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For the second night in a row, a pesky opponent in the middle of the Western Conference pack stormed out to a high-scoring, smack-talking first half. And for the second night in a row, Devin Booker and the Phoenix Suns responded to a rowdy playoff environment and pulled out a gritty win on the road.
Only this time, Thursday’s win over Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets featured the return of Chris Paul, came on the second night of a back-to-back and helped the Suns inch closer to history in the process.
Here are the five most important observations from Phoenix’s 140-130 win over Denver.
On a night where the Suns reached 60 wins for just the fourth time in team history, wrapped up the NBA’s top seed with eight games to go and pulled within three victories of a franchise record, the postgame vibes were in a good place.
“For us to have 60 wins and clinch No. 1 with a few games to go is truly a blessing and amazing,” coach Monty Williams said. “I could sit here all night and talk about it, just because I remember where we started in Flagstaff. And for us to be here certainly means a lot of people have sacrificed and put a lot of work in to allow for us to be here, and I’m grateful for that.”
Surely all the quotes to follow were positive too, right? Well…for the most part, sure!
Paul mentioned how special it was to reach the 60-win mark for just the second time in his 17-year career. Booker grinned when asked about taking in the moment, admitting he was excited to enjoy the long bus ride back to the Denver airport and ensuing flight with his teammates. This group consistently talks about “celebrating everything,” and Thursday gave them cause to do so.
“Sixty wins is something I’ve never even thought of, to be completely honest,” Booker said. “But it’s just the day-to-day grind. We’ve been after it from the bubble on, just getting better, not worrying about what’s going on on the outside and worrying about what we got in-house, and it’s turned into something really nice.”
But as much as that 60th win was a happy occasion, the chippiness to the proceedings was impossible to ignore. Before the game, ESPN aired a segment about Booker’s shortcomings as an MVP candidate:
To recap, the arguments centered around how he’s “not a top-10 scorer,” “not a high-flying dunker like Giannis or a flurry of 3s like Steph,” how he “doesn’t have the overall importance to his team in a way that Jokic does for the Nuggets” and how he “doesn’t have the same impact on both ends of the court.”
Oh, and also: “Feel. Like, all right, can you just not stop this guy?”
To paraphrase a GOAT meme from the GOAT himself, Devin Booker took that personally.
“It’s that time of the year, one, to gear up for these playoffs, and honestly, there’s people playing with my name, man,” Booker said. “It’s just too much for me. I’ve been at it for a long time now, and I’m the type to see anything and take it as disrespect, so that can get me going.”
This, of course, comes after ESPN’s Zach Lowe debated whether Booker really deserved an All-NBA Third Team slot, ultimately deciding to give it to him simply because of the Suns’ dominant record.
None of this is to slander Rosalyn Gold-Onwude or Lowe, but having to swat away horrible takes and constant disrespect from prominent national media figures has gotten old.
Layering it on, the Nuggets decided to have some fun with their pregame introductions, putting up a picture of Amir Coffey in the arena when Booker was announced:
“Yeah, that was disrespectful,” Booker said. “I was laughing. I know that was purposely done….It’s all fun and games, but we got the last laugh and every other laugh for the last few games against them. So it’s good marketing, or a good team they got over there to put that up there, ’cause it got me going for sure.”
Some of the all-time great NBA players were revered for their ability to find new challenges and channel them into competitive fire. Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant were among the best at taking perceived slights and using them as fuel to incinerate opponents.
Booker has those same genes, and he says it’s something he has in common with the rest of his teammates. In short, they responded when rookie Bones Hyland made the same mistake Karl-Anthony Towns did the night before by talking a little too much in the first half.
“I’d just say that’s my character, it’s my personality, and we have a lot of guys like that on this team, so it’s also contagious,” Booker said. “I feel like everybody had it tonight and last night in Minnesota ’cause they got us going a little bit, but the games that I don’t have it, Cam Payne will come with it, somebody else will come with it, so we feed off each other’s energy. Them high-intensity games, them crazy atmosphere games, we thrive for that.”
