After losing a third game in a row to drop to 8-8 this season, a frustrated Chris Paul spoke bluntly about the current state of the Phoenix Suns: They have to play better.
“We’re not …” Paul started, pausing briefly, “playing well enough now. I’m not going to say that we’re not good enough, but we’re not playing well enough now.”
The Suns fell 102 to 97 at home on Wednesday for Paul’s former Oklahoma City Thunder team, with the final three minutes going in the wrong direction for Phoenix. Thunder ended with a series of 11-2, with the Suns missing their final six shots.
Paul, who led Thunder in a surprising 5-seed last season after a brilliant clutch game, scored 32 points in 35 minutes against OKC. But two clean looks in the final 20 seconds did not fall, the first being a turnaround in the middle strip that spun off the edge, and the second a potential straight draw with 3 that caught all the air.
The Suns have been without All-Star guard Devin Booker in the last two games due to pain in the hamstring. Although the team lost its ability to score, coach Monty Williams refused to acknowledge this, or anything else, as an excuse.
“Until this team understands consistency for four quarters, we will feel very much like that,” said Williams. “We can try to make everyone feel sorry for us. It won’t work. We have to be consistent. This is on us.”
Williams, clearly aggravated by his two-minute post-game availability, insisted on Suns’ need for consistency.
“In the final stretch, we had an incredibly bad finish,” he said. “We have open kicks, missing kicks under the basket. It’s just bad. Poor execution and bad finish. It is.
“At some point, you just need to finish the games and understand what it takes to be a really good team is consistency,” said Williams. “Full stop. That’s the deal.”
Williams made it clear that if any questions were asked from that moment on, he would respond in the same way: consistency.
“Whatever you ask me, I will say ‘consistency’,” said Williams. “That’s it.”
Suns led by 15 at the end of the first quarter. But with sloppy detours and stagnant offensive, they scored just 10 points in the second quarter, which led OKC to a 21-4 run to take the lead towards the break.
As Paul tends to do, he settled down calmly in the game, delaying early, but asserting himself late. He scored 13 points in the fourth period to give Suns a late lead, but defensive lapses and bad offensive possessions led to Phoenix’s collapse.
“We played in spurts,” said Paul. “We have to respect who we are going to play against. Every night. Respect the opponent. They are paid like us.”
For Paul and the Suns, a promising start to the season has fallen in the past three weeks. Paul’s addition seemed to help sustain the momentum they built with his bubble invincibility, but an interruption in the season with a breach of three sets of health and safety protocols and Booker’s injury interrupted it.
The Suns have lost five of the last six games, with virtually all recent defeats being narrowly called – consecutive overtime games against the Denver Nuggets not heading their way, a four-point loss to the Memphis Grizzlies and a five-point loss to OKC.
“I’m just trying to figure out how we can win,” said Paul. “Because lost things grow old.”