they can forget about a title if they don't defend.

That fact of NBA life makes the Milwaukee Bucks' recent hiring of coach Scott Skiles look better every day.