Four Rounds: Suns in trouble, appreciating the Nuggets, Pascal Siakam and more

The Talking Point: Are the Suns in Trouble?

A big takeaway from the last week of the NBA playoffs.

Well, it’s official, nearly a week into the NBA playoffs and no team is under more pressure than the Phoenix Suns.

This is not your typical 3-6 matchup. The no. 3-seeded Timberwolves were not the critically acclaimed favorite to win the series. Most pundits expected the Suns, despite being the no. 6 seed, to do what they did in the regular season and beat the Timberwolves (the Suns won the season series, 3-0). After all, this is Kevin Durant. This is Devin Booker. This is Bradley Beal. This is Bol Bol! 

Instead, they are down 2-0, with Game 3 returning to Phoenix on Friday night, where the next two games could determine whether this expensive experiment is worth the investment.

The Suns aren’t just down two games to none, they are also down bad. Watch the end of Game 2. As the Suns let the game slip away, Booker slapped his hands after Rudy Gobert went untouched for an easy dunk. Durant slumped his head when Anthony Edwards netted an open jumper in the fourth quarter. Edwards celebrated by chirping at his own bench. While the Timberwolves were galvanized, the Suns unraveled. Vibes = not good.

A first-round loss could beget a greater unraveling.

It becomes much harder for Suns owner Mat Ishbia, proud purveyor of the league’s fourth-highest payroll, to justify the spend for a team that barely escaped the play-in tournament and lost in the first round. 

Because the Suns are firmly in the second apron next season, improving the team will be difficult. No mid-level exception in free agency. Can’t aggregate contracts or take back more salary than they send out in trades. The best asset they have is the 22nd pick in June’s draft. In other words, it’s back to the minimum salary bin. But Reggie Bullock and Aaron Holiday aren’t elevating the Suns to the Denver Nuggets’ level.

There are inherent flaws to this roster that will be darn near impossible to address. They lack size, defense and ball-handling. 

The gambet of going without a point guard has backfired at times. Phoenix’s offense should be a machine. Instead, it often ends up looking like a rotary phone, cycling between 1, 3 and 35. 

Durant has never been an elite playmaker, and forcing Booker and Beal to initiate offense takes something away from their best skills. This offense lacks an instigator. Someone who forces the defense to get into rotation so that the stars can sing.

I feel like I’ve seen this…

…and this…

A thousand times.

The offense lacks creativity and harmony. Including the first two playoff games, Durant and Booker have played through a total of 19 picks, according to Second Spectrum. Beal and Booker have set 33 for each other. Beal and Durant have set 99. For comparison, Chicago’s Coby White and Nikola Vucevic led the league with 1,324 screens.

Maybe that’s the blessing and the curse of a star-studded offense. Usually, the one-on-one stuff is enough. After all, the Suns had the 10th-rated offense in the league this season.

(Record scratch)

Wait… 10th? That’s good and all, but a team with Durant, Booker and Beal should be closer to first. How did the Knicks (seventh in offensive rating) have a better offense than the Suns this season? 

And that’s just the offense. Greasing the wheels on their collaboration should spark greater results. The same can’t be said about the defense, which ranked 13th in the regular season and 22nd in fourth quarters.

Anthony Edwards has diced Phoenix’s defense mostly by making the simple read. It doesn’t take much work to stress the Suns' defense past its breaking point. 

Even when it looked like the Suns had him bottled up, Edwards reset the possession by pitching the ball to a teammate and getting it back. Like in this next clip, whatever worked for the Suns seemingly evaporates after a quick pitch-and-catch, and Edwards gets an easy shot.

“We’re all trying to fight out there, and so far in this series, once it’s turned to s—, we’ve kind of separated instead of being together,’’ Booker told reporters after Game 2. “And that’s everybody, top to bottom. It’s something we got to figure out.”

All of that said, there’s the outline of a contender here. The Nuggets had an elite offense and were 15th in defensive rating last regular season and won the whole thing. If the Suns can create some synergy on offense and hustle on defense, they can still win these games against the Timberwolves at home and even up the series.

But that will take greater effort and a better attitude from a team that, to this point, has been too easy to rattle.

The Reset: Appreciate the Nuggets

Sometimes an old narrative needs another look.

I don’t know if you heard, but the Lakers have now lost 11 straight games to the Nuggets. This factoid will be featured on a graphic on every sports talk show, with an accompanying question on a lower third, like “What does this mean for LeBron’s legacy” or “Are the Lakers finished?” 

And, look, if that’s your thing, good for you. I’m certainly not against debating the career of perhaps the greatest player of all time.

But focusing only on the LeBron-and-Lakers side of this rivalry (rivalry?) would be to ignore the sheer dominance of what the Nuggets are doing. 

Over the last two postseasons, the Nuggets are 17-4 in their last 21 playoff games, including a championship. This run of dominance has been accomplished by only a few teams in league history. 

Here’s the list of teams that have gone 17-4 or better in a span of two postseasons: The early 2000s Lakers and Spurs, 1980s Lakers and Celtics, late 80s/early 90s Pistons, Michael Jordan’s Bulls (before and after baseball), the Kevin Durant-infused Warriors, LeBron’s second Cavs team, the Big Three Heat, the Kobe-Gasol Lakers and Kareem’s Bucks in the 1970s.

