DENVER – Leave it to the Nuggets to provide the golden opportunity.
The Phoenix Suns will never have a better chance to win in Denver this series than Monday in Game 2 against a great home team.
There are a lot of intricacies within the Suns 97-87 loss that will have you tripping and crashing if you try to take it all in at once.
But basketball is simple. After all, he says it himself.
Monday was the first real game the Suns played with Kevin Durant, where the reasons why they gave up a truckload of assets needed to be realized.
Cash was not checked.
Durant finished the night 10 for 27 for 24 points, with eight rebounds, three assists, one steal, two blocks and two turnovers in 44 minutes. Hardly a terrible stat line, not even a performance. But Phoenix lost Chris Paul to a left groin injury in the third quarter, Devin Booker did what at this point feels like a scary prerequisite to carry parts of the game, and he got a resurgent Deandre Ayton in a game that hung from the rafters. for what felt like ages.
All the Suns needed was for their second star to contribute the way he is expected to in order to steal a game in which they shot 40%. All-timers like Durant sense those moments and seize them with ruthless precision. To expect anything less from him would be an absolute and utter insult to his greatness.
But Durant couldn’t deliver. He was 2-for-12 on 3s, most of them pretty good looks for one of the best 3-point shooters ever. Durant had never gone more than a minute in any period. His shooting by the quarter was 2-for-8, 2-for-5, 2-for-4 and 4-for-10, respectively. His last two field goals came when the game was already out of reach.
“They looked beautiful. “It just didn’t fall,” Durant said of his shots.
“I just couldn’t knock them down. I felt they were fine letting go of my hand, but it is what it is.”
Paul’s injury status will determine how much this loss comes back to bite Phoenix as he tweaks his groin while gearing up for a comeback. If he can’t make it the rest of the way, the Suns will need at least a masterclass from Booker and Durant every night, plus Ayton’s return from the 2021 playoffs. If Paul does return, he still won’t be 100%, as we’ve seen the last two seasons. It will still take almost the best of the other three.
So, it can’t be said enough how long it took the Suns to win this one.
They were up by seven with less than three minutes left in the third quarter, 90 seconds after Paul had left. By then, they had ironed out their offense, getting back to great moves and unlocking 3-point opportunities by moving the ball to the second end. They could have been up by 20 if the quality of batting matched how often the ball was bowled.
A lot of that had to do with Paul, and once he was out, the Suns lost that momentum. Denver’s late defensive wrinkle, like putting Aaron Gordon on Ayton, stymied them. When a move didn’t work, it was a hero ball from Durant or Booker. This is when superstars can save their team. Durant couldn’t, and Booker had spent himself too much already for one more wave of brilliance.
“The thing that worked was hitting him on the backside and playing 0.5,” Suns coach Monty Williams said. “And it got away from it a little bit and we missed a lot of shots. … We found a formula to run a drive, hit it and then play off of it and that’s something we have to stick to against this team the way they play in the pick-and-roll.”
Just eight points were scored in the first 3:51 of the fourth quarter, and all came from Denver scoring five points, which included a pair of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope triples. Phoenix’s defense was doing an outstanding job of forcing the Nuggets to beat them through Nikola Jokic, Michael Porter Jr.’s individual goal. and Gordon holding Jamal Murray to successfully decapitate the snake, but the dam on an offense as good as Denver’s was will eventually burst. Cracks appeared routinely until Murray with 8:24 to go brought a “finally!” The hand-raising gesture from the star of Saturday’s Game 1 victory, who shot 3-for-15.
Durant scored on two straight and then Booker fell down the middle, signaling that perhaps the Phoenix superstar’s hitting would save the day. But instead, it was the best team to win.
With 4:56 to go, it was a three-point play after an Ayton dunk set up by Josh Okogie as a screener to counter Jokic’s use of him. But that counter continued to stem Phoenix’s flow. Booker and Durant both took 3s without good ball movement, missed. And then another bucket by Jokic was followed by Durant having to force a double-team jumper that was blocked after another failed offensive set.
