Well, they all can’t be magical now, can they?
The Phoenix Suns looked like a shorthanded team on the second night of a back-to-back against a good team on Monday night when they lost to the Houston Rockets 114-92 at Mortgage Matchup Center.
The game that was supposed to feature the return of Kevin Durant to the Valley didn’t. Durant missed the contest and wasn’t in the building as he deals with a family issue. His absence, much like the night of March 8, 2023, when Durant was supposed to make his Suns home debut but turned an ankle in warmups, sucked a lot of energy out of the building.
The rest of the energy was sucked out by Houston’s relentless defense, which held the weary Suns to 41% shooting, a season-low in points and only 11 assists — the third-lowest total in a single game in franchise history. Add in 21 turnovers by the home team, and this was a tough watch.
The Suns were outplayed, outhustled and out-everythinged by the Rockets on this night. But for me, there was really only one takeaway, and that was that the shorthanded Rockets are a better team than the shorthanded Suns.
In addition to Durant, Houston was missing Dorian Finney-Smith, Tari Eason and Fred VanVleet while the Suns were without Grayson Allen, Jalen Green, Ryan Dunn and Mark Williams, who once again didn’t play the second of back-to-backs as the team continues to manage his long injury history.
Despite not providing much to cheer about on Monday night, mission accomplished. The Suns still won two of three on a homestand against three sure-fire Western Conference Playoff teams.
But buckle up Suns fans, the schedule is about to get really unforgiving.