It’s not an exaggeration to say Thursday was one of the best games Devin Booker has ever played, and Williams agreed. Before the game, the Suns coach expressed his confusion at seeing Booker’s name ninth on NBA.com’s MVP ladder. Armed with a 49-point, 10-assist performance as ammo, he called attention to Book’s answer to all that noise.
“The fact that he’s not in the MVP conversation is just somewhat silly,” Williams said. “When you can will your team to win like that, and do it in a fashion that he did it in tonight, it says a lot about his his work ethic, his individual ability and a lot of other stuff I don’t have time to talk about.”
We have time though, so we’ll take the reins from Monty: Against the reigning MVP (and one of this year’s frontrunners), on the second night of a back-to-back, in Chris Paul’s return, no less, Booker dropped 49 points, 10 assists, 4 rebounds, 3 steals and 1 block in a game-high 39 minutes. He made 16 of his 25 shots and 15 of his 17 free throws, finishing as a game-high +16.
Chris Paul said he isn’t even surprised by the high scoring numbers from Book anymore.
“I don’t know how many points he got or nothing like that, I just expect it,” Paul said.
Defensively, Williams challenged his two All-Star guards in the third quarter to lock in. The Suns gave up 31, 37 and 38 points through the first three quarters on 62 percent shooting, and their normally stout defense was getting sliced and diced. They responded accordingly, including a trio of plays where Booker just terrorized Jokic and the Nuggets, ripping the ball away from whoever was in front of him:
“That, to me, is one of the main reasons why we we’ve been able to have a little bit of success is those guys allow me to coach them,” Williams said. “When I challenged those two, it didn’t mess with either one of their competitive natures. They didn’t get all in their feelings, as the young guys say. They just said, ‘We got you, coach.’
“When the best players allow themselves to be coached and called up, it means a ton.”
So for those keeping track, this “not top-10 scorer” was 11th in the NBA and has now moved up to ninth among all qualified players at 26.3 points per game. The “high-flying dunks” are apparently so rare that this one from literally the night before somehow slipped through the cracks. It’s a shame he can’t unleash a “flurry of 3s” while shooting 37.5 percent from downtown on a career-high 7.1 attempts per game.
But if only Devin Booker could drive that impact for the Suns, whose 11-4 record without Paul this year is eerily similar to their 11-5 mark without Booker over the last 16 games he’s missed! It’s a pity Booker and his 3 steals don’t impact the defensive side of the ball, an area where he’s been legitimately good for two years and owns the best defensive rating among all shooting guards! And surely if we asked the Nuggets how their “feel” for Booker was Thursday night, they’d tell us they could’ve “stopped this guy” but instead chose to let him drop 49 points on their heads.
Or, you know, maybe the guy with a 26-5-5 stat line for the No. 1 team in basketball by a whopping nine games is actually really good? Because if this were Stephen Curry we were talking about, plenty of people would be pleading his MVP case.
“The main objective is to win basketball games, and they’ve been telling me that since I was 18 or 19,” Booker said. “So now that we have the 1-seed locked up, been winning basketball games for two years straight now, this team needs some flowers.”
Flowers in the form of legitimately joining that MVP conversation?
“Yeah,” Booker said.
On and off the court, statement made.
Oh, right: Chris Paul is back!
While Booker dominated the proceedings, the return of the Point God put an extra spring in Phoenix’s step. Some rust was to be expected, and early on, Paul committed a pair of uncharacteristic turnovers where he dribbled into the teeth of the defense and simply couldn’t keep his handle on the ball.
“Early in the game, my legs was heavy, but it’s a mental thing,” he explained. “The game started getting exciting, and that’s when I started feeling a little better.”
Paul wound up with 17 points and 13 assists on 6-of-10 shooting in his return. He also logged 30 minutes — just a few more than Williams had promised when he said in pregame that he planned to keep Paul under his usual 28-32 minutes.
