After all the talk, after all the pursuit and all the optimism, the Phoenix Suns aren’t going to secure a top 6 seed in the Western Conference playoff pecking order.
That was pretty much nailed shut when Devin Booker’s three-point shot clanged off the rim in the closing seconds of a 125-123 loss to the Denver Nuggets at Mortgage Matchup Center on Tuesday night.
Honestly, had Booker’s shot gone down, climbing up to the sixth seed still would’ve been difficult. But after that loss, the Suns trail Houston by four games with only nine to play. That hill is a little too steep.
Unlike many of the Suns’ losses since the All-Star break, this one wasn’t gut-wrenching. Phoenix went toe-to-toe with three-time MVP Nikola Jokic, big-shot maker Jamal Murray and the Nuggets for most of the game. That coincided with the returns of Royce O’Neale and Grayson Allen from injury. With Dillon Brooks and Mark Williams’ returns also on the horizon, there’s still more than a bubbling hope that the Suns can get out of the play-in gauntlet and make a good showing in a best-of-seven series.
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I want to focus on the bigs, though. I thought rookie Khaman Maluach played his best basketball of the season in his 11 minutes of action with six points and two blocked shots. I thought he had played well enough that if you want to question head coach Jordan Ott for not closing the game with him on the floor as opposed to Oso Ighodaro, I’d listen.
Ighodaro also did some nice things but also reached a crucial juncture of his development in the fourth quarter when Denver coach David Adelman employed the “hack-an-Oso” strategy — purposely fouling Ighodaro to put him on the line. It’s a frustrating tactic, but it made sense.
Ighodaro is a 47% foul shooter. He missed four of his seven attempts from the line in the stretch and those misses loomed large in a two-point loss. Ighodaro has made massive improvement in his second season, but hopefully the stigma of being a player so weak at the line he’s targeted in that way in a close game becomes the impetus for a real effort to improve from the stripe, because sub-48% free-throw percentage for an NBA center on a playoff team isn’t going to cut it.
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