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Game 1 of an NBA playoff series can often serve as a feeling-out process between two opponents. Whatever the Phoenix Suns felt through the first three quarters of their second-round matchup with the Dallas Mavericks, it wasn’t resistance — outside of one Slovenian superstar, that is.
Despite a huge night from Luka Doncic in the scoring column, the Suns led wire-to-wire against the Mavs in Game 1 Monday night. The final margin of victory in Phoenix’s 121-114 win wasn’t as convincing as most of the game was, but a pivotal question remains: What can the Suns take from this series opener?
Coming off an explosive first 40 minutes and a final eight-minute stretch that fizzled, here’s why Phoenix should be feeling good after Game 1, despite having a few areas for improvement.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: that ugly, unnecessary trip down Anxiety Avenue in the fourth quarter.
Despite leading by 21 points with just under nine minutes to go, Phoenix saw its double-digit advantage shrivel up to 6 points in the final minute. The game was all but decided by then, but getting outscored 35-25 and shooting a dismal 7-for-25 in the final frame forced coach Monty Williams to play his starters longer than he probably wanted.
“I think it speaks to, one, we can be better,” he said. “I mean, we scored 121 with that fourth quarter. So I know our guys are feeling that, and that’s what we said. But we can’t have those kinds of quarters against a team like that and give up the 35.”
Surrendering 35 points in the final period is uncharacteristic for a Suns team that typically dominates fourth quarters as the NBA’s No. 1 team in crunch-time, but this felt like the case of a superior team taking its foot off the gas and cruising toward the finish line.
The end result was all but decided by the nine-minute mark, but Deandre Ayton said the Suns have to be better in those situations.
“We got away from our principles, but stuff like that, I’m glad that happened early,” he said. “A little eye opener that these dudes don’t give up. So basically just break the dang gas pedal, that’s it. Just break it, don’t take your foot off of it, because they not letting up.”
For most of the last five minutes, Phoenix was one or two shots away from putting the game to bed, but they just never fell. Teams are going to miss shots; it’s just a part of basketball. But combing through that fourth quarter, look how many of them were high-quality looks, shots the Suns normally make, or just plain, wide open:
Williams said they could’ve done a better job attacking the mismatches with JaVale McGee like they’d done with Ayton earlier in the game, but for the most part, it was just missed shots that plagued Phoenix down the stretch.
“I thought if we could’ve made a few more shots in the fourth, it’d feel a lot better,” Williams said. “But I thought we got the shots we wanted.”
Ayton described an emotional type of energy out on the court as the Mavs tried to make it a game late. The Suns got quiet, knowing they weren’t closing to their standards. Typically, the winning team doesn’t have extra Game 2 motivation coming off a dominant Game 1 win. For the Suns, their unsatisfactory close may have already lit the fire for Wednesday night.
“I won’t say we treating that as a loss, but I know for a fact we not closing out a game like that again,” Ayton said. “We’re gonna be way more locked in like we just came off with the L, because the feeling and the gut feeling we walked out the locker room with, not everybody was really happy with how we ended that.”
Yes, it sounds like a crazy takeaway when a guy just dropped 45 points on 15-of-30 shooting, not to mention 12 rebounds and 8 assists. But as good as Luka Doncic was in Game 1, anyone watching that game saw how hard he had to work for his points.
Perhaps more importantly, lost in all of Doncic’s eye-popping stat line was how Phoenix was able to contain pretty much everyone else outside of Maxi Kleber.
“I mean, any time a guy has 45, you look at that number and you don’t like it,” Williams said. “But I look at their assist numbers, they only had 16. So Kleber hit some 3s, but for the most part, nobody else got going the way that they’re capable.”
Kleber racked up 19 points on 5-of-8 shooting from 3-point range, but most of that production came against JaVale McGee in the drop. Doncic may have accounted for 65 points between his scoring and his assists, but he was also food on the defensive end, and Dallas’ offense got too iso-heavy to ever feel like a real threat against Phoenix’s defense.
