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5 observations from Suns' gritty Game 3 road win vs. Pelicans
NEW ORLEANS — It wasn’t as convincing as the fan base probably hoped to see from the NBA’s No. 1 seed, but the Phoenix Suns took back control of their first-round playoff series Friday night.
With a 114-111 road win over the New Orleans Pelicans, the Suns regrouped from their disappointing Game 2 loss that saw Devin Booker leave with an injured hamstring. Phoenix had a few days to absorb’ Booker’s uncertain timetable, stew on the loss and refocus for Game 3, which they used to take a 2-1 series lead after an up-and-down affair.
Here are the five biggest things that stood out from a gritty yet encouraging win at the Smoothie King Center.
1. People took (the Point) God’s name in vain
All the concern over Booker’s hamstring was warranted for obvious, championship-aspiring reasons, but lost in the narrative was a certain Point God. And that Point God’s name was repeatedly taken in vain between Games 2 and 3.
ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins picked the Pelicans to win in seven games after Booker went down. Undisputed’s Skip Bayless predicted the Suns would lose both games on the road to go down 3-1. And Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green said New Orleans now had the two best players in the series with Brandon Ingram and CJ McCollum…but “no disrespect to Chris Paul.”
Based on his performance, CP3 was acutely aware of what people were saying.
Paul finished Game 3 with 28 points, 14 assists and 4 rebounds, shooting 10-for-18 from the floor and 7-for-8 from the free-throw line in 40 minutes.
“He’s just one of those players that plays the right way,” coach Monty Williams said. “He understands the when and how to create for himself and others. And the leadership qualities that you guys don’t see in the timeouts is probably just as impressive as what he does on the floor, even though what he does on the floor is so meaningful to the team.”
Throughout the game, Paul’s former teammate and assistant coach Willie Green threw different coverages at the Point God. When the Pelicans were in drop coverage with Jonas Valanciunas, Paul punished them with midrange jumpers and feeds to a rolling Deandre Ayton. When they switched with Larry Nance, Paul went straight at him again and again. And when they trapped in the fourth quarter, he found open teammates cutting to the free-throw line, opening up looks for everyone else.
“It’s amazing, just seeing the concentration, the focus and just the brains that he has of the game, and the vision that he has of the game,” JaVale McGee said. “Just the way that he knows where guys are gonna be, he knows what’s gonna happen, he reads it. He’ll read a play, he’ll do the play, read it, and be like, ‘They’re playing us like this now.’ And then they’ll switch and do something else, and he’ll go, ‘Okay, they switched into this.'”
Paul scored 19 of his 28 points in the fourth quarter, including four straight midrange jumpers to turn a 1-point deficit into a 5-point advantage.
Paul’s surgical execution in the final frame was so ruthlessly efficient that even the Pelicans’ camera operator near media row was hurling obscenities at the former New Orleans star by the time it was over. A “Fuck Chris Paul” chant even broke out, though CP3 and Williams were quick to dismiss it.
“Listen, this city is not about that,” Williams said. “I would say whoever did that is probably a small, small minority. This city has always been good to Chris, and those kinds of chants aren’t indicative of the people of this city. I don’t know who did that, and I really don’t care. I know that the majority of the people in this city respect Chris, and what he’s been able to do in this city for families and kids speaks for itself.”
“I grew up here,” Paul affirmed. “Six of the best years of my life, I played for New Orleans, and you can’t base a select number of people on an entire — you know? I know how I am with this city. That’ll never change. I had my parents here, my family here, it’s nothing like it. It’ll always be so much love between me and this city here, so I don’t never pay that no mind.”
Even if that chant was just a few rowdy fans who spent their Friday imbibing at French Quarter Fest, Paul’s robotic execution down the stretch had Pelicans fans feeling a certain type of way by the time it was finished.
Interestingly enough, it was Ayton who coaxed that dominance out of one of the NBA’s greatest all-time closers.
“I just picked my spots, finally had a couple shots go down,” Paul said. “Just try to be aggressive, listen to DA. DA kept telling me he was gonna get me loose, and he told me to stop passing and to shoot the ball.”
“He did his job in the first quarters to really get everybody going and the court started opening up, and I started hearing different terminology out there on the floor, and I’m telling C, I’m like, ‘They’re back to normal coverage, I’m gonna need you to shoot the ball,'” Ayton explained. “‘Like, I’m gonna get a clean hit, I just need you to come off and do your thing.’ And he did, and it felt normal.”
