PHOENIX — It’s not the type of mindset revolving around the Phoenix Suns at the moment, but victories like Friday’s 112-107 final over the New York Knicks are the exact type of outcomes that pay dividends in April and beyond.
As the Suns approach the halfway point of the season, they are 23-15, all but set to play some form of postseason basketball, whether in the play-in or in the playoffs. With that, it’s important to find a handful of battle-tested environments before then to learn more about each other through those experiences.
Devin Booker backed up that it was one of those wins that will pay off later.
“Yeah, 100%,” Booker said succinctly.
While it will not go down as one of the “wins of the season” and lacked total quality in play from Phoenix’s side, it was a defining result that shows how freaking good this Suns team is.
Uneven rhythm on both ends of the floor was carried by Booker (31 points) and Dillon Brooks (27) offensively, combined with enough gritty defensive possessions to make up for the messy ones.
Booker reached a pristine zone with his ball-handling that we’re used to seeing, totaling eight assists and two turnovers, a zone he’s finding with more regularity in 2026. He created space for himself and his teammates constantly, with 10-for-23 shooting not accurately representing how many usual gimmes for him in the midrange didn’t go down.
It has been such an incredible team-wide effort all year that the Suns haven’t had to rely on Booker carrying them through tight games in a way you’d expect a star with this roster having to do, but they were clearly leaning on his prowess all night.
Booker was +11 in the game and sat at +14 to start the fourth quarter when he went for his final rest. While Phoenix’s eight-point lead only lost a point, the flow of the game was abhorrent and required Booker to stabilize it.
He couldn’t. Both Booker and Brooks were missing and missing badly with their individual offense, continuing to leave the door open for the Knicks.
New York eventually tied it with 3:04 to go, and after the mismatch hunting on the Knicks’ two-big lineup was resulting in a rare junked-up Suns product offensively, they had another sloppy possession following an extended timeout that ended in a Booker turnover.
But after a New York miss, Booker got one of those middies to go and the Knicks panicked the next time down, sending an immediate double-team his way that easily rolled out the red carpet for Booker to let Royce O’Neale use his signature move.
He’s the best player in the league at one specific oddity: ball fakes. And this one was a beauty to get a clean 3 off, his fourth of the night to put the Suns up five.
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The move has become O’Neale’s staple, and he told Arizona Sports he actually first started doing it in high school as a joke to mess with his teammate and act like he was going to pass him the ball. He implemented it more once playing alongside fellow clever guys in Utah like Joe Ingles and Bojan Bogdanovic, using it with even more frequency than ever this season for how many 3s the Suns are getting up.
Booker noted how the scouting report tells defenders to chase O’Neale off the 3-point line, and with how O’Neale is sometimes taking “4s” instead of “3s.” Given how he can space from even deeper out behind the line, the closeouts get even more desperate and create an even easier opportunity to make opposing defenders look silly.
It wasn’t smooth sailing from there.
New York fouled Oso Ighodaro down three with 30 seconds left, and the shaky free-throw shooter missed both. He then made up for it, though, with fantastic defense on Knicks MVP candidate Jalen Brunson to not allow him to get a 3-pointer off on the ensuing possession.
That forced a mid-air pass that Grayson Allen got into enough to deflect, but he didn’t give up on the play from there, noticing a lackadaisical Mikal Bridges floating toward it going out of bounds. Allen weaved around Bridges to knock the ball off him to swing a critical swing.
Never Quit: The 2025-26 Phoenix Suns pic.twitter.com/bRbVSHBX9i
— Shane Young (@YoungNBA) January 10, 2026
“That was it. That play, game-changer,” Suns head coach Jordan Ott said.
Allen, who was 0-for-6 from 3, said it’s particularly natural on this Suns team to impact the game with energy in other ways when the shots aren’t falling.
“I think with this team it’s a little bit more natural because if you don’t play with energy on this team you’re out of place,” he said.
Allen then made some key shots, four free throws to keep the Suns’ lead above a possession, and that was the ballgame.
Phoenix survived a mauling on the glass from New York’s Mitchell Robinson, a supreme force as a rebounder. He grabbed eight of his 14 overall in the fourth quarter alone, with the Knicks’ tweak of a double-big lineup giving the Suns all sorts of fits when shots went up.
Ott initially countered with Mark Williams when the lineup was first deployed, but Williams had no chance on Robinson. Ighodaro eventually got back in the game and tried his best as an undersized 5 in the first place.
Ighodaro missed the one shot he took, didn’t grab a rebound and still found a way to help the Suns win this one, like his clutch stop on Brunson. He’s playing the best basketball of his career at the moment and it feels like a breakthrough last month-plus for him.
“We gotta give Oso props, man,” Booker said. “He’s stepped it up, he’s gotten better every opportunity that he’s had out there.”
The Suns survived that war inside plus the poor 3-point shooting of Allen and Jordan Goodwin (0-for-7), as well as the quietest 28 minutes Collin Gillespie has played since the first couple weeks of the season.
Brunson ended up with 27 points and was simmering at a few points throughout the game while never quite reaching white-hot status in the ways he has the last couple of years at Mortgage Matchup Center.
Turnovers were 18-10 Knicks and points off turnovers were 22-11 Suns. That right there, folks, is what influenced the end result the most, a tried and true winning formula Phoenix can successfully rely on.
Still no dice for Jalen Green, who will see his timeline for re-evaluation end on Monday. When tracking all the usual steps we do from afar for a return off a long-term injury, it seems like the middle of the upcoming six-game road trip would be the best bet. The opening three are Tuesday in Miami, Thursday in Detroit and Saturday in New York.
For any thought to not interrupting what’s working in terms of the starting lineup, part of Ott’s answer on further details surrounding Green’s return included him saying it would come in a starting role. That figures to be alongside Booker, Brooks, Williams and Allen, who still is ramping himself up as a reserve in his third game back.
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