While Doncic piled on the points, Jalen Brunson — who averaged 27.8 points per game in the first round against the Utah Jazz — finished with just 13 points on 6-of-16 shooting. Spencer Dinwiddie had just 8 points on 3-of-8 shooting off the bench. Sharpshooter Reggie Bullock only had 7 points on 2-of-7 shooting before fouling out.
In other words, Doncic can go for 40-plus all he wants, but if the Mavs don’t find other ways to attack this Suns defense, Phoenix will live with that.
“The thing is trying to slow down a little bit of both him, and making his teammates better also,” Booker said. “[Chris Paul] does a good job at slow-stepping in the lane, and you think he’s gonna shoot it and he sprays it out for a 3. So we’re trying to keep it all contained and just make it tough on him.”
That’s not to say the Mavs star doesn’t make his teammates better, or that Phoenix should celebrate Doncic going for 45 in a playoff game. There are definite areas for improvement, especially when it comes to keeping him off the foul line: The Suns attempted 18 free throws as a team (with most of those coming in garbage time playing the foul game), while Doncic attempted 14 by himself.
But by the third and fourth quarters, Doncic looked dead tired. He was already coming off a calf strain that forced him to miss three games in the first round, and he came up limping after making contact with McGee on his left leg in the second half. He played 44 minutes, and Dallas’ core rotation is really only seven or eight players. If the Suns can tire him out, let Doncic run iso after iso, and keep the other guys from getting too involved, they’ll be fine with the results.
Doncic was the best individual player on the court Monday night, but it became pretty clear the Mavs have no solution for Deandre Ayton. His 25 points and 8 rebounds on 12-of-20 shooting don’t even paint the full picture of the problem he represents for Dallas (as we mentioned in our series preview).
“I just think there’s opportunities to take advantage of certain situations, whether he’s in short roll — he’s been pretty efficient with that shot — or when he has a smaller guy in a post-up situation,” Williams said. “But he’s worked on it with coach [Mark] Bryant. As I said before, the first year, I didn’t think he was as comfortable playing in the trenches and using his left shoulder jump hook and playing in short roll. So it’s just something that he continues to work on, and it’s a weapon for us, especially when you’re playing Chris and [Devin Booker] with the kinds of coverages they see every night.”
Ayton was effective in all facets in Game 1. He used his size and strength advantage to bully his way into easy hook shots. He showcased his improved touch with midrange jumpers and floaters. And, as always, he cleaned up around the rim with a few easy lobs and dump-offs.
“He’s a beast down there, and he proves it,” Booker said. “Night in and night out, that’s what teams try to go to versus us, just have five guards out there and switch it 1-5, and that’s his time to punish ’em.”
Ayton has always chalked up his elevated performances to taking what the defense gives him, and it’s true that his rolls — even when he doesn’t get the ball — create offense for his teammates by opening up 3-point looks on the backside.
But DA was already playing some of his most assertive basketball, coming off a first-round series where he averaged 20.5 points and 9.8 rebounds per game on 70.3 percent shooting. Now that he no longer has to face bigger, physical bruisers like Jonas Valanciunas, Jaxson Hayes and Larry Nance Jr. on the interior, Kleber and Dwight Powell have their hands full with a behemoth who can finish his rolls again.
“Gotta use the hookshot, Valanciunas not there to send it in the backcourt,” Ayton said. “But it’s a lot more smalls than the first round. I’m finally finishing my rolls. At first I couldn’t get as much rolls where I’m getting a seal or a duck-in, I had to do a little short roll. But I’m finishing my rolls now where I can get a big seal at the rim and just have the basket right above me three feet away.”
If there’s one area for improvement after Game 1, it’s clamping down on Dallas’ high-volume 3-point attack. They attempted a whopping 39 triples on Monday night, making 16 of them for a 41 percent conversion rate.
