Phoenix Suns hold on without Kevin Durant in win over Spurs

PHOENIX — In the second year of a Phoenix Suns roster headlined by Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal, the story continues to be health.

Just as Beal returned from missing one game in Tuesday’s 104-93 win over the San Antonio Spurs, Durant sprained his left ankle in the mid-second quarter and did not return.

“You know it’s part of our league,” Suns head coach Mike Budenholzer said of injuries. “We’re not any different. I’m sure there’s not a team in the league that’s not dealing with some people in and out of the lineups. Hopefully we teach and start to learn a way of playing that’s good for everybody regardless of who’s healthy and who’s not.”

Booker has played all 20 games but Beal came back following his fourth separate instance of sitting for some duration of games. Beal’s season-high streak for games played thus far is six, while Durant dressed in Phoenix’s first nine contests before recovering across the next seven. Tuesday was just his fourth game back.

“Just understanding that everybody goes through it,” Booker said. “All teams at some point in the season have to deal with it. I think it’s a special time for more opportunity for other people to get a chance because you never know what’s going to happen latear in the season or even the playoffs to where you just have to figure it out. No one talks about injuries after a season ends.”

The Big 3 did not debut last season until Dec. 13, game No. 24. It took until Jan. 6 for the trio to get a real string of games together, 16 straight. The total on the season was half the 82, 41. More concerning is how it added up from spurts of two, two, 16, two, one and 18 fixtures. Only two legitimate stretches of sustained time together on the court was not nearly enough.

This year, it has been two, one, four, two and now this one game against the Spurs.

Those chunks of quality time, like the first couple of weeks of this season (for the most part), are vital. And the Suns need more of ’em.

“The more time out there, the more things we figure out, the more situations that we’re put in that we learn from,” Booker said.

Maybe the collective time together is more important and the constant shuffling is overblown but from everything we’re told about teams meshing and building continuity, the disrupted rhythm matters.

Maybe it’s because Chris Paul was in the building but the thought of what he said toward the end of the 2022-23 regular season, from the night of Durant’s ankle injury that prevented Phoenix post-trade from growing much as a unit, kept ringing out.

“Anytime he’s not out there or other guys in our rotation, we’re gonna make do, but in order to really see what it looks like consistently, we gotta try and get our guys,” Paul said in March 2023.

This year is not as extreme as that situation or last year but is foreboding experience the Suns have to hope does not repeat.

Suns manage comfortable win

A San Antonio (11-10) team playing above expectations sunk back down to Earth a bit and a competent enough effort from the Suns got the job done.

Phoenix (12-8) was selling out on Victor Wembanyama inside the arc, a strategy that paid off immensely. The Spurs began the game 2-of-7 from 3-point range before missing their next 18 tries. This did not lead to as large of a deficit as it should have for them but kept the Suns in control of the game when they easily could have lost it.

Wembanyama went scoreless in the first half before scoring 12 points in the first 4:06 of the third quarter to get San Antonio within four. A 32-23 Spurs third quarter that took advantage of a stymied Suns flow without Durant looked to have the final frame and game up for grabs before Booker scored 12 of his 29 points to settle everything.

Backup point guard Monte Morris was in for most of that spurt after not playing in the first half. He was +13 across those eight minutes with four assists and zero turnovers.

Spurs guard Devin Vassell was 10-of-14 from the field for 25 points to give them some juice offensively but Wembanyama (6-of-18) couldn’t build off that hot start to the second half and the Spurs continued to clank 3s, finishing 8-for-44 (18.2%).

Booker reached the 15,000-point mark in his career, becoming only the 61st player in league history to do that for one franchise. Only Giannis Antetokounmpo and Stephen Curry have scored more points for a sole team since Booker entered the league in 2015. Booker is the second Sun to hit that total and is 639 points away from eclipsing Walter Davis’ franchise record of 15,666. Taking into account Booker’s current 24.7 points per game, he will likely break it some time in late January or early February.

After playing 31 minutes off the bench in Jusuf Nurkic’s first game out due to a right thigh contusion, rookie center Oso Ighodaro got the start on Tuesday. He performed well once more, contributing seven points, three rebounds, two assists and two steals in 28 minutes.

Due to the helter-skelter nature of Nurkic’s contributions and the massive gap of how good or bad he is playing, there is at least momentum building up toward a shakeup in how the rotation at the 5 spot pans out. Nurkic was rock solid for the majority of last season and provides Phoenix with legit size, physicality and experience, but the shortcomings of his game have been on much more prominent display this year.

He is shooting 59% at the rim, a rough mark for a center, after checking in at 60% last year, per Cleaning the Glass. The big difference has been how the playmaking big has not been taking care of the ball. At 16 games into the season, Nurkic is assisting only 7.8% of the Suns’ baskets when he’s on the floor as opposed to a 19.9 AST% last year. The turnover percentage has also grown from 19.1% to 21.5%. An AST% under 10% and TOV% over 20% hasn’t been done by someone starting every game they’ve played since Kendrick Perkins in the 2013-14 season, per Stathead.

That momentum will increase the longer Nurkic is this erratic on the floor or when Ighodaro performs at this level. The extra bounce and speed Ighodaro brings to the position makes a big-time difference, as evidenced by the last two Suns wins.

Phoenix was eliminated from the NBA Cup despite posting a similar point differential (+30) to last year (+34), when the same 3-1 record got the Suns into the bracket with a wild card berth. That will go to the Dallas Mavericks, who went on a 13-0 run late in the fourth quarter to rally back and beat the Memphis Grizzlies to be 3-1 with a +46 point differential. That was heavily weighted by Dallas’ 41-point win over the New Orleans Pelicans.

The Suns will now have one home game and one road game filled into the schedule on either Dec. 12 or 13 and either Dec. 15 or 16.

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