The Phoenix Suns (39-30) are a leaking ship, and that’s not to say they will sink to the bottom of the sea, but they cannot plug up all of their current holes at once.
Even while fixing some of the recent issues, others persisted in a 116-104 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Phoenix has now lost three games in a row. Since Feb. 1, it has been worse in lots of key metrics, and is now 9-11 over that span.
Whether you think it’s more injury related or the Suns hitting a wall in regard to overcoming the limitations of the roster, this is the worst basketball they have played this season and it’s not particularly close.
Forget about playoff positioning. Escaping the play-in now becomes less of the near guarantee it felt like a few weeks ago if the Suns can’t start permanently repair most of those holes that weren’t there two months ago.
The Suns were on the second game of a back-to-back and Minnesota wasn’t, but Anthony Edwards (right knee soreness) was out for a T-Wolves (42-27) team that really struggles to bring good energy consistently.
This was a game we’ve seen plenty of earlier in the season, when Phoenix’s tremendous effort almost caught the opponent off-guard and it had to decide if it wanted to try to top those energy levels. The Suns responded to their recent uninspiring play with a season-high 14 assists in the first quarter for 39 points, and 16 of ’em were in the paint after generating just 28 on Monday against the Boston Celtics.
Everything was adding up on that end, but Minnesota had a few jumpers go in, grabbed a few key offensive rebounds and had a few easy buckets where it simply came down to how much smaller the Suns’ on-ball defender was. The Timberwolves got 36 points that way, then upped the energy even more in the second quarter, where Phoenix’s lack of size was once again prominent.
Phoenix’s offensive effectiveness wasn’t the same after such a hot start. It scored 47 points in the middle quarters and is simply not playing good enough defense each possession to be able to withstand that.
Once Devin Booker went to the bench for his last rest, Minnesota opened up the fourth quarter with back-to-back open layups to go up 10. Minnesota bumped its lead to 14 with under eight minutes to go when Booker checked back in. The offense did its customary collapse from there, amounting to 18 points in the final frame.
It’s now three games in a row that Booker has taken the dangerous in-game steps of going from upset with the officials to letting it affect his actual play.
There is a correlation between how animated he gets with the refs and how much worse his decision-making gets with the ball. We’ve seen this plenty over the years in small bursts, and what made it even more unacceptable Tuesday was that it came as his team has been reeling the last six weeks and has been totally relying on him offensively, all while he’s the unquestioned leader on the floor with Dillon Brooks (left hand fracture) sidelined.
Again, he’s getting a bad whistle, and that must be incredibly frustrating given the respect he has across the league. But he’s completely tailspinned three games in a row in the second half all while the Suns’ overall level of play has taken a major dip since the start of February.
Booker finished with 34 points, six rebounds, three assists and two turnovers on 11-of-27 shooting.
This was the come-down performance from Jalen Green that was easy to see rapidly approaching from out on the horizon.
His four-year career in Houston included plenty of fantastic stretches, whether it was a few games, weeks or over a full month. But regression to the mean for Green, whether it’s his efficiency or overall impact, has always been waiting for him on the back end of those awesome spurts. With ruthless consistency.
He was 3 for 14 in the first half and 3 for 17 overall with nine points, five assists and a turnover. He checked out with 8:08 to go and did not return, a step back to what Green was forcing out of his coaches a handful of games ago. Most of those shots came via pull-up jumpers or poor challenges near the basket.
Grayson Allen (left knee soreness) did not play and there was some level of bounce-back efforts from his fellow supporting cast members.
Oso Ighodaro had 14 of his 16 points in the first 18 minutes of the game and it is not a coincidence that it occurred when the offense was in rhythm. He added 10 rebounds, four assists, four turnovers and three steals. While Collin Gillespie shot 4 for 13, he did have seven assists and zero turnovers to go with 12 points. Royce O’Neale provided nine points, two rebounds, two assists, three steals and three turnovers.
Coming off his best performance as a Sun, Haywood Highsmith was listed as available after getting a questionable designation for right knee injury management, but he only got nine minutes.
Highsmith had surgery for a torn meniscus in August and was traded a week later to the Brooklyn Nets. He then didn’t play all season for Brooklyn while rehabbing, was bought out after the trade deadline and then signed with Phoenix.
He just started playing on March 8, so it will be a delicate few weeks of managing his knee. That provided an opportunity for Ryan Dunn to get back in the rotation and he played 17 minutes.
