Much like two seasons ago when the Phoenix Suns entered the playoffs with a preferable matchup against the Minnesota Timberwolves, it was far more important how Phoenix would solve its own issues instead of what the draw was.
This time around for the play-in tournament, the same holds true. It doesn’t really matter who the Suns are playing. The only relevant matchup is the one against themselves, a matchup they’ve been losing a whole lot lately. If they don’t conquer that, they won’t win a game this postseason, just like what happened two years ago.
If that happens, they’ll make history. All 10 of the seven seeds across play-in history have advanced, and only two required the second game to do so: the 2023 Miami Heat and the 2024 New Orleans Pelicans.
Sure, it’s not great that a stylistic counter in the eighth-seeded Portland Trail Blazers comes to Phoenix on Tuesday. But if the Suns get back to their brand of basketball, one that had them pacing for north of 50 wins, all the advantages the Blazers have won’t matter. That Suns team is far better than this Portland team.
Regardless of that central point, for the sake of postseason basketball, let’s break down the matchup.
Can Suns return to prior defensive form?
In the most simplistic form of analysis, this game comes down to how the Suns defend.
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It would be shocking to not see their signature fight and intensity from the first 50 games of the year return given the stakes. But even when it has over the last two months, Phoenix has remained disorganized and unable to string together multiple connective efforts of team defense.
Easy mistakes pile up. Floating in transition, not communicating, losing focus for a split-second off the ball, failing to box out the right guy or switching off a man and not finding the correct assignment afterward. These are all little things that have come in large waves lately. The ol’ basketball adage is “defending on a string,” as in five players linked together moving as one, and that string has been on a milk carton since February.
The Suns better find it before Tuesday or they will be facing a win-or-go-home proposition on Friday.
This is both in the sense of them maximizing their own strengths, and how Portland could further do that itself if Phoenix’s defense doesn’t show up.
Margins have defined Phoenix’s successes and failures this year, so in a turn of fate, this is a matchup that will be decided by them.
The Blazers, who averaged the most turnovers per game by a team in over a decade (17.3), gave it away against the Suns 20, 17 and 21 times in the regular season. Phoenix’s points off turnovers were 21, 25 and 25. Even with the Suns’ drop in defensive efficiency from sixth pre-February to 17th afterward, their forced turnover percentage only dipped from third (17.1%) to seventh (15.9%).
Maintaining what they do and doing it at the highest level is a must, as is securing that advantage on the other end. If you get extra possessions, you can’t give them away.
An issue for the Suns in these matchups was they themselves had 52 combined turnovers to the Blazers’ 58, a higher number partially due to Devin Booker missing two of those games. Even so, that’s too tight of a margin for how loose Portland gets with the ball.
Especially with how much the Blazers dominate inside.
Second-chance points were 73-42 in favor of Portland. That includes an astronomical 39 Phoenix allowed in the Feb. 3 victory. The Blazers were fourth in offensive rebounding rate this season and led the league in second-chance points per game.
The Blazers are already going to get a handful on Tuesday from Donovan Clingan and Robert Williams III, who have combined to average over seven offensive rebounds per game since February. Mark Williams has really struggled with brute types like Clingan, and Portland’s emerging 5 will be the best center on the floor.
Clingan dominated the last two matchups between these teams, averaging 18.5 points and 14 rebounds per game. It’s on Williams to prevent that, or Suns head coach Jordan Ott should be quick to take Williams out of the rotation in favor of promising rookie Khaman Maluach if Williams is aloof once more.
The Suns, of course, will also be at both a size and athletic disadvantage across every other position as well. Portland plays long wings and springy guards, a group that loves to crash. They’ve got to find a body as soon as a shot goes up.
Portland’s downhill threats a major concern
Phoenix has been terrible all season at containing dribble penetration, especially against bigger wings, so enter Portland All-Star Deni Avdija, the NBA’s leader in drives per game at 6-foot-8 on a team top-3 in drives per game.
