Amare without Nash is a good player. He'd probably average 22 ppg or so (considering that he averaged 20 per game last year, albeit on a terrible Suns' team). With Nash, though, he's a monster. And, had any Sun other than Amare shown up for work for the 4th quarter of game 5, the Suns might have lived to fight another day.
Have to give the Spurs credit, though. They realized that they could live with Amare and Nash going off, but couldn't live with Q and Marion having big games, and when those shrinking violets had pressure applied to their games, they wilted, and quickly. Q with a big zero in game 5. JJohnson had a terrible shooting night, and Nash went cold basically from the 3rd quarter on (bad timing since no one else on the team was hitting with any consistency).
With the Spurs in the finals, I'm cheering for the Eastern Conference. If Shaq doesn't start looking better fast, I'd much rather see the Pistons face the Spurs.