It all comes down to one game on Friday, one opportunity to keep the season alive. After falling to the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday, the Phoenix Suns are now fighting for their postseason lives. They\u2019re also staring at history. Only two teams in the first five years of the Play-In have lost the 7\u20138 matchup, but both still advanced as the eighth seed. Phoenix is trying to make it three. We now know who they will have to defeat in order to do so.<\/p>\n
Their opponent? The Golden State Warriors.<\/p>\n
Golden State is coming off an impressive win in the 9-10 game, upsetting the Clippers 126-121 at the Intuit Dome after outscoring Los Angeles 43-32 in the fourth quarter. A team that entered 8\u201333 when trailing after three quarters found a way, powered by Stephen Curry early and Draymond Green late, to take down the 9th-seeded Clippers. Now they come to Phoenix for a winner-takes-the-eighth-seed, loser-goes-home matchup.<\/p>\n
These Pacific Division teams know each other. They met four times this season, with Golden State taking three. Phoenix\u2019s lone win came on December 18, a 99\u201398 victory for the Suns<\/a>. The last meeting was on February 5 \u2014 trade deadline day \u2014 and it was a late collapse for Phoenix in a 101\u201397 loss<\/a>. Hmm. Late collapses. It\u2019s been a Suns thing for a while now, hasn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n It sets up an intriguing clash. Both teams have struggled since the All-Star break. Golden State is 8\u201319 in that stretch, averaging 112.7 points per game. That\u2019s good for 27th in the NBA. But the Suns haven\u2019t been much better, as they\u2019ve gone 13-14 and are sitting near the lower tier offensively as well. Their 110.5 points are 28th in the NBA. This becomes a matchup of two teams searching for rhythm at the worst possible time.<\/p>\n And one team has the best player on the floor.<\/p>\n Curry showed it against the Clippers, dropping 35 points, 16 in the third, 11 in the fourth. He went 4-of-6 in the final frame, including 2-of-3 from deep. When it mattered, he controlled the game. So while the Suns face a Warriors team that finished 37\u201345 and limped through the end of the season, this is still a group that has had their number and has the player who can take over when everything tightens.<\/p>\n Friday night at the Mortgage Matchup Center. One game. Season on the line. We\u2019ll see which version of this team shows up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It all comes down to one game on Friday, one opportunity to keep the season alive. After falling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3791],"tags":[7,6,2065,472,4045,604,86106,30089],"class_list":{"0":"post-711571","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","14":"tag-suns-playoffs","15":"tag-suns-schedule"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116412756953933330","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711571","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=711571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}