With 28 assists and zero turnovers over the last two games, Chris Paul now has the most assists without a single turnover over a two-game playoff span since at least 1978. He’s got 38 assists and only 2 turnovers in the series. And the Suns’ 23-7 advantage in points off turnovers in Game 3 was due in large part to his unwillingness to cough the ball up.
The Suns may be missing Devin Booker, and they’ll need him to win a title. But all the doom and gloom proclamations bordered on Point God disrespect, and Game 3 was a great reminder how shortsighted it was.
2. Interior dominAYTON
Paul closed, but the Suns would’ve lost without the monster game Deandre Ayton had through the first three quarters. Finishing with a playoff career-high 28 points, including 21 in the first half, DA played Jonas Valanciunas off the floor with a bevy of hook shots, paint touches and even turnaround jumpers.
He also chipped in 17 rebounds, 3 steals and 1 block while shooting 13-for-20 from the field.
“I kicked myself the other day, when I looked at the stat sheet, and I kind of felt it in Game 2, that he didn’t get enough opportunities,” Williams admitted. “Tonight, we tried to look at him on the post a little bit, and then I thought Chris did a really good job of trying to get him the ball in short roll. But he was dominant tonight. When you look at those numbers, 28 and 17 on the road, and we needed every one of them.”
In 35 minutes, Ayton was a team-high +18. His aggressiveness on the boards helped limit the Pelicans to one offensive rebound in the second half, and the Suns enjoyed a 64-40 advantage in points in the paint — a stark contrast from the first two games:
“I know C brings a lot of attention going to that middy, so I made sure I just got it in and just try to take care of the rest when I get the ball,” Ayton said.
DA wasn’t the only Suns big man feasting on the interior in Game 3. In only 12 minutes off the bench, JaVale McGee chipped in 15 points and 3 rebounds on 7-of-8 shooting.
“JaVale was amazing,” Paul said. “We talked about it, this was the third game when Larry Nance comes in the game, that’s when they tend to switch everything. So we wanted to try to punish him on the inside, and JaVale’s energy is contagious.”
Ayton, McGee and Bismack Biyombo have all mentioned at various points throughout the season how efficient the Suns are at setting up their big men for success. Friday was another example of how much better Phoenix is at enabling their big men to punish mismatches, and Williams even said they view those shorter shots near the basket — which rarely lead to long rebounds and fast-break opportunities — as a way to flatten the Pelicans out.
“I just feel like a couple of years ago when we first got here, we weren’t as smooth in that environment — how to pass the ball, teaching the bigs to play in Tim Duncan, catch high, keep it high,” Williams said. “They’re switching a number of pick-and-rolls, and you have to make ’em pay.”
With the Suns’ bigs feasting down low, that makes everyone else’s job easier. Phoenix didn’t shoot particularly well, but McGee is aware how advantageous it is to be able to punish switching defenses with size.
“How I feel is when they feed us excessively, it opens everything up,” McGee said. “Now the 3s are open, now they’re in the paint worried about us, and then we have big men who actually can pass the ball.”
“Monty has definitely just let his dogs out to where he’s letting the teams have it, making sure we locked in down low and making sure we have great seals and legal, physical movement when it comes to fronting the post and stuff like that,” Ayton said. “So we’re ready for all that.”
3. Certain role players need to step up
If it weren’t for the Herculean efforts of Paul and Ayton, the Suns would probably be down in this series. The margin for error is a lot slimmer with Booker sidelined, and each new role player who disappears makes it worse.
Jae Crowder is the most noticeable struggling role player, given that he’s a starter. His defense has gone overlooked, but his 6-of-25 shooting line — including 0-for-14 from 3-point range — in this series makes it hard to focus on anything else. The Pelicans have looked more than happy to let him launch 3s and make plays, and Crowder has to start making them pay. So far, he has a grand total of 16 points on 25 shots.
The only reason Cam Payne isn’t drawing the same ire is he plays significantly fewer minutes. Still, it was hard to ignore his 3 points in 13 minutes on 1-of-5 shooting. Payne now has 11 points on 5-of-17 shooting for the series, and he has yet to hit a 3-pointer (0-for-7).
