Suns squander opportunity at win without Kevin Durant vs. Pelicans

The Phoenix Suns can still be a good basketball team without Kevin Durant (left ankle sprain). They just can’t play stable enough basketball right now to navigate the smaller margin of error, with the latest example coming in Thursday’s 126-124 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans.

There was a lot to like in this Phoenix performance. Very good stretches defensively and plenty of contributions from the depth made up for not having Durant, Ryan Dunn (left ankle soreness) or Jusuf Nurkic (right thigh contusion).

But the Suns (12-9) turned the ball over 17 times, many of which were mental errors, and they gave up 45 points in the third quarter after surrendering just 54 in the prior two quarters. They are now 1-7 without Durant.

Bradley Beal shot 10-of-18 for 24 points and was playing his ass off as always but had seven of those turnovers. Devin Booker got up to 28 points thanks to battling through a physical game and drawing fouls, but he had a woeful shooting night, going 6-of-20 while trying to find his space to score. It did not use to be this much of a battle for him to do so on lesser teams.

Booker actually kept the Suns in it late, drawing back-to-back trips to the free-throw line to tie the game with under a minute to go. But New Orleans’ C.J. McCollum isolated Grayson Allen and scored a tough bucket on good defense before Booker’s drive-and-kick pass found Allen for a 3 that did not go. The Pelicans got a breakaway dunk after that to all but seal it, until a missed Booker 3 was rebounded by Phoenix and found Allen for a 3 that did go. The Suns quickly fouled, and after McCollum missed one of two, they called a timeout down two with 2.7 seconds remaining.

The sideline out of bounds play got Booker the ball at the top of the key, where he lost his handle quickly before a second body came over to contest his shot that wouldn’t even get to the basket.

The Pelicans’ 45-point third quarter was the product of some quality shot-making through a comfort Phoenix allowed that resuscitated their offensive flow, and from there, a 5-for-21 first half from 3 on attempts the Suns were OK with giving up was followed by a 7-for-9 mark on 3s in that quarter. Their signature scorer Brandon Ingram got rolling within this, scoring 21 of his 29 points.

That is the type of snowballing when Booker has to stabilize the team, and that’s even when Durant is playing. He’s had a fantastic knack for doing so over the course of his career, but when he tried to trade buckets with Ingram, he missed his last four shots of the period. While Booker definitely had a hop in his step in the building he had previously scored 52 points in across two straight games, the extra juice didn’t translate to shots falling.

Royce O’Neale was outstanding with 19 points and made a handful of big plays in the fourth quarter to keep the Suns in it. The bench was terrific, with Bol Bol and Josh Okogie both providing quality minutes in a shorthanded situation. Grayson Allen’s 13 points, six rebounds and 10 assists continues his bounce-back run of play the last two weeks and Tyus Jones was very good as usual with 13 points and six assists.

The Suns could very well look painfully back at a first half when they were only up 11 against a fairly lifeless Pelicans performance before New Orleans came out of halftime a brand new team.

The Pelicans are the weirdest team in the NBA.

They made a smart, buy-low trade to acquire Dejounte Murray but surely did so thinking another move to balance out their roster was coming. It never came, likely due to the apron restrictions handcuffing the majority of the league’s trade flexibility. New Orleans was just going to roll with too many cooks in the kitchen before injuries hit it hard. Herb Jones, Trey Murphy III, McCollum and Murray all are back after playing under 10 games coming into Thursday while Zion Williamson made it two weeks into the year before injuring a hamstring that will nag at him in the way most straightforward injuries usually do for him.

Those two variables led to a 4-18 start for a squad many thought would be in the play-in mix and a few thought had a shot at sneaking in the top-six. Because of how awesome the West is, that had the Pelicans already 7.5 games out of the 10th seed despite the season just reaching the quarter mark. So if they’re going to turn this thing around, they have to pick up some momentum immediately in December. The gear they showed in the third quarter is the potential New Orleans has to do that.

Some numbers on the Durant-less stretch: The Suns weren’t actually that bad with him off the floor when he was healthy. In the opening nine games, Phoenix had a 4.6 net rating in those 88 minutes. Across the next seven Durant missed, the Suns had a -10.4 net rating. So, they were able to actually do fine without Durant over the blips of his one rest each half, but the weight of his absence over the course of a full game is when it was very much felt.

Beal in the two games he played before he also got hurt was great– 25 points per game on 51.5% shooting. And even though the eye test wasn’t so kind to Booker’s play, mainly due to the extra defensive attention, he still managed 25.4 PPG with a 44.8 FG%. From a production standpoint, those two have still been able to bring it.

A big issue was the supplementary shooting. Jones, O’Neale, Dunn and Allen combined to shoot 30.8% from 3-point range in the five games Beal and Durant were both injured for. Out of those 117 attempts, NBA.com’s tracking data had 112 of those down as “open,” which means a defender was not within four feet of the shooter.

With a look at how that translated tonight, Beal’s turnovers, Booker’s inefficiency and a big-time lapse defensively in the third quarter was the recipe for a loss on Thursday. If one of those three factors is slightly less damaging, Phoenix wins this game comfortably. A good sign was Allen, Jones and O’Neale shooting 10-for-21 on 3s.

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