Avdija in the one lone fixture he got against Phoenix was marked by Dillon Brooks, although Brooks was quick to hand him off on a switch. That’s where things get dangerous, because Avdija can use his momentum with that arriving defender to put them in a compromising position.
And on the possessions Brooks plays it straight up, Avdija is simply bigger, faster and stronger.
He will bait Brooks into foul trouble. A major win for the Suns in that affair was holding Avdija to four free-throw attempts, just the ninth time in a full game this year in which he took four or less.
Avdija has almost mastered how to get himself into an advantageous position and then using that to draw fouls, even against premium defenses. His 9.3 FTA/G were second in the NBA this year. It will be a breeze for him to get an extra step on a Suns defender, so from there, they have to be smart with their recoveries.
Again, this is now a different Suns team defensively, but they were solid in November on him. You can see below how careful Phoenix was to not let Avdija get cheap bumps or to foolishly go for the ball. The only two times Avdija scored at the rim were from a poor heavy closeout and in garbage time late. All three of Phoenix’s rim protectors at the time each had a good moment denying him around the basket.
arizonasports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avdija-good.mp4Replicating that effort, especially with Avdija’s 3-point percentage plummeting below 20% since his back started flaring up in February, would be massive.
That’s because the problem does not simply end without Avdija.
Even in the two February games he missed, the Suns still looked hopeless defending on the ball. Portland had little issue playing downhill to score at the rim.
arizonasports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/portland-drives-g1.mp4The Blazers don’t need to use complex motion or advanced schemes. They can simply use 1-on-1 play then get past or through a Suns defender to see good things happen, while also sprinkling in cuts.
arizonasports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/portland-game-2.mp4Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe and Jerami Grant are three players that join Avdija in being able to get a shot near the rim almost whenever they want against this type of on-ball resistance. Jrue Holiday will sporadically bully-ball his way in there too. The Blazers were top-5 this year in rim frequency.
Henderson, the No. 3 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, started to find some rhythm toward the end of last season before missing the first 51 games of this one and he’s been back in business since returning.
The plucky and explosive 6-foot-3 guard wants to be a slasher, where he joins Sharpe in having a great rim rate for a guard. They share dynamic athleticism Phoenix simply does not have the capacity to contain. Both guys, particularly Sharpe, can settle for jumpers at times and that’s where Phoenix will have to force the duo to beat it from. Sharpe just returned on Friday after having been sidelined for 28 games, so he will have some rust.
Grant’s availability will be the primary subplot to monitor on Monday’s injury report. He missed the last seven games of the regular season with a right calf strain. In his two appearances against Phoenix, Grant was at 23 PPG on 17-for-28 shooting (60.7%). As you can see in the two above videos, he had zero trouble scoring in the paint.
Blazers head coach Tiago Splitter said Sunday there is no timetable for Grant’s return, but that he has started doing court work. That does not sound like a guy who will be ready for Tuesday.
In that same vein, Phoenix’s primary on-ball stopper Jordan Goodwin hasn’t played since spraining his ankle on Wednesday. The Suns really need him for that trio of Portland guards — Henderson, Holiday and Sharpe. Haywood Highsmith played on Sunday for the first time in a dozen games. Could he break into the rotation for that same reason?
How much the Suns help off shooters to contain those drives will be a point of interest.
Portland ended the year 27th in 3-point percentage but that is a deceiving number. Since Henderson came back on Feb. 6, Grant (6.4 3PA/G, 41.8 3P%), Holiday (7.2 3PA/G, 40.3 3P%), Camara (7.4 3PA/G, 39.8 3P%), Henderson (5.3 3PA/G, 35.5 3P%), Clingan (3.6 3PA/G, 37.9 3P%) and Matisse Thybulle (3.4 3PA/G, 38.1 3P%) have all been reliable. Trade deadline addition Vit Krejci, who returned on Sunday from a 13-game absence, has been at a poor 31.7% despite his reputation as a good shooter.
Phoenix in all likelihood takes its chances leaving those guys open and whether the Blazers can make them pay is a factor.
