After a pair of home wins for the Phoenix Suns, the team popped up to San Francisco to play the Warriors on Tuesday night, and the swarming defense that stung Wemby was not nearly as effecitve as the team played
from behind all evening in a 118-107 loss to the Warriors.
Phoenix put up a fight, but the effort came after spotting Golden State a 24-point cushion. The Suns clawed back to within eight in the fourth, only to run out of gas before the finish line.
Devin Booker did what he could, dropping 38 points on 13-of-24 shooting. But the Warriors bench turned the game on its head, hanging 63 points and swinging the momentum early. Golden State feasted on defensive lapses, hitting 19 threes at a 45% clip, with five players in double figures. Steph Curry led the way with 28, while Moses Moody surprised everyone with 24 off the bench.
The loss drops Phoenix to 3-5 on the season and 0-2 in Pacific Division play.
Game Flow
First Half
After their best shooting night of the season, the Suns opened this one with a thud. Or should I say dud?
The ball wasn’t finding the bottom of the net. After missing five of their first six from deep, they watched Golden State rattle off a 14-2 run powered by the unlikely hot hand of Quinten Post. Not Steph Curry. Quinten Post. He hit his first three from beyond the arc.
From the jump, it was clear this game would be physical. The officials kept their whistles in their pockets, letting plenty of contact go both ways. Only two fouls were called in the entire quarter.
That level of physical play led to several missed finishes at the rim for the Suns, who found themselves down 14 after one. They shot 8-of-27 from the field, a rough 29.6%.
Golden State’s bench carried the load, putting up 16 points, nearly matching Phoenix’s entire total in the quarter. The Warriors hit 7-of-11 from deep and made the Suns pay for every mistake. Even with only two turnovers, Phoenix still gave up five points off them.
After one, it was 33-19. Suns trailing.
The second quarter opened with a pair of threes from the guy who leads the league in makes off the bench. He hit one, then picked off a lazy inbounds pass from Draymond Green and buried another.
The sequence trimmed the deficit to 10.
A 7-0 run led by Moses Moody pushed things back the other way. He had 13 points in 11 minutes off the bench in the first half. That’s right, it wasn’t Steph Curry or Jimmy Butler cutting the Suns apart. It was Moody, Hield, and Post, who combined to go 9-of-13 from deep with 33 first-half points. The Suns, as a team, had 5 made threes.
The mistakes kept piling up. Slow rotations. Missed box-outs. Sloppy turnovers. The kind of habits that come back to bite. Eight turnovers led to 13 Golden State points before halftime. Mix that with a Warriors bench that couldn’t miss, and the Suns had dug a hole that was going to take some serious work to climb out of.
Steph Curry heated up late, knocking down a pair of threes that killed any hint of a Suns run. Devin Booker had 17 points on 3-of-7 shooting, but he was the only Sun in double figures heading into the break.
At halftime, the Suns trailed 68-49.
Second Half
The second half opened the same way the first one ended. A wide-open layup for Steph Curry, a turnover by Phoenix, and another Curry three. Sigh.
There wasn’t much to highlight early in the third, though Mark Williams did grab his 11th rebound, marking the 1,000th of his career.
Jimmy Butler was done for the night with lower back soreness, sitting out the entire second half. The door was open, but could the Suns walk through it? Golden State kept them at arm’s length for much of the quarter, yet Phoenix stayed aggressive. Their pressure paid off with an 11-0 run, capped by a Devin Booker three — his first of the night — to cut the lead to 12.
Booker played the entire quarter, scoring 17 points on a perfect 5-of-5 from the field and 1-of-1 from deep. He passed the 240-point mark on the season through eight games, breaking his own franchise record for the most points in that span.
Phoenix shot 67% in the quarter, holding the Warriors to 2-of-9 from deep. Despite trailing by as many as 24, the Suns outscored Golden State 34-24 and trimmed the deficit to 9 heading into the fourth.
The fourth opened the way the first half had gone. The Suns attacked the rim but couldn’t finish, while the Warriors kept knocking down corner threes like it was routine. Within four minutes, the lead ballooned back to 19.
Like a boxing match though, Phoenix kept swinging. They pieced together a 13-3 run midway through the fourth, cutting it to 8 as Booker poured in his 38th point. The Suns once again showed they’re zombie-like, a team that refuses to die.
One thing that never seems to go your way during a comeback is the whistle. The Suns felt that all night. Officials who swallowed it early suddenly found it in the fourth, halting Phoenix’s rhythm every time momentum began to build. Seven personal fouls were called on the Suns in the quarter, all while the game still hung in the balance.
In a moment fitting for the chaos, Dillon Brooks somehow picked up a technical. From the bench. In street clothes. Wearing sunglasses.
The Suns fought to the end, but the push came up short. Golden State outscored Phoenix 36-24 in the fourth, closing the night with a 118-107 win.
Up Next
The Suns head to the City of Angels for their second game this season against the Los Angeles Clippers. Phoenix played them a week and a half ago, losing 129-102 at the Intuit Dome.
