Suns find ability to grind for hard-earned win vs. Lakers

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns are 3-1 with plenty to improve on after a 109-105 win on Monday over the Los Angeles Lakers, and their ability to win through that with real resolve speaks to the potential this group has.

This one could have gone south quickly, as it did a whole lot last season.

“I’m sure everybody’s watching the game and all they could think about was last season and how we were down early and had some slow starts,” Kevin Durant said. “I loved how we cut the lead down quick. … Showed our poise, it showed that defensively we stay together.”

Los Angeles blitzed the Suns across the first seven minutes of the game that felt like a basketball ambush. The Lakers put a clear emphasis on pace off makes or misses before immediately trying to attack the basket. The crazy part is that Anthony Davis, who looked like an MVP candidate again, settled for two jumpers early before morphing into Godzilla over a stretch that put L.A. up 18.

Durant responded by scoring a dozen in the quarter to cut the deficit to nine and then Bradley Beal kept that going, getting the Lakers’ lead down further before 14 second-quarter points from Devin Booker got the Suns up two at halftime.

This was another ride on the roller-coaster that is Jusuf Nurkic when he is struggling, to the point where the ride feels like it’s never going to end and the mistakes compound themselves. Whether it was mishandling the ball, missing shots around the rim or getting called for offensive fouls, it was legitimately remarkable how many impactful negative plays he made in such a short time. Nurkic exited at -18 following his first shift, and while he certainly played bad in that 6:44, it didn’t feel like he was the primary culprit for all of that.

But when Nurkic checked back in for the second quarter across a 3:08 stretch, you could feel the momentum of the game changing again when he screwed up. Long-time readers will remember us here coining the term “Bender Groans,” a moment in which former top-five pick Dragan Bender would mess up and the crowd would respond in an admittedly awkward way. Deandre Ayton reached this status late in his tenure, and it took lots of growing pains for Bender to arrive there too. Nurkic’s last goof, a post-up attempt he lost control of, inspired Suns fans to let a lot of those out.

“He understands what it is and you never want the weight when you play bad,” Booker said of Nurkic. “He’s a competitor, so he’s gonna come in and he’s gonna play better and we’re gonna rally behind him.”

Nurkic did start the second half but was taken out in a little over five minutes. He wouldn’t check back in until the end of the game for rebounding. Head coach Mike Budenholzer attributed some of that to how well backup Mason Plumlee was playing. He provided good rim protection in his best overall game of the season.

“I thought he was fantastic tonight,” Budenholzer said of Plumlee. “There’s different versions of going with the hot hand.”

Out of all the things, the Lakers’ shot-making outdid the Suns’ in the third quarter to get L.A. back in the lead, up nine entering the fourth.

Phoenix once again stuck with it, playing tremendous defense since the early gaffe in the first quarter.

“There’s been stretches in each of the games where the defense has been at a pretty high level,” Budenholzer said. “And the hard thing is to sustain it for 48 minutes. … To go down like we did, I really feel like it was our defense that allowed us to get back in it and find a way to win.”

“It can be dangerous,” Durant said of the defensive potential the Suns have. “I think the more we get on the same page, the more we get a little bit more creative with the stuff we’re doing out there. … Coach is really good at letting [the players] do stuff like [adjusting] so once we get more and more on the same page, we’ll do creative stuff like that.”

That backbone let Phoenix retake the lead a few minutes into the final frame via big-time contributions out of Ryan Dunn and Royce O’Neale off the bench, minutes in which the Suns went small without Nurkic, Plumlee or Oso Ighodaro on the floor. Budenholzer even let it rock for a few possessions with Davis back in before Plumlee returned.

Durant then took over, and admittedly did so in the slowed down, matchup hunting that has plagued the Suns at times in this first week of the season. He scored the Suns’ next eight points in the mid-fourth to take it down to 105-101 Phoenix with 2:17 remaining.

LeBron James drilled a 3 to briefly snap out of his jaw-dropping off-night (more on that in a minute) and then Lakers coach J.J. Redick decided he had seen enough of Durant beating him. He sent instant double-teams Durant’s way, and after Booker missed a 3 off those, Plumlee snagged a crucial offensive rebound. The next set of ball rotations off the double led to O’Neale, who calmly knocked down a floater.

The Suns didn’t quite figure out the spacing off the doubles for Durant in the closing 90 seconds, with the ball finding Booker back-to-back possessions while getting defended by Davis. But some key Lakers misses kept Phoenix afloat, including a gorgeous play drawn up by Redick that got Austin Reaves wide open, a rebound Dunn battled for before Booker saved it from going out of bounds right to Durant.

“I knew he was in the area — that was an iffy play, because you never know,” Booker said of it.

The Suns were up three at 7.2 seconds to go when Durant fouled James just before James was going to shoot in order to trigger free-throw shenanigans. The Lakers elected for James to miss the second on purpose after making the first, and in typical James fashion, it was a perfect miss off the bottom of the rim to create a loose ball, but the Suns got it for the win.

Durant produced 30 points, eight rebounds, four assists and four blocks, Booker added 33 points and even though Beal was 1-of-7 from 3, he was just as good as those two if not better. He was a deserved +14 and is playing great all-around basketball, especially on defense.

O’Neale’s 12 points, nine rebounds, four assists and two blocks in 25 minutes made him +25, meaning he is now +71 through four games. That is tied for the highest mark in the NBA with Boston Celtics guard Derrick White.

“There’s lots of little subtle things that go into winning and Royce just really understands those and does them night after night,” Budenholzer said.

Grayson Allen returned from his two-game absence with a dozen minutes. It’s a testament to how fantastic Dunn and O’Neale have been that the Suns haven’t missed Allen much, their most consistent player last season. Some of that also has to do with Budenholzer opening up his minutes more than he usually does, playing Booker 39 and Durant 38 on Monday.

This was literally a once-in-a-thousand performance from James, who shot 3-of-14 (21.4%) from the field. That’s his lowest field goal percentage in a regular season game since opening night of the 2007-08 season 1,179 games ago, per Stathead. As a testament to the basketball fan Durant is, he correctly remembered the opponent James faced that night, a game that happened on the date of his NBA debut.

Davis ended up with 29 points and 15 rebounds while Rui Hachimura has been a stud for L.A. early, providing 20 points and 10 rebounds in this one.

The Suns only committed 11 turnovers and were actually +5 on the free-throw line. Even more bizarre was the Lakers getting a 25-21 edge in assists. T’was a weird night.

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