Suns reach peak of adversity with Booker, Green both injured
Injuries to Devin Booker and Jalen Green halt the Phoenix Suns season-long momentum in Friday's 110-103 lost to the Atlanta Hawks.
Watch: Reacting to the Phoenix Suns signing Dillon Brooks to a 3-year, $73 million extension | 9 mins
With the Phoenix Suns’ season-long momentum reaching new apex after new apex, the low point arrived abruptly in Friday’s 110-103 loss to the Atlanta Hawks, as both Devin Booker and Jalen Green got injured.
Late in the third quarter, as the Suns were on their biggest surge of the night, Booker was lightly slowing down while a whistle was blown to his right, and as he looked that way, he unknowingly collided with Atlanta’s Onyeka Okongwu to badly twist his right ankle.
OH NO: Devin Booker is *SIGNIFICANT PAIN* after rolling his right ankle on
He needed help to the locker room
Prayers that it is nothing major 🙏 pic.twitter.com/FtKGOzZBU0
— CourtSideHeat (@CourtSideHeat) January 24, 2026
Booker, not one at all for being on the floor in pain, was down for about 30 seconds before gingerly making his way toward the locker room with a heavy limp and needing to take a few breaks en route to the back.
He had sprained his left ankle just 10 days prior in Miami, which forced him to miss just a game, but he was clearly playing through some limitations, and the degree to which he sprained it was not as severe as Friday’s injury looked. Strictly off eye test, this looks like the more severe variety that could sideline him for weeks instead of days.
The team defined Green’s re-injury of his bothersome right hamstring as “precautionary tightness,” so we’ll see if that means Green avoided something serious and they’ll only have to put him back on ice for a bit.
But the concern level is extreme considering this is the second reaggravation for Green of that hamstring. The initial instance was on Nov. 8 and cost him two-and-a-half months. That is just about the time remaining in the regular season, so if this is more than just tightness, missing the rest of the year is a legitimate fear.
For the second straight time, Green’s extended absence ended only to re-injure himself in the first half of his second game back. It was an even tougher gut punch that it appeared to come on a highlight play, with Green dismantling Atlanta’s Luke Kennard via as clean of a baseline blow-by drive as you’ll see. Green went to the locker room right after.
We already know Phoenix is capable of maintaining a top-six seed in the Western Conference without Green, but the possibilities of what his inclusion could unlock were captivating to see with each possession Green played the last two games.
Instead, the wait for that lengthens yet again, and it might have to now include some time joined by Booker on the bench.
For how often we refer to the danger of soft-tissue injuries and how difficult they can be to deal with, NBA teams have gotten so good at managing them that we rarely see them ravage the path of a player’s entire season in the way Green’s has. That’s even the case for a guy that had only missed six games over three years and just 21 total in his first four NBA seasons before sitting for 41 of Phoenix’s 45 this go-around.
With as deflating as this development is to Suns fans, it is worth reminding that this group has thrived through adversity. On that same beat, though, they have never faced as much as they will if both star guards miss more than just a blink of time together.
Booker prior to that injury was in the midst of a 16-point third quarter while Phoenix’s defensive activity reached game-changing levels to tilt a back-and-forth affair in their favor. Even as he exited, Collin Gillespie and Oso Ighodaro kept sparking the game enough to keep the Suns not only in it, but in control.
That duo, however, had to get a rest in the middle of the fourth quarter, and while they both were able to get back on the floor with Phoenix down just two points with three-and-a-half minutes to go, the offense was expectedly stuck in mud as Atlanta ratcheted up its own defense to seal the deal.
This was the Suns’ 12th straight loss in Atlanta. While statistics like this are most of the time meaningless since it’s usually a few different iterations of each team over that amount of time, the context is that this was the ninth defeat out of those dozen that Phoenix has had the game at either the beginning or end of a road trip. Anyone in the league will tell you there’s something more to overcome in those contests.
A few things were just easier for Atlanta than we’re used to seeing from Suns opponents. The Hawks were able to get out in transition, find space and were able to jumble up Phoenix’s switching more often. Even a 30-12 Suns advantage in points off turnovers was not enough to make up for those shortcomings.
Gillespie scored 16 points with six rebounds, four assists, two steals and one turnover in 35 minutes. Grayson Allen added 16 points off the bench with four steals.
The two of them could have some major heavy lifting to do over the next couple of games, and it’s worth noting that two-way guard Jamaree Bouyea recently returned from a concussion to score 27 points in a G League Valley Suns victory on Thursday.
Ighodaro was once more phenomenal and the superior 5-man. What he does as a “hub” to create extra movement offensively and ignite activity defensively through switch-first schemes is undeniably the better dynamic than what Mark Williams has brought for the last six weeks.
Phoenix clearly tried to get Williams the ball more, and in those spaces of the short rolls, he struggled to pick his spots to take the right shot, going 3-of-8 from the field for six points with five rebounds, one assist, three steals and zero turnovers in 21 minutes. His physicality in those areas continues to get picked on by stronger opponents.
Ighodaro played 27 minutes to end up with eight points, seven rebounds, two assists, two steals, a block and a turnover.
Dillon Brooks reached double figures in his first 35 games as a Sun, which was one of the 15 longest streaks by a player to begin this season, per Stathead. But since then, Brooks has scored five, 27, six and 11 points, getting more streaky over his total performances instead of the ebbs and flows we’ve seen with him getting white hot or ice cold by quarter.
It eventually evened out within each game but that is no longer the case. He shot 4-of-18 and his 1-on-1 play had no shot against the high-end perimeter defenders the Hawks deployed. It is not a reliable source of crunch-time offense and will just depend on the night.
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Comments
197 Comments
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