{"id":705523,"date":"2026-04-08T16:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T16:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/705523\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T16:26:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T16:26:15","slug":"vinnys-view-suns-unravel-after-inspiring-1st-quarter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/705523\/","title":{"rendered":"Vinny&#8217;s View: Suns unravel after inspiring 1st quarter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The good: The Phoenix Suns played possibly their best and most inspired first quarter of the year. <\/p>\n<p>They built a 21-point lead over a shellshocked Houston Rockets team. They outworked, out-thought and outplayed the visitors in every aspect. The energy inside Mortgage Matchup Center was as good as it\u2019s been in the last three seasons.<\/p>\n<p>The bad: <a href=\"https:\/\/arizonasports.com\/nba\/phoenix-suns\/fade-durants-return\/3617181\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Everything that happened<\/a> after that.<\/p>\n<p>As they have quite regularly recently, the Suns looked positively pedestrian over the next 36 minutes in a telling 119-105 loss to the Rockets. <\/p>\n<p>It was Houston that was the aggressor from the second quarter on. The Rockets turned 24 offensive rebounds into 37 second-chance points, exploiting the Suns\u2019 lack of size and diminished energy. How thorough was Houston\u2019s beatdown on the offensive boards? Even Kevin Durant got one.<\/p>\n<p>What I couldn\u2019t understand was the Suns\u2019 rotation decisions in this game. <\/p>\n<p>The rebounding differential was pronounced, yet head coach Jordan Ott didn\u2019t stray from his pre-determined playing time rotation to get more size on the floor. It\u2019s not like Phoenix has five long, physical 6-foot-10 players hanging on the bench, but for Rasheer Fleming, Ryan Dunn or Khaman Maluach not to take their sweats off until a \u201cwe give up\u201d timeout with 64 seconds left in the game was puzzling.<\/p>\n<p>The Suns will need to do work over the final three games to hold on to the No. 7 seed and a home play-in game against the No. 8 seed. But then what? The current construction of this team doesn\u2019t lead to much optimism.<\/p>\n<p>The Suns used effort to stack wins prior to February. But the NBA is a much different animal after the All-Star break when postseason teams actually start trying.<\/p>\n<p>Vince Marotta has been the Phoenix Suns\u2019 PA announcer since 2016 in addition to his duties as co-host of Bickley &amp; Marotta. On weekdays after Suns home games, you can listen to Vinny\u2019s View on Arizona Sports 98.7 at 7 a.m. or read what he saw from the front row at Mortgage Matchup Center here.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"twitter-follow-button\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Vincemarotta\" data-show-count=\"false\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Follow @Vincemarotta<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arizonasports.com\/arizona-sports-newsletter-signup\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/AZSportsEmail-830x100-1.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0 auto;\" class=\"mobile-signup\"\/>\t&#13;<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/AZSportsEmail-830x100-1.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0 auto;\" class=\"desktop-signup\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>                    <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The good: The Phoenix Suns played possibly their best and most inspired first quarter of the year. They&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3791],"tags":[7,6,2065,472,4045,604],"class_list":{"0":"post-705523","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\/116370027951898771","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705523","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=705523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}