Suns retake embarrassing form after 4-game mirage, lose to Rockets

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns revealed they are who they are directly after their four-game winning streak earlier in the month, a mirage of a week that suggested potential growth. Instead, it was a blinding flash in the pan, as evidenced by Sunday’s embarrassing 148-109 loss to the Houston Rockets.

Phoenix has now dropped three straight after taking a brief peek around the corner it was ready to turn and is two games back in the loss column of the Sacramento Kings and Dallas Mavericks for a chance at making the postseason. Urgency and desperation are completely foreign to this basketball team.

“Tonight was a bad night,” head coach Mike Budenholzer said when asked why his team is not showing urgency on the floor given where the Suns are at in the standings. “There’s no other way to paint it. But I don’t think it’s what it’s been to say categorically every night. But tonight we were not good. Urgency, anything you want to put on it. We were not good.”

Does he think this team has that desperation?

“There’s desperation. And then you have to go play,” he said. “There’s an element of, at some point you have to go and get stops, you have to find a way to make things happen on the defensive end, you have to go and make plays offensively. Desperation and all those things, they’re important but you gotta go play. And we have to play better.”

After a 16-0 Rockets lead earlier in the second quarter blew the game open and put Phoenix down 17, Houston wing Dillon Brooks was ejected for getting too vocal towards an official during a kerfuffle, offering the Suns a window with a cool breeze given how the Rockets were also missing Tari Eason (left leg injury management).

The Rockets then got a 3-pointer off an offensive rebound, a transition basket following a botched Suns 3-on-1 and then two straight Phoenix turnovers led to open Houston baskets. Shortly later, the Suns failed to score on a 5-on-4 when Houston’s Jalen Green took a tumble and stayed down. Off the miss, Green received a deep outlet pass for a free dunk.

Houston scored 46 points in the period to lead by 29 at halftime. The Suns were loudly booed off the floor.

Phoenix attempted to meet the energy it knew Houston would bring early but did not maintain that over the entire first half. That is what is necessary for the Suns to overcome their stunning lack of cohesion and any type of identity. They know that and don’t care enough to overcome that. Well, they cared enough for a week.

To repeat an evergreen message that has been present in this space many times for over a year, whatever is at the root of this has to go. That includes any player, any coach and any member of the front office. It’s up to the Suns to make the right call on who are those the most responsible. Clearly they did not last summer.

I will spare you just about the rest of the details. Not going to waste your time anymore on nights like this, nor with any numbers or thoughts on individual performances.

What you should know is Suns forward Kevin Durant heavily twisted his left ankle on a drive to the basket in the mid-third quarter. He walked back to the locker room with a heavy limp and did not return. With two weeks to go in the season, the inescapable thought arrives if this was the last time we saw him in a Suns jersey. Durant will have an MRI on Monday.

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