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The Phoenix Suns pride themselves on playing to a certain standard on a night-in, night-out basis. From the very first season under Monty Williams, they strived to build their identity as the team that would outwork their opponents. At the start, this young group didn’t have the talent to simply show up and win, so they set themselves apart by competing harder and being more prepared than whoever they were up against.
Adding in Chris Paul, Jae Crowder and a handful of NBA veterans, not to mention seismic leaps from Deandre Ayton, Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson, changed the equation a bit for the Suns. But even with that surge in talent, finding a solution to their current problem comes down to the same math as always.
After the lowly, depleted Oklahoma City Thunder dropped Phoenix to back-to-back losses with a 117-96 thrashing on Sunday, coach Monty Williams had no trouble identifying the root of the issue.
“The only thing I said to them was since I’ve been in Phoenix, we’ve never had two games in a row where we got out-competed,” Williams said. “We all felt it, and I didn’t feel the joy that we typically have. Some of that is from the shot-missing, but yeah, I think it’s something we all can learn from.”
“Just gotta go hoop, play our way,” Mikal Bridges added. “It’s that simple.”
In Sunday’s surprising defeat, Phoenix gave up 12 offensive rebounds and allowed OKC — the NBA’s worst 3-point shooting team — to go 17-for-41 (41.5%) from downtown. Meanwhile, the Suns only went 7-for-38 from long range and gave up 65 points in the second half.
The loss to OKC’s C-team followed up a similarly poor effort on Friday, when the Suns gave up 16 offensive boards for 30 second-chance points and were soundly beaten by a Memphis Grizzlies squad missing Ja Morant, Jaren Jackson Jr., Desmond Bane, Steven Adams and Tyus Jones. This marks only the fourth time all season Phoenix has lost back-to-back games, and while getting humbled by a motivated Grizzlies side was one thing, losing to the backups of the backups of a 22-win Thunder team was another entirely.
“Two teams in a row, we’re playing against guys who most of our fans may not even know their names,” Williams said. “It comes down to having a great deal of respect for a guy who has an NBA jersey on. I don’t think we disrespected them, but I just didn’t think we brought the level of intensity that we brought in the Golden State game, when we knew exactly who we were going up against.”
And yet…as uncharacteristic as it was to see a consistently great, hard-working team simply not bring it for consecutive games, anyone panicking over this ugly stretch should probably think twice before losing any sleep over it.
In fact, it’s fair to say that anyone hitting the panic button over this two-game skid hasn’t been paying attention to what motivates the best Suns team to ever don the purple and orange altogether.
Nobody should be making excuses for Phoenix after two startling losses to inferior opponents, but this is a group that thrives on prime-time matchups. They relish the opportunity to prove they’re better than the best of the best. They soak in all the criticism and disrespect from the national media picking against them. And because they’re so much better than the rest of the pack, they’re constantly in search of new sources of motivation.
No offense to the Grizzlies’ or the Thunder’s reserves, but it’s pretty hard to get up for games against those types of matchups when you already had the 1-seed wrapped up for the entire playoffs last week. Getting the franchise-record 63rd win is obviously still hanging over their heads, but as much as the Suns would like to (and undoubtedly will) cement themselves as the winningest team in franchise history, that designation might mean more to the fanbase than it does to a group that’s trying to stay healthy for a title run.
“It’s go time here in a week or so,” Williams said. “As I’ve said before, everybody’s talking about winning 63 games; I have not done that one time, because I understand how important preparation is, and how important the next meeting is, or the next whatever we have. You can’t get too far ahead.”
One of the Suns’ many credos all season long has been “doing the next right thing.” They’ve failed in that task the last two games, but it’s because — for the first time all year — they have to balance their all-out approach with preparing for the end game.
With Devin Booker, Deandre Ayton and Jae Crowder resting on Sunday, and Chris Paul and Cam Johnson still trying to work their way back into playoff shape after missing extended time due to injury, this team is trying to toe the line between staying sharp and being ready for the games that really matter.
Paul and Crowder are the only ones who have extensive experience with playing big minutes and then pacing themselves during the end-of-season stretch for a long playoff run. When Phoenix locked up home-court advantage throughout the postseason with eight regular-season games remaining, even they were entering uncharted territory.
“I never been in probably a situation like this where you got that locked up that early,” Chris Paul said. “But it is what it is.”
Williams has admitted over the last week there’s no right answer to striking the right balance between preserving guys for the playoffs and making sure they don’t fall out of their groove. It’s an evolving conversation among the coaching staff, and following Phoenix’s 62nd win, the last two games prove it’s still a work in progress.
“I don’t have a great answer,” Williams said. “I think we’re just trying to figure out health, rhythm, rest. If you ask 30 people, I think you come up with 30 different [answers]. We’re gonna figure it out as we go along.”
The results have been unsightly so far, but if any team in the NBA, any team in franchise history or any team in Arizona sports history in general deserves the benefit of the doubt, it’s these Suns. Phoenix’s rags-to-riches ascension has spoiled this fanbase with an unparalleled run of elite basketball, but that doesn’t mean a two-game deviation from the norm is cause for alarm.
“The standard that we put out there every night is hard to keep at the highest level, but I wouldn’t use that as an excuse,” Williams said.
These are not the Arizona Cardinals, who fell apart midway through the season after an undefeated start and then died a horrible, slow death in the first round of the playoffs. These are not the Suns teams of old, who were never the undisputed best team in the league. This is not “limping” into the playoffs, when a two-game skid follows up a nine-game win streak.
This group is a 62-win juggernaut that could still enter prestigious 66-win territory with four games to go. They’re a two-way powerhouse as the NBA’s only team to be in the top-three for both offensive and defensive rating, with a league-leading record, clutch record and point differential. Even after back-to-back losses on the road, they’re still seven whole games ahead of the next-closest team, with a road record that’s better than every single other team’s home record.
People slammed the panic button when this team started the season on a 1-3 skid. Doing so now, after what we’ve witnessed over the 74 games that followed, and after what we witnessed last year, would be completely asinine.
“Everybody wants to win a championship, but you can’t skip steps,” Williams said. “I think you have to go through tough losses like this to learn and understand that you can’t just show up.”
That’s been the Suns’ standard operating procedure for three years now. Their talent has skyrocketed over the last season or two, but the catalyst behind their rise to elite status has always been putting in the work. From Williams’ and the coaching staff’s preparation with the right game plan to the players’ diligence with their workouts and practices, “reps remove doubt” could just as easily describe the Suns’ journey from bottom-feeders to a team whose victories have an air of inevitability.
These last two games have proven the Suns aren’t quite Thanos when they don’t put in the requisite effort that got them to this point. But for such a motivated group that’s on the warpath to avenge last year’s Finals, it’s nowhere near time to start doubting those reps.
“Can’t take too much into it, and you can’t look at it too lightly either,” Paul said. “You don’t want to just be limping going into the playoffs, you want to make sure your team is playing with the right energy and the right pop. We don’t ever play to lose, I tell you that much. So we’ll be better.”
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