Or, you know, the teams that always come up when we talk about the greatest of all time.

It doesn’t look like these Nuggets are stopping any time soon. They have won 13 of their last 14 playoff games. Nikola Jokic is an all-time playoff performer. His chemistry with Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, Michael Porter Jr. and Kentenavious Caldwell-Pope tends to eclipse a league dominated by player movement and hodge-podge rosters.

If the Nuggets go on to win the whole thing again, we’re looking at one of the greatest teams of all time. Let’s make sure that’s not left out of the discourse.

Observations: The matchups that have defined the first round (so far)

1. Brandon Ingram vs Lu Dort

Brandon Ingram is a particular scorer. He has his spots that he wants to get to – mostly at the rim or around the free-throw line. He wants to get the ball, jab a few times and make his move to his safe zone. Through the Pelicans’ two games against the Thunder, Lu Dort isn’t letting him.

Dort is a close-contact MMA fighter. He’s being physical with Ingram, bumping him off of his spots and out of rhythm. Ingram has had to settle for longer, rougher jumpers and fewer attempts at the rim. 

The Pelicans have countered by throwing screens in Dort’s path as Ingram searches for space off the ball. Sometimes it works, but Dort is always fighting.

Ingram is averaging 15 points on 37 percent shooting in the series. With Zion Williamson sidelined, one of New Orleans’ top scoring options has mostly been neutralized. 

2. Pascal Siakam vs the Bucks bigs

Your top scorer so far in the playoffs? Pascal Siakam. In a series of big names like Damian Lillard and Tyrese Haliburton, Siakam’s potential impact was easy to overlook. 

But with Giannis Antetokounmpo sidelined, the Bucks don’t have anybody capable of guarding Siakam. Put Brook Lopez on him, and Siakam will blow by him for a layup.

When the Bucks have tried Bobby Portis, Siakam goes to work.

Siakam’s cutting is a problem for a Bucks defense that has a short attention span.

Siakam is the reason why the Pacers probably have the advantage in a series tied at 1-1. It’s been a disappointing series so far for Tyrese Haliburton and Indiana will need a big game from him at some point to advance, but the Pacers should be thrilled that they traded for Siakam in January.

3. Mavericks stars are one pass away

The Clippers have been able to defend the Mavericks in previous playoff series because they have a ton of wing defenders capable of crowding Luka Doncic’s space. But this is the first playoff meeting between these two teams since the Mavs traded for Kyrie Irving, and that changed everything.

Even with Kawhi Leonard back in the lineup, the Clippers had a hard time containing the Mavericks offense when Doncic and Irving were on the floor. That’s because the Mavericks make sure that their two stars are always one pass away from each other. If Doncic has the ball and the closest defender helps, more often than not that defender is leaving Irving. That’s death against one of the most playoff-tested shooters in the league, and it’s exactly what happened when the Mavericks needed a bucket down the stretch of their Game 2 win.

But if the Clippers don’t send help, they risk giving up an easy bucket to a talented isolation scorer. Here, Doncic gets the screen and drives left. Irving is parked in the same corner but Norm Powell knows if he leaves him to help harass Doncic, it’s an open corner 3 for Irving. So he stays connected, giving Doncic the space to get off a makeable floater.

Clippers coach Ty Lue will have adjustments for Game 3. They can try to pre-rotate when they send help, but it’s easier said than done. Doncic and Irving take such strange angles that it’s not always clear where the second layer of help should come from and, when they are one pass away, there is even less time to think. 

Take That For Data

Some numbers and stats.

50%: One adjustment for the Celtics going into Game 3 could be to hope the Heat don’t shoot 53.5 percent from 3-point range again. Well, over the past two seasons, the Heat have shot 50 percent or better in four playoff games against the Celtics, according to MiamiHeat.com’s Couper Moorhead.

26.5: That’s the difference in points per game for Damian Lillard in the first half and Damian Lillard in the second half. Lillard has scored 61 total points in the first half of Milwaukee’s two playoff games. In the second half? Eight. Total. With Lillard switching time zones, Dame Time might have moved to the first half, not the second.

17.9: With Russell Westbrook on the court, the Clippers are outscoring the Mavericks by 17.9 points per 100 possessions, the highest margin for any Clippers player.

20.2: That’s Cleveland’s average scoring output over the last six quarters against the Magic. Specifically, they have scored 22, 16, 21, 24, 16 and 22 points in the last game-and-a-half.

9: Centers to make at least five 3s in a playoff game in NBA history after Embiid shot 5 for 7 against the Knicks in Thursday night’s win. The other eight: Nikola Jokic, Nikola Vucevic, Al Horford, Meyers Leonard, Karl-Anthony Towns, Channing Frye, Bill Laimbeer (in 1990!) and Brook Lopez.

33: The difference between what the Magic were outscored by with Jonathan Isaac in the starting lineup (minus-17 total) versus what they’ve outscored the Cavaliers by with Wendell Carter Jr. at center (plus-16 total).