Suns go dual centers, recover from lifeless start to beat the Knicks

PHOENIX — Given how the last couple of weeks have gone for the Phoenix Suns, winning ugly is a start, and that’s what they did Friday in a 120-112 victory over the New York Knicks.

A complete lack of energy with defensive ineptitude was surprising to see from the Suns early on in the game, given how they have been annihilated in the past two first quarters, allowing 37 points in the opening 12 minutes to New York.

That would have been the story most nights, but Friday night was not most nights.

Monty Williams tried to provide some type of shock to the system by starting centers Deandre Ayton and Aron Baynes together, a curious move given Dario Saric’s play has mostly been “fine” this season and there’s not much they theoretically gain from the move.

Regardless, the duo was deployed together, and even when Baynes picked up foul trouble, Williams deferred to third-string center Cheick Diallo over Saric, a clear emphasis to having size.

Williams wanted to counter the Knicks’ physicality, which he spoke to multiple times before the game. Now, the argument is if the Suns even need to consider countering a now 10-25 ball club.

Williams said Saric wasn’t going to help the Suns battle physically and that a long talk with general manager James Jones on Thursday made it go from something Williams was considering on his own to him pulling the trigger to the full support of his coaching staff.

Baynes was used more as a floor spacer from three-point range, where he tied a career high with eight attempts and made two, while Ayton received more post touches. Both did their fair share of dives to the rim as well, cluttering the paint as one would expect.

Ayton mostly relied on the mid-range jumper and shot 5-of-11 for 15 points, 13 rebounds and five assists. Despite his insistence on wanting to shoot three-pointers and practicing them, he did not get the green light yet and did not attempt one.

Saric was completely exiled from the rotation to only four minutes, a whiplash of a change so severe that it would induce nausea given the importance of his role on the team in 34 starts and 26.8 minutes a night prior to Friday.

Bizarrely enough, Phoenix was minus-four on the boards, thanks largely to New York’s 13 offensive rebounds.

Ayton, in his own special way, supported the idea 100%.

“About time! I’ve been asking them since there was a little rumor, a little tweet, saying I’m about to play the 4 so I’ve been wanting to play the 4, been wanting to guard out on the perimeter.” Ayton said, assumingly referring to a quote from late September at his fundraiser when he said power forward was his “born-and-raised position.”

“I think the league changing to where dudes are big and strong, versatile as well, so we want to be the same thing,” Ayton said. “We want to join them. Just us putting pressure on the rim, protecting the rim and cleaning up the glass. It’s even easier to me.”

Williams has been fearless this season with in-game tweaks when it comes to his rotation matching up with the opposition and this was an extreme example of it.

NBA lineups are certainly changing, but are getting smaller. Teams often close the game without a center on the floor. The trend has been especially relevant in the playoffs, where bigs continue to get played off the floor and picked on by the pace and space of the current game. Williams knows that and is incredibly intelligent while also accepting of the modern elements of NBA basketball in 2020.

Ayton has power forward characteristics to his game, which Williams said Jones was pointing out in that conversation, but everyone watching can agree that the big man dominating inside is the best version of him. And while his ability to space the floor makes it a little more tolerable stylistically, he’s not shooting the deep ball at this point.

Defensively, Ayton looked comfortable as always sliding his feet and has improved his reads from the weak side as a shot-blocker, something he can do more easily as a 4 when not having so much responsibility inside at center. That’s where the move is the biggest help.

It looked like offensively was much more of a work in progress beyond Ayton getting those looks in the post, which makes sense given the Suns haven’t had a full practice yet to even prepare sets and just had Friday morning’s shootaround.

Williams wouldn’t commit to this being a permanent change, but it certainly produced shockwaves for both his team and those close to it, especially given the discussion around the type of player Ayton is.

With the funk Williams’ team has been in the past few weeks, maybe that was his primary intention outside of anything else.

To get back to the game, the Knicks — who I must emphasize at this stage of the proceedings are a very bad basketball team lacking top-level talent — were the perfect opponent for the Suns given how they played.

The first half snoozing was forgiven after a mostly strong second half by the Suns, who didn’t hit a three-pointer in the first half. Phoenix (14-21) then proceeded to shoot 10-for-19 from three in the second half and had 69 points.

Williams referred to a “Suns edge” coming back.

Devin Booker took control of the game in the third quarter to ensure nothing got too out of hand in a game that didn’t lean too far in either direction, scoring 15 in the third quarter and 38 overall. You could see Booker sensing another winnable game he did not want to lose again like they have with a handful already this season, as he attempted a season-high 27 shots and was visibly frustrated by every little break not going the Suns’ way.

Kelly Oubre Jr. made all five of his three-point attempts in the second half and finished with 29 points.

Of all players, it was Baynes who scored 14 in the fourth quarter, a testament to the seesaw nature of the game.

The Knicks self-destructed down the stretch. Down six with 3:25 to go, Elfrid Payton missed a layup, Mitchell Robinson missed a tip-in, Payton missed a three, R.J. Barrett turned it over, Julius Randle turned it over and then Payton, you guessed it, turned it over.

In the five ensuing possessions by Phoenix, they only scored one point, but the seven-point advantage was enough to ride from there.

It was a game that was almost designed to create bold takeaways.

A daring starting lineup, one that speaks directly to a hot debate about the team’s most important asset, and another poor start that was a mixed performance against a terrible team.

In a weird way, all of that combined together makes it almost impossible to draw many conclusions from this one.

It more so adds intrigue to Sunday’s game, to see if Williams continues with his experiment, if the Suns learned at all from a tale of two halves and if the jolt those two things produced is enough to get this team back on track.

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