New Orleans Pelicans striker Zion Williamson (1) passes Phoenix Suns Deandre Ayton (22) and point guard Chris Paul (3) in the fourth quarter of an NBA basketball game in New Orleans, Wednesday, 3 February 2021. (AP Photo / Derick Hingle)
Wednesday’s formula for the 123-101 loss of the Phoenix Suns to the New Orleans Pelicans was not a space science.
The Suns failed to hit open shots all night, shooting 8 of 35 (22.9%) from a three-point streak. They had no answer for Pelicans star Zion Williamson, who scored 28 points in 32 minutes in 14 shots.
Phoenix (11-9) did not offer counterweights elsewhere to help offset these two decisive factors.
Devin Booker scored 25 points and put the team into action in the third quarter, but Phoenix’s next highest scoring player was Deandre Ayton, with 13.
That says something, considering that the Pelicans were obstructing the painting all night, completely fine with letting the Suns snipers beat them, as opposed to Chris Paul’s penetration and Ayton’s rolls to the basket.
“It’s hard to explain,” said Williams about Suns continuing to miss high-quality looks these days. “The quality of the photo is there … We lost a lot of open photos. We knew the defense they were going to implement, where the short man would take the DA in the dive and we would have shots from the weak side – we just couldn’t do it. “
Williams surprisingly saw a change in his team when shots were not falling.
“For some reason, we let our lack of shooting in the first half kind of discourage us a little. I didn’t see that from that group, ”he said. “Our guys hope to shoot, but I thought we had so many open looks in the first half, and when we didn’t, I thought it affected us a little on the other side.
“We played a very good defense in the first half, especially in that second half. We just couldn’t score. “
This defense did not pass to the second part. The Suns managed to lose just three points in the interval, before yielding 40 points in the third quarter. The Pelicans (8-12) left there.
In Monday’s victory over the Dallas Mavericks, Booker and Paul’s stupendous effort made up for a bad night of pitching by the Suns wing trio. The wings could replicate that ride on Wednesday, but not Paul and Booker.
Mikal Bridges (4 of 12), Cam Johnson (3 of 9) and Jae Crowder (1 of 4) combined for only 19 points. It’s easy to take for granted those nights when one of those guys loses 15 and the other one delivers 12, and the attack really suffers when none of the three can hit a shot.
Bridges is now 4 to 28 (14.3%) from three points in his last six games, after a 0 to 7 mark on Wednesday. He’s now 38.9% on the year, a credit for how tremendous he started this season.
As far as Williamson is concerned, the Suns changed very early, but Johnson took over the main task. This did not work, as the Pelicans continued to attack Johnson in different situations. When Crowder was there, it was no different. He probably had his worst performance of the year and Wiliams played just 13 minutes.
Williamson scored 15 of his 28 points in the first quarter.
“No matter who guards you, you need to show some resistance,” said Williams. “I didn’t think we had much resistance, especially at the beginning. There were times when we had four guys around him and he even dribbled right through us and went to the basket … You have to be able to stand in front of someone for at least two dribbles to help in your defense ”.
New Orleans was always present on the offensive glass, where Steven Adams (8) and Williamson (3) combined for 11 of Pelicans’ 12 offensive rebounds.
Adams got the better of Ayton in a handful of them, while the recovering Suns gang generally took a while to join. Ayton himself has continued to be consistent as a high-level rebound in recent weeks, with four of his 11 players attacking the Pelicans.
Paul had 10 points and four assists. That number of assistants would have been much higher if Suns had arranged some open looks. And, again, the Pelicans left him out of the game as much as they could, hitting the pick-and-roll hard to limit Paul’s ability to tackle incompatibilities.
New Orleans coach Stan Van Gundy said he considered this the best game his team had played throughout the year. The Pelicans had 30 assists, seven turnovers and seven double-digit players. Brandon Ingram scored 23 points and Lonzo Ball added 18. They held the Suns below 30 points in all four quarters and below 50 in the first half.
Booker was asked about the work that the Suns did at Williamson, as this is the type of player for which a team has a game plan and defends as a unit. His assessment “was not right” before giving a nod to the random execution of the Suns on some 20-game nights, with the team’s three-game winning streak coming to an end.
“You can have any game plan going into the game. Until you really get there and the game is moving at full speed, things happen differently, ”said Booker.
“We have some work to do.”