Earlier this week, we asked Suns fans what their favorite victory has been from the team’s first quarter of the season and one game took the crown by a large margin: Phoenix’s 114-113 comeback win against the Minnesota Timberwolves on November 21st. The team was down eight with 50 seconds left but rallied back, [capped off with a Collin Gillespie game-winner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_Rpo1Giju0).
The results do not surprise me. Not only were the Suns down eight with a minute left, something that teams seldomly comeback from, but they were doing it without Devin Booker and Dillon Brooks for most of the comeback, who were leading the team in assists and points in the game respectively and both fouled out earlier in the quarter.
While I wasn’t at the game, from the Phoenix Telecast, the Mortgage Matchup Center appeared to erupt after the final buzzer sounded. Gillespie’s game-winner went viral online, with 3.2 million views on X.
With forced turnovers, three-point shooting and playing with a compromised roster to end the game, the way Phoenix closed out Minnesota is what many Suns fans and media pundits have lauded them for in the first few months of the 2025-2026 campaign, where they’ve exceeded many people’s preseason expectations for them.
The frenetic and hectic ending of the game left Suns fans messing with Timberwolves fans who were messing with Suns fans earlier in the contest. This was Phoenix’s first win against Minnesota since the 2023-2024 regular season. The Timberwolves swept the Suns in the 2024 playoffs in Phoenix’s only playoff series they played with Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal and Devin Booker all on the roster. The teams have some recent history.
The win was also the team’s second victory of the season against a team with a winning percentage over .500. The first one came against the San Antonio Spurs where they forced Victor Wembanyama into a 9-point, six-turnover game on 4/14 shooting. Phoenix won that contest in convincing fashion, securing the victory 130-118, but the team was leading by more than 20 for a large part of the second half. That got the second-most votes.
Phoenix’s ability to shoot the ball, (they’ve made the sixth-most threes this year at the fifth-best percentage in the league) has helped keep them in many contests like the game against Minnesota, and their ability to force turnovers, (they’re averaging the most steals per game in the league) helps them expand their leads and cut down deficits.
Did the fans get this one right? Let us know why or why not.