The Phoenix Suns expected to be contenders this season, but, after a 124-116 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on Thursday, they are 27-32 and 11th in the West, 3.5 games behind the Sacramento Kings for the final play-in spot. The loss against the Pelicans at home was their seventh in their last eight games and their 10th in their last 12.
Asked how they found themselves in this position, Suns star Devin Booker told reporters, “I’d say just skipping over the details and always taking the get-’em-next-game mentality. At some point, you gotta draw a line, and it should’ve been drawn a long time ago.”
Booker lamented that, while they’d talked before the game about forcing the Pelicans’ Zion Williamson to his right hand and bringing help early on his drives, they didn’t execute the game plan. Williamson, who scored 27 points on 13-for-17 shooting and recorded the first triple-double of his career, is a “tough assignment,” Booker said, but “you still want to take away what you see him do every night.”
This kind of thing is the “story of the season thus far,” Booker said. “It could be fixed with just a little bit more talking, I’d say. Things get tough, we get quiet as a team, and, from my experience and what I’ve seen, that’s not the way to get through it.”
Booker said that there needs to be “constant communication” in the huddles. He said that it starts with him, Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal and coach Mike Budenholzer, but “everybody has to be on the same page” and there should be conversation “throughout the whole game.”
Essentially, Booker’s issue is that Phoenix has not created an environment in which it can solve problems effectively, and that the team has not addressed mistakes as quickly or directly as he would like.
“I’d rather two people say the wrong thing to each other out there than nobody talk out there at all and leave the gray area,” Booker said. “So it’s like any job or any group project that you do. You have to do it together.”
Asked if he was implying that he should have done something differently to drawn the line, Booker said, “Yeah, I always look at myself first.” He paused for a few seconds before adding, “But I also talk a lot.”
Given that the Suns’ chances of even making the play-in are getting slimmer by the day, it is understandable that Booker is frustrated. This has been a profoundly disappointing season in Phoenix — in 1,091 minutes with Booker and Durant on the court, it has outscored opponents by just 2.2 points per 100 possessions, down from 5.7 per 100 last season and 15.9 per 100 (in just 180 minutes) in 2022-23.
But there might be more to this story. On Friday, Chris Haynes reported that Budenholzer had “implored” Booker to be less vocal “on the court and during timeout huddles” so the coach could do more of the talking. This reportedly took place weeks ago and “completely shocked” Booker.
Haynes did not directly report that Budenholzer was the intended audience for Booker’s postgame comments or even that Booker was upset or offended after the meeting, only that the meeting “provides context” for the press conference. This is a funny way to put it, given that Booker’s gripe was about a lack of clear and forceful communication.