“We gave up some easy 3s tonight and transition 3s that we typically don’t give up, just because we were miscommunicating,” Williams said. “That was in that same segment where we weren’t scoring like we did in the first half.”
For the Suns, it all goes back to their philosophy on defending Doncic: Keep the ball in front, and don’t let the other guys get going.
“We gotta defend, that’s what we done stood on all season long,” Paul said. “They got up 39 3s, so just keep trying to slow down the other guys. We know Luka gonna take his shots or whatnot, but just try to make it tough on him.”
This is nothing new for the Mavs, even after dealing Kristaps Porzingis and getting back Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis Bertans. They ranked eighth in 3-point attempts this season, hoisting 37.4 per game and converting at a 35 percent clip. In the playoffs, they’ve stepped those numbers up, averaging a league-leading 41.4 attempts per game on 37.6 percent shooting.
Facing a team that likes to go five-out, drive to the paint and kick out to open shooters, the Suns have to trust their defense at the point of attack and avoid over-helping.
“We gotta trust the guy that’s guarding the ball, that he’s gonna force a tough 2,” Williams said. “There were a number of times tonight where we didn’t steel-out to the 3-point shooters, we were kind of watching the ball. And then once the pass was made, and we made the effort to get out there, but it was too late. We can do a much better job of of just guarding the ball keeping it in front, but then the guys watching that have to trust — whether it’s Mikal [Bridges] or Jae [Crowder] — that those guys are going to be able to guard and force a tough 2.”
After the game, Monty Williams talked about respecting their opponent at all times, with what he calls “appropriate fear.”
“This team won 52 games, they were the sixth-best defense, and they have three guys that can go get it done every single night,” Williams said of the Mavericks. “And when you put the stats up on the screen and show the guys, you have to have what we call appropriate fear. And that allows for you to bring your A-game every time you step on the floor. It’s just a high level of respect.”
That’s all well and good, but just to recap: Luka Doncic scored 45 points on 50 percent shooting…Maxi Kleber chipped in 19 points off the bench…the Mavs shot 41 percent from 3…Dallas won the battle for second-chance points (11-9), points in the paint (44-38), fast break points (12-11) and free-throw attempts (25-18) while committing fewer turnovers (9-8)…the Suns shot 28 percent in the fourth quarter…and it still should’ve been a double-digit win for Phoenix.
After Game 1 of the New Orleans Pelicans series, it felt like Willie Green could tweak his rotation, let his team continue pummeling Phoenix on the glass and make things more physical to adjust. What adjustments is Jason Kidd supposed to make, exactly?
The Mavs’ seventh-ranked defense is better than the 121 points on 50.5 percent shooting they allowed in Game 1, but how are they supposed to slow Phoenix down with a healthy Devin Booker; with Cam Johnson putting in 17 points off the bench; with Cam Payne and Jae Crowder finally hitting some 3s; and with DA possessing such a clear advantage over their small-ball bigs? Playing Dorian Finney-Smith at the 5 changes the equation in spurts, but that’s just inviting Ayton to dominate.
The Suns’ biggest weaknesses were giving up offensive rebounds and second-chance points, as well as getting creamed by massive free-throw discrepancies. The Mavs ranked 24th in offensive rebounds, 29th in second-chance points and 14th in free-throw rate this season.
Phoenix won the rebounding battle 51-36 in Game 1, went 11-for-28 from downtown and pretty much got whatever they wanted on offense until open shots randomly stopped falling in the fourth quarter. They still shot 50 percent for the game, which is no fluke for a team that’s shot above 50 percent in all seven games and leads all playoff teams in field goal percentage.
The Pelicans were the worst-case scenario for a first-round matchup. While the Mavericks are a better overall team, they’re a much more favorable matchup for Phoenix. The series is far from over after one game, but so far, it just affirmed that the Suns are as well-suited for Doncic and the Mavs as anyone.
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