PHOENIX — Part of what can make the Phoenix Suns great is a completely uncontrollable force of chaos, and it provided the ultimate gift and a curse across the second half of a 114-110 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday that now has them facing elimination.
Phoenix will host the play-in tournament’s final game on Friday against the winner of Wednesday’s matchup between the Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors. The winner gets to play the Oklahoma City Thunder in OKC on Sunday afternoon nearly 36 hours later. The loser sees their season end.
You could go as far as describing Tuesday’s last two quarters as an encapsulation of the regular season.
Phoenix was absolutely reeling in the early third quarter when Devin Booker picked up his fourth foul, the third of which was unnecessary and set up a far more consequential 50-50 call that was challenged and upheld.
The Suns trailed by six when he exited and the deficit quickly ballooned up to double digits.
That’s when this group clearly needed to take a few extra breaths and calm down. But that intensity, bordering on maniacal and irresponsible, then fueled them to a 29-8 surge and transformed the game into an environment totally void of composure from either side.
Portland, a poor 3-point shooting team, was coming off a 12-for-27 first half from deep and kept bombing away, missing 14 of its first 15 triples to begin the second half. A few of the launches were reckless and reeked of a team letting the moment get too big.
The initial wave of those misses essentially rolled out the red carpet toward rhythm for a Suns offense that was an absolute dud in half-court scenarios, outside of shot-making in the midrange.
Collin Gillespie and Royce O’Neale had massive two-way shifts from the mid-third quarter through to the early fourth, when the Suns ripped off that aforementioned run. Dillon Brooks and Jalen Green, who scored 22 of his 35 points in the first half, were instrumental in driving that energy everyone responded to.
That ended with the building roaring and the Suns up 11 at 7:13 t0 go
They would then proceed to give up 27 points the rest of the way, all while Phoenix’s serious crunch-time woes offensively from the past month-plus reared their head, and that flame was lit by a mini-meltdown from both Brooks and Green.
It only got worse from there. It felt like pulling teeth for the Suns to generate a quality offensive possession. And in a similar theme, their problems all season with containing dribble penetration were exposed by Portland in a painless effort to generate its own quality offensive possessions.
That was reflected in the best way by the play of the two stars.
Booker was severely outplayed by Portland’s Deni Avdija. Avdija in the final frame was 4-of-5 with 14 points, three assists and a turnover. Booker was 0-of-3 for three points with one assist and no turnovers.
Phoenix’s rotations weren’t flawless but Avdija ravaged his way to the rim whenever he wanted. He completely dominated the closing of the game and finished with 41 points, seven rebounds, 12 assists and five turnovers on 15-of-22 shooting.
Booker was 7-of-17 for 22 points with four assists and two turnovers. He only scored six in the second half.
The Suns were nearly bailed out on two separate instances late, with a Flagrant 1 foul drawn by Brooks temporarily halting Portland’s momentum, and an excellent play design getting Jordan Goodwin a layup for the Suns lead with 33 seconds left.
But in a moment where Avdija and most people in the building knew he was going to see plenty of resistance in his path toward the rim, he just went through everyone and scored. Even with open shooters in each corner.
DENI GIVES THE BLAZERS THE LEAD!
HE’S GOT 41 PTS 🔥
BLAZERS UP 2 WITH 16.1 TO PLAY 🍿 pic.twitter.com/zGK0T7x85I
— NBA (@NBA) April 15, 2026
Phoenix’s answer was a Booker isolation, where he was once more enveloped by the phenomenal Toumani Camara, and Booker got rid of it to Green for a 3 that wasn’t close.
BLAZERS WIN ON THE ROAD 🚨
THEY HAVE CLINCHED THE WEST #7 SEED AND WILL FACE THE SPURS IN ROUND 1! pic.twitter.com/4DGeCF5ho7
— NBA (@NBA) April 15, 2026
Again, in full circle moments, a conversation piece surrounding Booker’s career has been his willingness to make the right play and not force it, even when the game is on the line. Avdija forced it. Booker did not.
“I can take that shot too and force overtime but I seen Jrue (Holiday) sleeping a little bit and Jalen shifted to open space,” Booker said.
This was a deserved win for the Blazers. In both middle quarters, they put together stretches where they were outclassing Phoenix with ease. The better team advanced.
Phoenix only managed to get off 25 3-pointers and made nine of ’em. Its first 3-pointer came from Goodwin in the late first half, a reversal of the math it has consistently used to find an edge and overcome weaknesses elsewhere.
In a persistent theme of the Suns’ offensive struggles the last two months, opposing gameplans are designed around letting Booker, Brooks and Green go 1-on-1 with all the middies they desire, prioritizing an emphasis on cutting off ball movement. That trio combined for eight assists and eight turnovers. The Suns ended the night at 20 assists, continuing their awful numbers there since those three started playing together again.
“There’s probably some windows we missed spraying the ball out for some high-quality shots — there’s gotta be a mix of it, especially this time of year,” Suns head coach Jordan Ott said.
The only time Phoenix got it gong offensively was either the individual scoring brilliance of those three or off the Blazers’ misses and turnovers. It took 53% of it shots from the midrange, including a 99th-percentile 20% on long 2s (from at least 15 feet), per Cleaning the Glass.
“They kind of force you into the midrange game and I think we could have got more 3s up overall as a group,” Booker said.
Grayson Allen did not play due to left hamstring soreness. Phoenix really needs every possible tool available to relocate some sort of offensive flow, and Allen is one of its most valuable.
Ott seemed out of answers for what to do with his centers. Mark Williams got only 22 minutes, with his off-ball mistakes defensively and inability to match physicality on the glass canceling out all the good he did elsewhere. Whichever Portland defender was marking Oso Ighodaro did so from another area code, denying the Suns’ spacing elsewhere. The two combined for five rebounds in 47 minutes. Ott eventually went small to close for the last minute.
That will prove to be relevant on Friday. Whether the Suns draw the Clippers or Warriors, both teams go five-out with smaller lineups, presenting different types of issues than Portland’s size advantage did on Tuesday.
Brooks got a technical foul in the fourth quarter. His regular season technical foul total already reset, and it will do so once again after the play-in if the Suns advance to the playoffs, per the team. That is where he could run into another suspension possibility, but the play-in and regular season techs will not apply.
The Suns battled like hell on the glass to only lose second-chance points 15-12 versus a Portland team that led the league in that category.