Caldwell-Pope, who was outstanding in this ball game, drilled his third 3 of the fourth quarter on the next down and Murray pulled the trigger and dropped his second Blue Arrow dagger of the series in one step deep two back for a 91- 81 score with 2:04 left to end it.
Suns players outside of Booker and Durant were 0-for-11 from 3 and the Suns shot 19% as a team on 31 attempts.
Most of them were shots that they normally do. Booker made the lone 3-of-12 shot from the corner, a once-in-a-dozen occurrence of the best shot in basketball. Damion Lee is a great shooter and missed a trio of 3s overall. Cam Payne, another stalwart, couldn’t get it going on all four of his attempts.
I have to say, as someone who has covered Booker’s entire career thus far, it’s getting pretty funny how the story doesn’t change in terms of how much his team has to ask of him. His organization traded for two of the best shortstops to ever do it with plenty left in the tank, and for the third postseason, it’s all still in his hands. It’s a gift and a curse right now for the Suns.
He doesn’t care, of course. This is what he lives for.
“I like it,” Booker said when asked about his confidence level going down 0-2. “I just love playoff basketball. That’s the first thing I said when I walked into the locker room. You just have to love this [expletive], hug him. Not many people have the opportunity to do what we’re doing, playing the highest level of basketball. Compete at the highest level, remember to have fun with it (and) just take every chance we get.”
Even with Booker’s pristine knack for creating something out of nothing and his constant efforts to get his teammates involved (even when they kept letting him down), it still wasn’t up to the bar he usually reaches. Booker was recklessly looking for fouls and attacking defenders in search of any kind of free throw for Phoenix, the first time this postseason his incredible downhill mentality was backfired to a reckless extent.
He finished with 35 points, five rebounds, six assists and two steals on 14-for-29 shooting in 45 minutes. He spent time guarding Murray some as part of changes to limit the star guard. That, plus the extra point guard duties after Paul went down and the crazy minutes he’s been in this postseason wore him down. He takes a well-deserved rest in the next three days.
Ayton was much, much better with his energy after a poor start in Game 1. He made Jokic work to keep up with him and repaid the confidence the coaches gave him, with the game plan allowing Jokic to going against him 1 on 1 without any help. Jokic finished with 39 points on 17-of-30 shooting, and it would have been 50 more at most centers around the league. He added 16 rebounds, five assists, two steals and a block with three turnovers.
In what has previously been almost exclusively a conversation held by those who watch the Suns every night, Ayton’s inconsistent motor has now gained a common eye. A clip of Ayton watching Jokic for a jump shot went viral Saturday and was posted on the Instagram pages for ESPN and SportsCenter.
SportsCenter has 34 million followers, and Ayton commented on it with a clapping emoji, and I’m going to need an emoji translator to appreciate what exactly he meant by that.
TNT’s Inside the NBA has had plenty of discussions about Ayton, but never strictly focused on his efforts until Monday, when all-time Mount Rushmore member Shaquille O’Neal wanted Ayton to raise him and stated that he would watch big man up close for Game 2.
Ayton answered. The 14 points, eight rebounds and four assists don’t show how effective he was, as the box score never does with him.
“I liked his energy tonight,” Durant said of Ayton. “He started the game well. I think he had some foul trouble, which might have taken him out of the game a little bit. But I like the way it started, I liked his energy and we’ll have to build on that going forward.”
Lee was really, really good. Williams continues to catch fire online, but the coaching staff’s adjustments to Murray and the plan to beat Jokic should have resulted in a win. And Lee’s 26 minutes were full of energy in sticky-type areas. He recorded three offensive rebounds and his activity was great on defense.
Payne struggled, but what he was doing as a cutter to create rim pressure and ball spins still helped. Landry Shamet did not play.