Suns control pace to beat Minnesota with defense
Arizona Republic USA TODAY NETWORK
The Phoenix Suns ran the Minnesota Timberwolves off the floor at home on Friday without scoring over 100 points.
The 97-87 victory looks like an throwback to a 1990s NBA game score in the Suns’ third straight win.
“I don’t know how many people expect us to get double-digit wins and not score 100 points. This is a big win for us,” Grayson Allen (game-high 23 points, 4-of-8 from the 3) said after the game. “It’s a statement for us defensively and the whole past couple weeks has been.
“We’ve been really good defensively. And so it helps when you have a defense like this that when you have an off-night and you can’t get to 100 points, you can’t get to 110, 115 offensively. To be able to hold a team like this, a really good team like under 90 points is big time.”
The Suns, currently sixth in the standings, continue trying to avoid the Western Conference’s play-in tournament’s Nos. 7-10 seeds. Beating the conference’s No. 1 team and the league’s top-ranked defense in Minnesota is the Suns’ third statement win this week to right the ship.
The two others were at the West’s No. 7 New Orleans on Monday, and the East’s No. 3 Cleveland at home on Wednesday.
Besides holding Minnesota to its lowest scoring output of the season, Suns coach Frank Vogel was proud of his team’s “most impressive” statistic — outscoring the Timberwolves 17-9 in fast break points.
In addition, Phoenix scored 24 points off Minnesota’s 18 turnovers, whereas Minnesota had 12 points off Phoenix’s 18 turnovers. The Suns caused the Timberwolves’ 14 first-half turnovers, and capitalized with 19 points off them.
“The most impressive thing for me was that even though we had 18 turnovers, they only had nine fast break points,” Vogel said. “We are recovering those possessions, way better than we did two weeks ago. We just made a commitment where we said, ‘Every day, we’re going to run out our transition defense and figure out how we can be better with our effort, focus, alertness, matching up; all those ways to save those possessions and this was a response to (Anthony) Edwards.”
Minnesota’s All-Star Edwards is always at the top of every team’s scoring report. From his highlight-reel dunks, and considered as a three-level scorer by his opponents, Edwards is 11th in the league at scoring (25.9 points per game) and individually ranked sixth in fast break points per game (4.0). He was held to just 17 points and made his final field goal at 4:46 in the third quarter. He finished on 6-of-19 shooting, similar to his 4-of-16 outing during Minnesota’s 133-115 loss in Phoenix on Nov. 15.
The Suns controlling the pace throughout the game wasn’t just about stopping Edwards. It was about closing the gaps, getting stops for run-outs and beating the Timberwolves from the onset.
In the first quarter, the Suns jumped out to a 15-0 lead and finished up 32-20. They were 9-0 in fast break points. By the end of the first half, the Suns had a 57-41 advantage, and 13-3 scoring in the open court.
The Suns’ team averages are 15th in pace, 20th in fast break points per game average (12.3), 17th in transition offensive points (21.4), first at scoring frequency percentage (56%) in transition offense and seventh in scoring off transition defense (23.1).
“We always talked about that throughout the whole season. I think efficient-wise, we’re like a top two or three team in the league in transition, but we might be bottom five in actually getting those opportunities,” Kevin Durant (22 points, six rebounds, six assists) said.
“So as much as we can get out in transition, it’s always good for our team because we convert pretty well.”