Clippers won’t be the last team to lose to the Suns in playoffs
You are allotted just so many 81-point halves, just so many 39-point nights by Terance Mann, just so many four-ace hands by Reggie Jackson when you get deep in the NBA playoffs.
At some point the constants take over. Teams that have their best players upright and functioning wind up winning, particularly when they play teams that don’t.
It’s not that the Clippers ran into reality in Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals on Wednesday night. They had been nothing but real throughout three playoff series. They just ran into Phoenix.
Kawhi Leonard, who deigned to sit in the Clippers’ bench area for the first time since he sprained his knee, wasn’t available. Chris Paul was.
The man who once legitimized the Clippers’ franchise ruthlessly crushed it down the stretch. He waited until the Clippers spent their final drop of adrenalin to get within seven points, then ran off the Suns’ final eight points of the third quarter. On
the first possession of the fourth quarter, they ran down two offensive rebounds and Deandre Ayton scored on the third try.
The Suns thus won their way into the NBA Finals for the first time since 1993, by a doubt-dispelling score of 130-103. It will be a major surprise if they have to wait 28 more years to do it again.
Devin Booker is 24, Deandre Ayton turns 23 in July. Paul will be 36, but he has 44 million reasons to return to Phoenix next season if he chooses. Nobody knows where the pieces will fall in the offseason, but the Suns will gladly take on the Lakers, healthy or not, as both are currently constituted.
As it is, they are a brilliant example of how you don’t have to bottom-feed for five years, or put together some kind of supergroup, in order to win in the NBA.
The Suns looked young
and unprepared in Game 5 when the Clippers jumped them early and outworked them throughout. They borrowed the best poker-faced qualities of coach Monty Williams in Game 6, playing to their strengths, involving Ayton in the first quarter, getting 16 first-half points from
Jae Crowder (who had missed 26 of his previous 33 threes), and then handing the sword to Paul, who swung it like an avenging angel.
He scored 41 points with eight assists and zero turnovers, and he also had the last word, or several hundred of them. Patrick Beverley took a running start and shoved
Paul in the back during a timeout. It was the type of sideshow petulance that has made Beverley a twosided commodity, but in this case it just added to Paul’s conquest. With 2:21 left he cashed another 3-pointer, and the Suns led 124-100, and he flipped out his shirttail, the first sign of a celebration that’s been 16 years in the making.
“I thought we ran out of gas,” Lue said. ‘The first thing that goes when you’re tired is the mental. We just made too many mistakes defensively. But Phoenix played a hell of a series.”
Considering George’s role in taking the 50-yearold franchise to its first conference final, you might call it the best individual postseason in franchise history. But Playoff P ran into Playoff D in Game 6, and you could hear the Greek chorus clearing its throat at the end of his silent, 21-point night.
The Suns made it clear that Marcus Morris and Reggie Jackson were free to wreak whatever havoc they wanted, as long as they surrounded, bracketed and generally hassled George. He was watched closely by Crowder or Mikal Bridges or Torrey
Craig whenever he got the ball. He ran into a second defender whenever he neared the lane. He spent the whole night looking for traction. He made one 3-pointer and turned it over four times.
With Leonard around, Phoenix wouldn’t have been able to pick and choose.
“The healthier team won,” Morris said.
Ivica Zubac’s injury also let Ayton have the room he needed, and he shot 8 for 10 with 16 pounds and 17 rebounds. The extinction of the big man is a basketball myth, just like the irrelevance of the “heavy” team in hockey. While his tall colleagues learn to shoot threes, Ayton’s feet should have been encased into the paint. As long as he remembers who he is, he has immeasurable upside.
Beginning in 2016, the Suns had four consecutive seasons of sub.300 basketball. They had not made the playoffs in 10 years. While the vortex of pro basketball was supposed to remain at Figueroa and 11th, they turned their Western rivals into Butches and Sundances, blinking and confused.
Who are those guys? If you don’t know by now, you will.