On Tuesday, the Houston Rockets will face off against the Phoenix Suns for the fourth and final time of the 2025-26 NBA season, giving fans yet another treat of a matchup. Houston has gone 3-0 against the new-look Suns, but the games have been closely played.<\/p>\n
Especially in Houston’s last game, in which Kevin Durant drilled a game-winning shot over his former team and pointed for them to go home afterwards. Durant also explained that the moment meant more for him, as he didn’t want to part ways with the franchise after just three short seasons (well, not even three full seasons).<\/p>\n
The Rockets find themselves riding a six-game winning streak and are essentially dead set at the fifth spot in the Western Conference postseason standings. They’re a game back from the fourth seed, which is currently occupied by the Denver Nuggets, who are now tied with the Los Angeles Lakers for the third seed.<\/p>\n
The Suns are 43-35 and occupy the seventh seed in the conference. Phoenix, of course, has been much better than expected. Especially heading into the season.<\/p>\n
Remember, they dismantled a trio of players signed to supermax deals, parting with Bradley Beal and Durant. Okay, so maybe Beal’s contract was an outlier and bad decision by the Washington Wizards, but he’s been a legitimate All-Star.<\/p>\n
The team replaced them with Jalen Green and Dillon Brooks — two players who have never even sniffed the All-Star team, even with it being watered down, due to players backing out of it. The immediate assumption was that the Suns would tank the season away, naturally and indirectly.<\/p>\n
Especially since they hired a new coach, not to mention losing Devin Booker, their lone hold over All-Star, who has missed a total of 16 games this season. And let’s not forget that Jalen Green missed 48 games on the year. <\/p>\n
Speaking of Green, Tuesday’s game against the Rockets will be his first opportunity to face his old team since last summer’s blockbuster trade. As for Brooks, he was expected to miss the duel, due to his 18th technical foul, which warrants a suspension. <\/p>\n
However, the Suns (and basketball fans) got good news on Monday, when the league office announced that they were rescinding the technical foul, thus lifting\/removing the suspension. Brooks has been the Suns’ saving grace this season and is having a career year, averaging 20.4 points (his first time crossing that mark throughout his career, 43.7 percent from the field, 34.6 percent from three and 85.8 percent from the foul line.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Tuesday, the Houston Rockets will face off against the Phoenix Suns for the fourth and final time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3791],"tags":[7,6,2065,472,4045,604],"class_list":{"0":"post-703508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix-suns","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-phoenix","11":"tag-phoenix-suns","12":"tag-phoenixsuns","13":"tag-suns"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116364081056527038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703508","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=703508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}