“We got to make feel us more.”īrandon Ingram scored 37 points on 21 shots, grabbed 11 rebounds and dished 9 assists. “Too comfortable on the offensive end,” forward Cameron Johnson said of the Pelicans. Either way, the Suns looked bad, and they all knew it. “Unfortunately we can’t go back and do nothing about it now.”Ĭameron Johnson said it was more about lack of execution making the players look like they had low energy, rather than actually being low. It shouldn’t,” Paul said, asked how the Suns could lack energy in a playoff game. “Just because, one, we’re at home, two, all of these games are so important.” “Yeah, it does,” Williams replied, when asked if he it surprised him how they lacked energy in this one. The Suns clearly lacked the cohesion and supreme energy that has marked this team for 2+ seasons. The shooting will level out, especially if the Suns dial back into their 5th-ranked three point shooting defense. making at or above league average this year. The Pelicans are not a good three-point shooting team, with only CJ McCollum and Trey Murphy Jr. This is a Suns team that’s been 5th best in three-point % allowed this year (34%) and allowed the 4th fewest makes per game (11.7).
“I thought we were hoping they would miss, instead of making them miss,” Chris Paul said. The Pelicans 55% mark on threes is the best % allowed by the Suns all season and halfway through last season too. “I just thought it was a lapse in, lack of intensity to get to their feet.” “We just didn’t shoot the ball as well as they did,” Williams said. Non-Book shooters made only 6 of 24 threes in Game 2, while the Pelicans made a whopping 17 of 31.
BOOKER SUNS HOW TO
“I thought we handled the offensive rebounds a lot better but lost it in transition,” Williams said.Ĭlearly, the Suns know how to win games with good defense, ranking 3rd overall in the league this season. Part of that was the Suns guards staying in to crash the boards a little longer after giving up 20 more rebounds than they got in Game 1, leaving them susceptible to run-outs. They’d only allowed 4 in transition in Game 1. This is the same Suns team that was 6th best in the NBA, allowing only 11.3 points per game on fast breaks. The Pelicans had 16 fast break points, making 7 of 11 shots, and every one of those seemed like the Suns never kept up.
“And for that to happen in playoff game, was a bit unsettling for everybody.” “That was probably, for us, the worst we’ve ever looked in transition since I’ve been here,” Williams said. On the Bright Side, Booker wasn’t the only thing that went wrong for the Suns on Tuesday night, and all those other things can be corrected. The Suns have to win at least two of those games to stay alive. Three of the next four games in New Orleans. They proved on Tuesday night that they can beat a Booker-less Suns team, which is what they did in the second half of the game.Ĭan a focused, backs-against-the-wall Suns team go to New Orleans and win? Of course.īut they have definitely been handed adversity. The Pels are 11-6 with Brandon Ingram and CJ McCollum in the lineup together, including wins in 10 of the last 12 games they’ve shared the court. Well, the Pelicans are definitely a playoff-level team. What does that tell us? That the Suns can win games without Book, but have not beaten a playoff-level team this year without him. They went 3-1, with wins over 3 non-playoff teams and a loss to the Bucks. The Suns lost the next four games, despite Booker scoring 40+ in two of them before wearing down.Ī couple of months ago, the Suns lost Booker for another four games due to COVID. Last year in the Finals, Booker played through a hamstring injury suffered in Game 3 (or was it at the end of Game 2?).The Suns went 5-2 in his absence (4 wins over non-playoff teams, 1 win over then-struggling Boston, losses to hot-shooting Golden State and LA Clippers). Earlier this season, Booker missed two weeks (7 games) with a hamstring injury to the other leg.The Suns don’t know the extent of the Booker hamstring injury, but we have two recent examples to draw from:
BOOKER SUNS UPDATE
Words after the game were limited - that we would get an update on Book tomorrow. Midway through the third quarter, as the Pelicans were taking a 77-74 lead with yet another rebound-leading-to-fast-break-dunk, Book chased down Jaxson Hayes only to pull up lame, grabbing at his hamstring. They stormed into the NBA playoffs, then watched this year’s MVP-candidate go down when Devin Booker suffered a hamstring injury in Game 2. They did survive, and made it all the way to the Finals. A season ago, the Phoenix Suns stormed into the NBA playoffs, then immediately had to survive a multi-game injury to their MVP candidate, Chris Paul.
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