Devin Booker, Cam Johnson shoot Suns to victory over Thunder
Dec 23, 2021, 11:00 PM
PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns will have cleaner overall wins this season than Thursday’s 113-101 final over the Oklahoma City Thunder.
But in a few of their NBA-leading 26 wins, they’ve shown a unique ability to turn it on when they need to, commonly referred to as flipping a switch.
It’s something excellent teams have in their arsenal during regular seasons where consistency wanes for everyone, less so over full games and more across quarters.
“It’s hard to play as hard as we demand of the guys to play because we know that’s going to help us be successful but we’ve already shown that we can do it for long stretches and long periods of time,” head coach Monty Williams said of the inconsistent energy in Thursday’s win.
Ahead of Christmas Day’s highly anticipated Round 3 against the Golden State Warriors on Saturday and with Oklahoma City on the second game of a back-to-back, the Suns came out of the gates against a now 11-20 Thunder squad as if they knew this could easily be a trap game of sorts.
A 29-17 first quarter saw Phoenix quickly seize control, only to fizzle across the next 17-ish minutes and allow Oklahoma City to take it back with a six-point lead.
The Suns were sloppy across that stretch, committing poor turnovers and repeatedly fumbling opportunities to score around the rim. The defensive energy wasn’t there, either.
“This is the NBA,” Suns center Deandre Ayton said. “You can’t disrespect your opponent, you can’t play to the level of competition because this is the NBA. Them guys played hard until the end.”
A better team would have made it more of an uphill battle to face but the Thunder are not that, possessing the league’s second-worst offense and three-point shooting percentage (30.8%).
A team starting three rookies quickly got overwhelmed once the Suns were sparked by a jolt in the third quarter, mostly provided by Devin Booker, who scored 15 of his 30 points in those 12 minutes.
“I thought our level of energy dropped in the second (quarter) but in the third, we exceeded any energy level we had,” Williams said.
Phoenix led by 13 after a 28-9 run in the final 7:07 of the third quarter and held that separation at the start of the fourth through eight straight Suns points from Cam Johnson.
As the Suns tried to put the Thunder away midway through the fourth quarter, Oklahoma City answered a Phoenix bucket with their own on four straight possessions to trail by just seven with 3:13 remaining.
While Oklahoma City kept scoring, so did Phoenix and the Thunder eventually just ran out of time.
Johnson was a perfect 7-of-7 (5-for-5 on 3s) from the field for 21 points with nine rebounds, three assists and two steals while Booker added seven rebounds, assists, two steals and a block to his 30-point outing.
Oklahoma City had starting center Derrick Favors out for rest, so it went with second-round pick Jeremiah Robinson-Earl at the 5 spot, a 6-foot-8 forward. Despite that size advantage for Ayton, he wasn’t able to string together his fifth straight awesome performance.
It was a rare off-night for Ayton finishing inside, shooting 8-of-15 with 19 points, 12 rebounds and two blocks.
“I told him, he was missing some shots around the basket, I said, ‘You gotta go up with some force and tear the rim off the backboard,'” Williams said of Ayton.
His intent, however, was consistent and didn’t go away, which is all that really matters in the grand scheme of things for a Thursday night game in late December.
“He missed a few around the basket tonight and after that, in the second half, I thought he was much more aggressive to dunk the ball and played with a much better energy in the second half,” Williams said.
That dipped the Suns’ points in the paint a bit to a lowly 34, an area others could have helped as well. I’m sure you triple-checked your box scores like mine when you saw JaVale McGee with only two points and four rebounds in 17 minutes after his tremendous production all year.
Some of that was surely by design for a Thunder defense that tried its best to collapse and take the Suns’ terrific center pairing out of the game.
“They do collapse,” Williams said of it. “When DA was diving tonight, there was a crowd there.”
The Suns hit enough 3s to offset that, 15 to be exact, and nine alone came from Booker (four) and Johnson (five).
Phoenix is averaging 34.8 three-point attempts per game in its last six contests, an encouraging uptick after entering Thursday ranked 27th at 31.4 a night.
The Thunder’s tremendous point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander tried his best to keep his group in it, registering 29 points on 10-of-20 shooting with five rebounds and seven assists.
Suns fans know that familiar feeling of watching an uber-talented young star in the making surrounded by names you’ve gotta double-check the roster sheet for on a bad team. Gilgeous-Alexander will surely be in the mix of the Western Conference’s top-half soon enough.