“I think anybody that doesn’t score the way that they’re capable of scoring has to find ways to affect the game in a different way, and he’s more than capable of that,” Williams said before Game 3. “The good thing is he puts the work in and the numbers say that he’s due for an offensive output anyway. But you can still affect the game in other ways: defending, rebounding, getting deflections. The biggest thing for Cam right now is to be himself and not allow the last two games to affect him, because every game has a life of its own.”
Unfortunately, Payne couldn’t get back on track on Friday. Throw in Torrey Craig having scored zero points in his 29 minutes, plus Landry Shamet being 1-for-7 from deep, and Phoenix’s highly-vaunted bench well is drying up fast. Poster dunks are nice, but going 0-for-5 from 3 stung in Game 3.
“I thought the way he’s attacked the rim in these past two games says a lot about, there’s layers to his game,” Williams said of Shamet. “And I think the more he plays, we’re gonna see some of his shots go down.”
The Suns had better hope so, because right now, they’re relying solely on an unfair burden being placed on the shoulders of Paul, Ayton and Mikal Bridges.
4. Don’t give this team reason to be angry
Midway through the second quarter, Jaxson Hayes blew a fuse. Whether it was Crowder’s trash talk, the physicality of the game or simply losing his cool, Hayes made an ugly, non-basketball play, body-checking Crowder in the face for a Flagrant 2 foul.
“When he got hit, I didn’t even see the play,” Williams said. “And then the coaches told me it was one of those hits that you just don’t want to see in basketball. And as a man, you want to respond, but we’ve always said we want to win the game, and not the fight.”
Hayes was ejected for the cheap shot. Crowder surprisingly got a technical foul out of the exchange, but the Suns closed first half on a 16-5 run from there.
“When things like that happen to us, we don’t shy away from it,” McGee said. “It actually makes us go harder. So I wouldn’t recommend that for teams.”
One would think Suns opponents learned from the regular season. Against the New York Knicks, a scuffle with Julius Randle led to Cam Johnson’s career-high 38 points and game-winning 3. Against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Karl-Anthony Towns made the mistake of doing the “too small” sign to Crowder after a dunk, and the Suns rolled all over them after that.
And on Friday, Hayes’ dirty play once again galvanized Phoenix.
“Hits like that, that gets us going, I think we needed a hit like that,” Ayton agreed. “That’s our brother. Whether it’s incidental or not, that made us play harder. And that’s the type of juices that keep us going and make us want to step through the whole gas pedal and break it.”
5. Suns should be fine once the 3s fall
The gritty, nerve-wracking nature of didn’t reassure anyone this would be a quick series for the Suns. And yet…for the second game in a row, it’s hard not to walk away thinking about erratic 3-point shooting trends that should revert to the mean here soon.
In Game 2, it was the Pelicans’ hot shooting that felt unsustainable. New Orleans made 17 3-pointers and shot 56.7 percent from behind the arc — both of which were season highs. It was unreasonable to expect a team that ranked 27th in 3-point percentage this year to submit another shooting night like that against one of the NBA’s top-five 3-point defenses.
In Game 3, it felt like the Suns’ poor 3-point shooting couldn’t possibly continue. While the Pelicans regressed to the mean, going 11-for-32 (34.4 percent), Phoenix was even worse, shooting a putrid 4-for-26 (15.4 percent).
“I told the guys that exact word: resolve,” Williams said. “They’ve been having big third quarters against us. For whatever reason, we couldn’t make a shot, but we were getting quality looks in the third, and we told our guys in a late timeout in the third, ‘We can’t waver right now, because we’re getting good shots, putting pressure on our defense, because we’re playing in transition a little bit.’ But the shots were there.”
The Suns were -21 in points off 3-pointers, and it’s alarming that Ayton (two) has made more 3s so far in this series than Crowder, Payne, Shamet and Craig combined (one). The playoffs are the worst possible time to go cold, and so far, Phoenix is shooting 30.3 percent from deep — the second-worst mark of among playoff teams.
The Suns are viewing that poor shooting optimistically, especially after a night where so many were wide open.
“The thing about it is we got great looks, and all season long, we’ve been a really good shooting team,” Paul said. “So to win this game and for us to not shoot it that well, that’s a plus for us. Because next game, if we can get those same shots, hopefully we’ll knock ’em down.”
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