PHOENIX — Devin Booker says it all the time. Your defense sets up your offense, and then your offense sets up your defense.
That full circle of modern basketball and its nonstop pace that often denies teams an opportunity to play with a set defense (and against one) was doing damage to the Phoenix Suns five games in, but it sure looked pretty when they got their own flow within that synergy in a 118-96 win over the Utah Jazz.
“I think it’s easier to catch a rhythm that way,” Booker said.
“If we’re able to get after offenses like that, then we’re able to use our defense to kind of fuel our offense,” head coach Jordan Ott added.
Best of all, this was a direct response to a brutal overtime loss in Utah four days earlier when the Suns gave up 28 offensive rebounds for 33 second-chance points. This time, the second-chance points were 16-9 Suns and the Jazz were held to 13 offensive rebounds.
In addition, giveaway woes through six games subsided to just 13 points off turnovers for Utah via the Suns’ 12. Both of those are season lows, with the 13 points easily ducking under the previous low of 23.
Phoenix was coming off its best defensive performance on Wednesday, one significantly bogged down by its own turnovers, directly causing the loss. While there have been small mistakes and brain farts aplenty through five games, the Suns have been able to stack a lot of clean defensive sequences, especially in the last few days. The potential was there if the hiccups went away, and that was the case to begin the game on Friday.
The Suns forced nine Jazz turnovers in the opening 12 minutes and scored 16 points off them while only committing one. Playing off misses and giveaways got the offense in motion despite Phoenix whiffing its first handful of attempts from 3. Booker benefitted from it the most, putting together what easily could have been a double-digit amount of assists had shots gone down, and he also had 12 of his 36 points, breaking a recent skid to open contests.
That allowed them to lead by 20 through one quarter after not even corralling a double-digit lead at all entering the night. So, that begged the question of how this group handles things when it is in control of a game?
The first signs of slippage for the Suns came with a little under six minutes left in the first half up 22. Across the final 5:54, they produced four points, but Utah wasn’t able to find many points of its own to create much unease. Ott wisely took a timeout in the middle of that, sensing the direction it was going despite a large margin.
The loose footing continued for the remainder of the half and Phoenix was fortunate the Jazz we expected to see all year showed up instead of the team from the earlier loss. A 12-4 Jazz spurt kept the Suns in front by 14 at halftime.
Eleven points less than three minutes into the third quarter indicated the Suns had found their balance, only for the dance to persist to force Ott to take another timeout to try to stabilize his guys, this time at a 13-point lead with 6:36 to go in the third quarter. Seven straight points from Booker a few minutes later got the advantage back to 20.
Utah got back within 12 at 6:32 left after scoring on eight of its first nine possessions, a marvel of an outburst considering they scored 67 points in the first three quarters. Phoenix, however, critically kept putting points on the board itself, making it just a 17-13 Jazz spurt. There was no last gasp after that.
Booker’s night served as a terrific reminder of what it looks like when he is playing elite basketball. The cadence, feel and flow were there all evening after being absent a week into the season. He posted 36 points, five rebounds, nine assists and one turnover in 39 minutes on 13-of-23 shooting. He easily could have been closer to 20 assists than 10 and for two straight games has played a much better brand of defense too.
“He’s getting blitzed most possessions and I feel like teams come into the game with this mindset of trying to get the ball out of his hands and make him play with the pass and he’s getting 30 without forcing it,” Allen said of Booker. “He’s getting off the ball and making the right play. … I feel like his patience, him making the right play has been great.”
A hand up over here for hardly mentioning Allen in this space six games in. He’s been very good about using the pace and downhill mentality the coaching staff wants this offense to have. Again, some of the turnovers are frustrating. But someone has to put pressure on the rim, and he continues to provide it in a way that gets the gears of the Suns offense spinning.
He ended up with 14 points, seven rebounds, six assists, three steals and a block. Phoenix’s backcourt suddenly looks to be in a fairly decent spot once Jalen Green gets healthy, given the play of Allen and Collin Gillespie.
Ryan Dunn required seven tries from 3 to get his one and only conversion. With that said, he played 31 minutes and amounted to 13 points, 11 rebounds, two assists and two steals. It is vital to the Suns’ long-term success that he earns enough trust from the coaching staff this year to get legitimate playing time and that’s now 59 minutes in the last two games after a total of 87 in the first four.
It was no 51-burger like Monday, but Lauri Markkanen still proved to be a tough cover for Phoenix, putting up 33 points (10-of-20) in 35 minutes.
Phoenix took 48 3s, making 17 (35.4%), and Ott deserves a ton of credit for how naturally that high number comes to be that leads the league. There are some early-clock attempts that surely rub some old-school minds the wrong way but even those are the ones the Suns want and the others within the flow of the offense are coming via a good cycle, mainly off Booker.
Green (right hamstring strain) and Dillon Brooks (core muscle strain) were both out again and each brought with them changes in status that did not inspire confidence that they could be back on Sunday, either.
Green was listed as questionable before Wednesday’s defeat, a designation change that often suggests a player is not only progressing but is close to playing. Instead, he was down as plain-old out prior to Friday. While there was no “setback,” he clearly regressed at some point, which you would be fair to argue constitutes as a setback anyway.
As for Brooks, his “right groin soreness” was now more defined as that core muscle strain. He, like Green, is being labeled as day-to-day. But a core muscle strain sure sounds more like a week-to-week injury, so we’ll just have to see if that’s the case through the continuous cycle of vague injury updates without timelines. Ott, however, stood by his initial assessment that the injury for Brooks is not serious.
Isaiah Livers was initially back in the rotation but was out for the second half due to a right hip contusion, the same hip he had surgery on that forced him to miss all of last year. Nigel Hayes-Davis got a DNP in the first half, with Jordan Goodwin taking his place. Hayes-Davis then got Livers’ spot in the second half. That is now every standard contract on the team getting a chance in the rotation besides rookies Khaman Maluach and Rasheer Fleming.
This was the beginning of NBA Cup group play for Phoenix. It lands in Group A, with Utah, the Oklahoma City Thunder, Minnesota Timberwolves and Sacramento Kings.
The group already looked weak going into the season, and that was before Minnesota got off to a slow start with Anthony Edwards sidelined. As usual, each team plays each other once. There is one group winner and then one wild card team that moves on to bracket play. In the brief two-year history, a 3-1 record is a minimum and has even proven to not be enough to advance.