A look at how the last 3 Suns-Nuggets games played out

The Phoenix Suns and Denver Nuggets met three times during the regular season — all in January and all very close games.

As we gear up for the Suns vs. Nuggets playoff series, read through for a refresher on how their previous matchups against each other this season played out.

Jan. 1

The Suns’ first game against the Nuggets was a 106-103 win of importance, giving them a 5-1 league-leading record at the time.

At the time, it was also Deandre Ayton’s biggest game of the season, finishing with 22 points and 11 rebounds.

It was a resilient win as well, one fully worth celebrating and getting some momentum from. While that was certainly part of the experience, so too was wing Jae Crowder getting on his All-Star backcourt for making it harder than it needed to be.

Phoenix led by 11 at halftime and got that up to a 16 point advantage in the third after Devin Booker scored 10 points in three minutes. A third quarter collapse brought the Nuggets back within striking distance.

It was down to a two point Suns lead with 50 seconds to go in the fourth quarter when Booker committed his eighth turnover of the night. Denver went on a fastbreak off that steal and Gary Harris earned a foul call on Mikal Bridges.

The Suns challenged the call, it was reversed, Ayton won the jump ball and Chris Paul sank a fallaway that sealed the game.

“That’s just really poor,” Williams said of that third-quarter collapse. “But we bounce back. The level of resiliency to go through that and go into the fourth quarter — we didn’t score a ton in the fourth but we scored enough to win and we got enough stops to win the game.”

Jan. 22

The Suns crumpled in the second half of this 130-126 overtime loss as their crunch-time issues persisted.

After starting hot with 34 points in each of the first two quarters, Phoenix began to falter and committed eight turnovers in the fourth quarter alone.

And while that was happening, the Nuggets kept coming. They were relentless in playing downhill and getting to the basket. The Suns had no answer for that all night, giving up an astounding 80 points in the paint in a 130-126 loss that was as much of a “what just happened?” defeat as it could have been.

Now a tighter game than the Suns anticipated, it became tied with 47 seconds left. Both teams missed shots and the matchup was pushed into overtime.

In overtime, the Nuggets scored 16 points, nearly matching the Suns’ 19 in the entirety of the fourth quarter.

Three Suns players scored over 20 points in the overtime loss as Booker dropped 31 points.

Ayton collected a double-double with 27 points and 13 rebounds. Mikal Bridges also added 24 points.

Jan. 23

The day after the brutal overtime loss, the Suns were ready for a rematch against the Nuggets. However, the ending was deja vu from the night before, falling 120-112 in double overtime.

Booker was out after straining his left hamstring in overtime of the previous defeat, but Paul stepped up in his place, leading the Suns with 21 points, nine rebounds and 13 assists in 42 minutes.

In a game that had 25 lead changes and saw neither team outscore the other by more than four points in any of the four quarters, it would come down to crunch time.

Denver’s Jamal Murray hit an insane 3-pointer to tie the game. Jae Crowder landed his own shot from beyond the arc to send the game into double overtime.

Crowder’s heroics weren’t enough to keep Phoenix from a loss, though.

Kaminsky had no chance guarding the Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic in double overtime. Whether the Suns sent doubles or not, it didn’t matter and the Nuggets cruised from there.

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