The Phoenix Suns beat the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night, overcoming a Devin Booker ejection and a 38-point night from LeBron James in doing so. The 114-104 win gave the Suns their 15th win out of the last 18 games.
Fifteen of 18!
The win moved the Suns into second place in the Western Conference, passing James and the Lakers in doing so.
Now, a few big caveats about last night — the Lakers are still missing Anthony Davis to injury, and they’re straight up not the same team without him in the lineup. Combine that with a rough shooting night (the Lakers’ Dennis Schroder was 6 of 17 from the field and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope went 0-5 from deep), and yeah, that’ll get LeBron and Co. a loss to a lot of teams.
Still, the Suns are rounding into shape, and have figured out an identity that’s really exciting to watch. I’m not ready to call them a title contender, but they’re VERY interesting, and super fun on most nights.
What’s been fun is watching it come together. The team took a little bit of time to gel under new point guard Chris Paul. Big man DeAndre Ayton looked out of sorts early, the role players weren’t quite sure how to work of Paul yet, Devin Booker especially.
They’ve figured that all out now, and turning the keys over to Paul has unlocked the offense.
Booker is still the main scorer, but the Suns currently have seven players averaging double-digit scoring a night. CP3 is averaging nine assists a game, and you can watch night after night as he dictates the flow of things, getting players touches early, finding open shooters. Paul had to kind of tweak his game to fit in with whatever was going on in Houston, but now in Phoenix he can do what he’s been doing for years and years.
This has all all freed up Booker to attack, which combined with Ayton’s size and rim-rolling, has made it so teams often have to collapse … which gives open looks to the Suns’ shooters. We saw that on Tuesday night, with the Suns making 55% of their threes against the Lakers, and the shots came from all over.
When Booker was ejected in the third, Dario Saric stepped in as the scoring option, and he got 10 of his 21 points in the fourth quarter.
Basically, it’s a really nicely constructed modern NBA team, and Chris Paul is putting on a vintage display of what he does best, and we’ve got yet another super fun team in the Western Conference. I have no idea this team’s ceiling, but I really look forward to watching them in the playoffs.
