PHOENIX — Friday night ended with Draymond Green riling up the Mortgage Matchup Center crowd after a double-technical ejection.
The 111-96 Phoenix Suns win over the Golden State Warriors was weird. It was fragmented in flow for the last playoff spot.
What this play-in finale certainly was not was a battle between the game’s greatest shooter in Stephen Curry and a midrange king in Devin Booker. Both showed signs of either age or injuries, with Curry (17 points, 4-of-16 shooting) twice stepping out of bounds on drives and too often straying too far off wing shooters.
The Suns got spotted an 18-point lead in the first quarter and then nearly blew it all 12 minutes later.
Booker was looking deferential once again. And again, he looked less-than-100%.
He couldn’t get a hip past 39-year-old Al Horford a few times, nor the aforementioned Curry. It didn’t help that the Warriors flooded his vision if he dared to attack inside the arc. He did find success foul-hunting to rack up his point total. Booker finished with 20 points on 5-of-12 shooting with 12 free throws made on as many attempts.
The winner of the night was the No. 1-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder, who surely were licking their chops watching two potential playoff opponents with sputtering superstars.
Enough nitpicking.
The winner of the night was Jalen Green, who poured in 36 points, with 22 in the second half. He put together a second stellar postseason performance, quickly getting the monkey off his back from last year’s playoff dud as a member of the Houston Rockets.
“Hell yeah. He stepped up to the test,” Booker said. “I know the last playoffs been sticking with him a little bit, so he prepared himself for these moments and capitalized off ’em.”
Booker also shed his fourth-quarter woes from the back-half of this season, hitting two key jumpers midway through the fourth quarter and keeping his trust in the pass as Golden State sent multiple bodies his way.
“He’s finding that balance,” Suns coach Jordan Ott said of Booker, who had eight assists. “Without that trust in his teammates and him early in the season making those plays, we’re not here today.
“He’s led us all year through bumps and bruises that he’s had.”
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That trust made good on Booker’s promise to carry the weight of the franchise, to give his rebuilding team an experience that keeps momentum moving forward despite the dark salary cap storm ahead.
“I’m happy we’re here,” Booker said. “We have a young team that if we didn’t get the experiences, the preparation for it … what’s a better test for us than the defending champs?”
Jordan Goodwin poured in 11 points in the final period, a cherry on top of earning 10 extra possessions in the box score (six steals and four offensive rebounds).
And the Suns found life offensively in the fourth with eight assists on 12 made field goals. That’s an anomaly since the All-Star break.
To pull back the perspective at a wider angle, the Suns began their season as the butt of jokes. Midway through the second quarter, their offense looked like a joke, but the game never got away.
“Obviously, Tuesday night was emotional for everyone, how it ended,” Ott said of the first play-in game, a loss to Portland. “But I think that’s what we’ve done all year. That’s the group in the locker room that has a ton of resilience.”
They looked better Friday with undersized Oso Ighodaro in the starting lineup against another small-ball team, switching most everything.
With starting center Mark Williams sidelined, Phoenix stole minutes by playing the still-raw Khaman Maluach — probably very intentionally when Curry wasn’t on the court.
Yes, there are plenty of roster flaws, room to worry about Booker’s trajectory and frustration watching Dillon Brooks’ silly fouls or Ott’s rotations.
But if the Thunder-Suns series goes as expected, this is the right moment to tip the hat to Booker and Ott. The head coach was not among the eight NBCA NBA Coach of the Year candidates who received a vote from their peers for the award handed to Detroit’s J.B. Bickerstaff earlier Friday.
Yet, Ott and his staff got nearly every rostered player to outplay their individual expectations for half a season. By the time they were figured out around the flip of the 2026 calendar, Phoenix still did enough to hold off the other three teams still chasing playoff chances in the Western Conference.
Two, the Clippers and the Warriors, have title-winning stars and two of the most respected coaches in the game.
Green was the best player on the court Friday. His slow injury recovery, struggles to find his spots next to Booker and hot-and-cold defensive efforts from earlier this year have all turned around at the right time.
Ott credited Green’s fourth-quarter defense alongside his offensive efficiency.
“Those guys in playoff games where the physicality ups and the court shrinks … we’re finding those pockets,” the coach added of his two best players.
Two dangerous scorers and a semblance of togetherness will only go so far against a 64-win Thunder team that’s rested.
But for Phoenix, there is more to build and things to learn in a 1-vs.-8 seed playoff series, where the full expectation is the Suns will be smacked in the face. One more positive thing for the road to Oklahoma City:
“You learn faster when you’re in the fire,” Ott said.
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