Coach Budenholzer receives crucial public backing amidst Suns' slump

The Phoenix Suns have lost five straight games - including a pair to begin their six-game stay at home - and are an even worse 1-6 since Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal went down with calf strains. They will now have some much needed time off before the games come thick and fast again.

As we've already laid out in painful detail, the most recent loss to the New York Knicks was the low point so far this season. The Suns had no answer for with Jalen Brunson or Karl-Anthony Towns, with the latter giving center Jusuf Nurkic an awful time across four quarters. Head coach Mike Budenholzer hasn't come under a ton of heat for this, but some public backing would be nice.

Which is exactly what Devin Booker did at the perfect time.

Booker spoke to the media in the aftermath of that tepid performance versus New York, and the question of starting Royce O'Neale over a second big like Mason Plumlee was brought up. There was good reason for this, the Suns had had some nice moments versus the Minnesota Timberwolves when starting both Nurkic and Plumlee.

Booker wasn't having any of that though - and although he had the opportunity to play the blame game - he instead went in another direction and gave his usual, Booker-like answer. "I think we had more success in Minnesota than we did the game after, but whatever coach say I'm rocking with".

The second part of that sentence is the public backing coach Budenholzer needs from his star playing during this rough stretch. It is also easy to come out defending your coach, when you've seen your team start a season 8-1 when fully healthy. Although the Suns were in close games when they had Durant and Beal, they were winning them, and that is the most important thing.

Booker also mentioned early in that same answer that this was something he didn't really pay attention to. Only that's not true, because he's correct in saying the Suns had more success with the duel bigs versus the Timberwolves than they did in the next game. A home loss to the Orlando Magic, with Oso Ighodaro replacing the injured Nurkic alongside Plumlee.

The Suns really struggled with the size of the Timberwolves last season, and adding in Julius Randle for Towns only makes them more intimidating. The Magic also have multiple bigs and are a young and hungry group - and when you combine that with Ighodaro's inexperience - it is no surprise the team again struggled.

Really though starting O'Neale still feels like the move here, because the Suns are terrible right now defensively no matter what big they have out there. Better to lean into your 3-point shooting - a skill O'Neale certainly has - and try and outscore opponents. That's primarily how this roster was constructed anyway.

At a difficult moment in the season Devin Booker could have thrown his coach under the bus and blamed everybody else for the run of losses. He could even have turned it into clickbait, like Paul George recently did. Instead Booker said there's nothing to see here and let's keep it moving and get healthy, and that is why he is the franchise cornerstone in Phoenix.