“I’m a liar,” Williams joked after the game. “I said I wasn’t going to play him in the 30s, but I was talking to him and he kept letting me know he was fine. And then once he gets going, you don’t want to mess with that rhythm. But to come back and have 17 and 13 first game back just speaks to the level of greatness that he has.”
Paul said he still has a “little ways to go” with his rehab on that thumb, but he’s been diligent about putting in the work with the help of the Suns’ training staff. The next step is getting back in game shape.
“It’s funny, I’ve been playing pickup like 3-on-3, 2-on-2, but 5-on-5 is totally different, especially your first game back in Denver,” he said before imitating his breathing. “I was like, ‘Whoo! Whoo!'”
Make no mistake about it: Paul’s poise down the stretch is a welcome addition, even to a team that learned a ton without him.
“We missed him,” Booker said. “I know he missed the game. He’s been right there with us the whole time that he’s been out. So to see him back there, see him getting his legs back, he did a great job today. I didn’t even know he had 13 assists, but that’s CP3.”
Speaking of where the Suns grew without Chris Paul, that pair of buckets Cam Payne hit down the stretch of a close road game shouldn’t be lost on anyone. Payne only finished with 9 points and 5 assists in 18 minutes off the bench, but the two runners he made around the 4-minute mark to keep Phoenix in front were emblematic of the strides he’s made over the last few weeks.
The Suns were monitoring Paul’s minutes, but it was striking to see Williams even considering closing with Payne instead of the Point God. Funnily enough, it was Paul’s idea to keep him in the game until checking back in at the 1:49 mark.
“I talked to him around the 4:30 mark, and I said, ‘I want to get you back in around the 3:30,’ and then Cam just made a couple shots and Chris was like, ‘Coach, let him go,'” Williams said. “And I was like, ‘Great idea!’ Everybody thinks I’m coaching, it’s actually the players.”
After spending five weeks away from the game and not being able to help his teammates, it’d be natural for a meticulous floor general like Paul to immediately want to start calling the shots again. But that’s not how this team operates.
“It’s cool, man, it’s trust,” Paul said. “We talk about team. We don’t have to take crazy, contested, tough shots, ’cause we trust.”
Therein lies the beauty of having the deepest roster in the NBA: The Suns don’t need Payne to go out there and drop 40+ like he’s Booker. They saw what he could do when Paul was out, and now, even in a reduced role, he can still have a big impact.
“I think the experience that he had without Chris in the rotation has helped him have that kind of confidence, ’cause those were big moments,” Williams said. “When Cam is making plays like that, again, it gives us another weapon that we probably wouldn’t have had if we hadn’t have gone through the adversity that we’ve dealt with this year.”
“The nice thing about our team, it’s just plug and play,” Paul added. “I’ve been on teams in the past where I missed time and we sort of played totally different, right? But even with me out, same sets, same stuff, just guys get to different spots, and that’s why I think it was pretty easy to sorta get me back into the rotation.”
In the third quarter, some silly beat writer questioned whether Mikal Bridges was (finally) looking tired.
It was only natural to wonder; Bridges is leading the NBA in total minutes this season, he’s averaged 37.7 minutes per game since the All-Star break, and over the last three games, he’s logged 50 minutes in an overtime game and then 39 and 38 minutes on a back-to-back in high altitude.
It took all of one fourth quarter for Bridges to make that guy look silly. Sloppy closeouts turned into the swarming defense and smart rotations we’ve come to expect from this Defensive Player of the Year candidate. A mere 7-point outing through three quarters gave way to a fourth-quarter avalanche of 15 points on 5-of-5 shooting to put Denver away.
“I thought Mikal, his ability to not just make big shots, but the willingness to take big shots is something that I didn’t see from him the first year,” Williams said. “Now, he’s seeking the ball and guys are looking for him, and I just feel like that gives us an added dimension to our team.”
On a night where Booker and Paul stole the spotlight, Bridges’ ability to pick defenses apart when they overcommit to the Suns’ backcourt looms large. It’s exactly what playoff opponents will try to do, and if Bridges continues playing like this, nobody will be able to defend these Suns.
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