Chris
Not quite. You have to remeber that not only are the drive phases 120 degrees apart but so are the motor windings so you end up with the three pases setting up a rotating magnetic field this makes the rotor rotate in motor mode it is always lagging ie slipping a bit but if you ramp the motor speed down with the controls then the rotor looses energy by truning into a generator ie it is leading and dumping energy back into the controllers DC bus