Suns offense must get back on track
To briefly cover the other side of the floor, Booker will be marked by a pair you could put up there with any across the league as a handpicked duo to limit him throughout a game.
Camara, a former teammate briefly, has defended Booker plenty the last few years and has done it well. The Second Team All-Defense honoree last year brings lots of raw feel for sticking on focal points, and does so at 6-foot-7 and 230 pounds. When he doesn’t take the assignment, Holiday will, one of the best perimeter defenders ever that has also given Booker fits in the past with his persistent strength.
And if Grant is out, we’ll likely see Thybulle, a two-time All-Defense member in a similar mold to Camara.
With that said, switching is going to happen a lot. Booker will find plenty of possessions without either on him.
Camara, Holiday and Thybulle are elite when it comes to fighting through screens, so we’ll see how sticky they can be. Given how much opponents are letting Booker play in 1-on-1 spaces lately to deny ball movement rhythm for the team, it’ll be curious to see if the Blazers do that as well in a game of this magnitude where he could drop 40-plus.
The twist is, the Suns need Booker to prioritize playmaking in this game and for the remainder of the postseason. He’s just going to take what the defense gives him, and a lot of them lately have been providing opportunities for buckets. But the Suns’ ball movement has been much worse since Jalen Green became a regular in the rotation, and adding Brooks into that has only intensified that.
They have become an extremely inefficient offense reliant on isolation scoring and offensive rebounding. The Suns’ assist percentage since Green started playing every day on Feb. 19 is 26th and their true shooting percentage is 29th. Those numbers before Green got in the mix were already below average, but are now amongst the worst across the last two months.
Green’s getting better with his choices on attacks to find drive-and-kick lanes instead of over-dribbling for a pull-up jumper but it’s still a work in progress. While Brooks is a good extra pass guy as a connector once the ball starts swinging, he’s having a historical season when it comes to how his high usage rate compares to his low assist rate in the tunnel-vision scoring he is susceptible to.
Green was questionable for Sunday’s finale after tweaking his right knee on Wednesday before remaining out. He should only play if he’s at 100%. Phoenix can’t afford a partially effective version of Green given his inconsistencies already.
Booker and Ott have to figure out how to get the likes of Collin Gillespie, Royce O’Neale and Oso Ighodaro going, as well as Grayson Allen if he manages to play after tweaking his left hamstring on Friday.
For now, the Suns offense has simply relied on the individual prowess of its scoring trio, and with that, they’ve made their breakout supporting cast ordinary. In turn, that’s had the same effect on an offense that was 13th prior to February and is 21st since.
Gillespie and Ighodaro have to get back to their excellent two-man game. The duo’s net rating by month from November to January went 11.5, 11.7 and 10.7 before February’s -5.4 and March’s 4.6.
Gillespie has thrived in all three Portland matchups, averaging 21.7 PPG and 6.3 APG while shooting 23-for-42 (54.5%). As you could see in some of the Blazers’ rim attacks, they were hunting Gillespie, so it’s an extreme swing of on-court value for him to make the trade-off work offensively, especially if Allen is out.
Suns need to get Collin Gillespie going on Tuesday.
21.7 PPG and 6.3 APG on 54.5% shooting in the 3 Portland matchups. Blazers used their bigger/longer defenders on him once he got going and he still had tons of success.
Supporting cast offensively has to get back on track. pic.twitter.com/hhcphwwuNX
— Kellan Olson (@KellanOlson) April 11, 2026
He has been the player most affected by Green’s return. Since Green’s everyday inclusion, Gillespie’s field goal percentage has fallen from 43.4% to 38.3%, including his 3P% going from 42.3% to 35.8%. Part of this is on Gillespie himself and having to adjust to a new role. Maybe the recent shooting slump is just him wearing down.
But the ability of the Suns’ offense to naturally lift up its complementary pieces is what made it special in the first half of the season, and that ability is now gone. The Suns will either need to relocate it or have their scorers catch fire in order to not sweat one more play-in game.
Follow @KellanOlson
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