PHOENIX \u2014 The Phoenix Suns hope to conclude their four-game road trip with a win as the Chicago Bulls play host on Easter Sunday with a 12:30 PM AZ time tip. <\/p>\n
ESPN’s basketball index is giving the Suns a 71% chance to win, as Phoenix arrives to United Center has understandable favorites. Chicago’s lost their last eight-of-nine games and has nine total players on their injury report ahead of Sunday. Phoenix, meanwhile, just has Haywood Highsmith as out with Amir Coffey questionable. <\/p>\n
The Suns aren’t quite in better form, having won just three of their last 11 games \u2014 though Phoenix is set to participate in play-in tournament activities after the regular season while Chicago seems to be eying the best draft pick possible. <\/p>\n
Josh Giddey is currently third in the NBA in assists per night at 9.1 \u2014 though he’s questionable with left hamstring injury management. <\/p>\n
The Bulls are No. 2 in the NBA in terms of pace while the Suns are near the bottom of the league, offering a fairly stark contrast in play style today. Phoenix will look to get going early offensively against a Chicago defense that’s allowing the third-most points per night at 121.6. <\/p>\n
The Suns actually lost their last matchup of the season back on March 5 in 105-103 fashion, which led to head coach Jordan Ott sounding off on his squad’s lack of energy. <\/p>\n
“Credit to them. We’re trying to blitz to create some energy. We shouldn’t be asking for energy. We want to get to March and play meaningful games, we shouldn’t be asking for energy. That’s why we’re blitzing. We’re blitzing because we can’t contain the basketball and we’re looking for energy,” a clearly bothered Ott said after losing to Chicago. <\/p>\n
“We all season have fed off of our defense, creating offense. Zero steals in the 1st quarter, I think two at halftime. We’re trying to find any way possible to create some offense from our defense. Again, it’s not like they got into the bonus super early in multiple, multiple periods. That’s a part of what we do. We just didn’t do it soon enough. And then when you try to turn it up late, the other teams are already rolling.” <\/p>\n
On the tail end of their road trip, will the Suns be able to find that energy? That’s the ultimate question, as they’re clearly the better team at this point in the season. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 The Phoenix Suns hope to conclude their four-game road trip with a win as the Chicago…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[7,920,919,329,3824,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-699999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bulls","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bulls","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-bulls","12":"tag-chicagobulls","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116353519099505286","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}