The Phoenix Suns are about to embark on a three game road trip, having suffered shock back-to-back losses to the San Antonio Spurs. Those losses drop the Suns to 2-3 on the still young season, and although there is plenty of time to make up ground, those losses weren’t part of the plan.
It is hard to tell which defeat was worse for the franchise. On Tuesday they led for all but 1.8 seconds of the game – the kicker there being that the Spurs took the lead for the first time with only 1.8 seconds to go. On Thursday, despite battling back well after a slow start, they were more comprehensively beaten behind Victor Wembanyama’s 38 point performance.
Hard as it already is to dissect those two games – both of which came at the Footprint Center – the Suns can learn a lot about what the Spurs exposed.
To have had Devin Booker back for that second game and to have still lost is concerning, although Kevin Durant continues to be excellent and is firmly in the MVP conversation. Bradley Beal is likely to come back at some point on the road trip, and only then will we get a clearer picture of where this team is at.
Some of the Suns’ role players have stepped up with Beal and Booker out, with Drew Eubanks looking feisty against the Spurs and Josh Okogie being one of the organization’s best performers overall since the regular season began. Like it or not though, this is what the Spurs exposed down in The Valley.
3. Slow starts
At one point in Tuesday’s game, the Suns were more than 20 points up over the Suns. The first half was going perfectly, with Durant looking fantastic and Eric Gordon and Grayson Allen going on to hit a tremendous nine 3-pointers combined.
The offensive engine was humming, so much so that Booker had no problem getting mic’d up by TNT to talk about when he hoped to be back on the court. Wembanyama looked like the rookie he is, and if you’d said then the Suns could win by 30, nobody would have batted an eyelid. Then in the second half the mood changed, and we all know how that would ended.
Even worse was Thursday’s game, where the Suns fell into a 13 point hole to start the game. It took almost four points for them to get on the board, with Durant bailing them out with a contested jump shot as he so often has. The Suns had chances, but failed to convert some straightforward looks.
The fact Booker was on the court for all of this is even worse, and although they at one point levelled the game before the Spurs pulled away, this was a needlessly bad way to start the game. The Spurs both exposed how easy it was to score on the Suns, and also how to keep them quiet if their stars aren’t hitting shots. All of this from a team that might not even make the play-in.