jokingly told reporters<\/a>: \u201cWe do have a realistic option if we drag Magic into a street alley and beat his a\u2013.\u201d<\/p>\nMagic Johnson played on. The Lakers swept the Suns with little resistance.<\/p>\n
This Phoenix team will try to take a different path, but nothing about it will be easy. To start, the Suns are shorthanded. Big man Mark Williams, sidelined the last two games with left foot soreness, wore a protective boot at Tuesday\u2019s practice and is unlikely to play. Guard Grayson Allen has not played since April 10 because of left hamstring tightness. Defensive ace Jordan Goodwin left in the first half of Game 1 with left calf soreness.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s dealing with top-seeded Oklahoma City, motivated and determined to repeat as NBA champion. Devin Booker perhaps provided the best assessment of the Thunder last week before leaving Phoenix. Asked for the keys to this series, the star guard laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the problem. The Suns don\u2019t need to fix just a couple things, as is usually the case between playoffs games. They have several issues to address. As Phoenix finished practice, coach Jordan Ott said the Suns need to reduce turnovers and improve defensive rebounding. They need to create steals and get out in transition. They also need to limit fouls, especially against Oklahoma City star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who made 15 of 17 from the foul line in Game 1.<\/p>\n
Most importantly, the Suns need to move the ball. In spurts, often with Booker resting, they get caught overdribbling, which leads to contested shots. Ott said Oklahoma City\u2019s wing defenders are elite, which makes offensive execution difficult.<\/p>\n
But the Suns don\u2019t need to do anything outside of their system. They just need to execute it better.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey guard the basketball with five guys, and they\u2019re really good at it,\u201d guard Collin Gillespie said. \u201cWe got to be able to move on a string with the guy who\u2019s dribbling the ball. Shortening passes is really important, giving guys windows to make those passes \u2014 especially Book, Jalen (Green), Dillon (Brooks), those guys that have the ball in their hands and are trying to create for us and create for themselves. They\u2019re a good defensive team, so they\u2019re going to cut off that first action sometimes, and we got to be able to make plays on the backside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ott expects the Suns to learn from their Game 1 mistakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just got to get some juice and energy,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m sure the environment here\u2019s helpful. You want to be in those environments. It was rocking in Game 1, and it\u2019ll be great (for Game 2.) Our guys will be juiced and ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014 About a mile from the Paycom Center, where the Phoenix Suns practiced Tuesday morning, not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3791],"tags":[7,6,179,2065,472,4045,604],"class_list":{"0":"post-715788","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-oklahoma-city-thunder","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-phoenix-suns","13":"tag-phoenixsuns","14":"tag-suns"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116447993117016994","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715788","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=715788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}