Can Suns find composure to advance past Warriors? ...Middle East

PHOENIX — How much will it matter that one team enters Friday coming off the low point of its season while the other has leapt to its highest?

The different types of momentum the Phoenix Suns and Golden State Warriors bring into a win-or-go-home finale of the play-in tournament feel too large to ignore.

The Warriors could not have been lower coming into Wednesday’s matchup against the Los Angeles Clippers.

Golden State had a record of 25-19 when Jimmy Butler tore his ACL. From there, it finished the year 12-26, with Stephen Curry playing in only nine of those games.

It meant something for that group to show the incredible amount of resilience it did with how low its morale appeared to be. Head coach Steve Kerr compared the victory to feeling like a champion again.

In other words, the Warriors feel like themselves again.

Meanwhile, Phoenix hasn’t gotten that feeling in months, and that dichotomy looms over this matchup.

Can Suns get right on offense?

As previously covered before Phoenix lost to the Portland Trail Blazers, there wasn’t anything that mattered more stylistically than the simple truth of a B+ Suns performance getting the job done. They have shown what they are capable of from the first half of the year, and if we see that squad on Friday, they will win.

We did not Tuesday, and let’s be honest, we won’t on Friday. So let’s really diagnose this thing.

The Suns’ primary issue is on offense, where a three-man attack of Devin Booker, Jalen Green and Dillon Brooks has brought extreme imbalance, taking the Suns right out of their signature ball movement that led to this group far overachieving its capabilities.

With those three together, the scouting report from opponents has become obvious.

Brooks and Green are afforded all the space in the world to go 1-on-1. Even Booker, who at times in his career has been the most double-teamed player in the league, has this red carpet rolled out to him as well. The only time you see a help defender come over is when Booker looks like he is at an advantage, and even then, it only occasionally happens.

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Golden State will be on top of this. While Kerr typically likes to overload on Booker’s space, chances are we see a more relaxed approach to deny the only capable playmaker opportunities to get the gears of the ball movement spinning.

Where Draymond Green decides to put himself will be big.

And one of the best defenders in the history of the game has still got it, folks. Look no further than at what he did to Kawhi Leonard with the season on the line.

Draymond Green’s solitary confinement of Kawhi Leonard compilation, final 3 minutes: pic.twitter.com/tNabKVpLOX

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) April 16, 2026

Green spent time defending the Suns’ centers a lot in the regular season, where he could directly attach himself to the ball screens and dribble handoffs. He could also just play free safety off a shooter that the Warriors would be happy leaving open to let Green roam. Green could be guarding Booker or Brooks, too. It’ll be fascinating to see where they decide he can be the most impactful.

Regardless of that, Golden State’s team defense had phenomenal stints on Wednesday, moving together through connected efforts. While the Warriors couldn’t do almost anything right once Butler got hurt, they still did force turnovers, the third-most in the NBA over that half of the season.

Expect them to use that strength and attempt to crater the Suns’ ability to move the ball even further.

The massive flaw here is Phoenix had a woeful rim rate all year through every iteration of the roster.

So, on Tuesday, the Suns took only 16% of their shots at the rim and just 31% of the total attempts were from 3. Cleaning the Glass puts both of those marks in the lowest-possible zero percentile, while Phoenix’s 53% of shots in the midrange were in the 100th percentile.

Essentially, all of the preseason concerns about the fit of this roster from an offensive standpoint and ball-handling perspective rapidly rose to the surface.

In the six games the trio has played together without minutes restrictions, the team produced 20.5 assists and 14.5 turnovers per game. The assists figure is 3.2 lower than the bottom number on the league leaderboards this year and the giveaways could be 15th. The 1.41 assist-to-turnover ratio could also be the worst.

This is all on Booker.

The roster construction was always bad in terms of building around him specifically, but he’s gotta be a star and overcome these situations. He has to see what the team needs the most and keep spraying the ball around off drives, an engine source his teammates are woefully incapable of providing. He needs to try to touch the paint every single time he gets the ball, and from there, make the passes he has for several years now.

In the five regular season games of this threesome’s short stint, 3-point shooters assisted by Booker shot 46.3% from deep and the mark via Green was 45.5%, as it was for Brooks. When they found the space, it was to open shooters that were knocking them down.

And for Booker, it’s not about finding the space. He’s the one capable of creating it.

Bombs away

That is so critical in this matchup because the Warriors are going to bomb away.

Post-Butler injury, Golden State has the second-highest 3-point rate in the league, a whole 8% above the average. Remember, that’s without Curry for 29 of those 38 games. Wednesday was the 10th game the Warriors have made at least 18 3s since that time.

When it comes to the seven-man rotation Golden State played on Wednesday consisting of Curry, Draymond Green, Brandin Podziemski, Kristaps Porzingis, Gui Santos, De’Anthony Melton and Gary Payton II, the six non-Curry members combined to shoot 32.4% across the 38 games. That is pretty terrible!

But those same seven combined to make 19 in Los Angeles.

The volume matters. If the Suns and Warriors both take the same amount of 3s as they did in their initial play-in games and shoot an equal percentage of them, let’s say 36%, Golden State’s 15-of-41 would result in six more 3s than Phoenix’s 9-of-25.

Head coach Jordan Ott thought it was more of Portland’s scheme affecting the Suns than them missing passes, and he noted how good the Blazers are at doing that.

Regardless of the matchup they’ve got to get up more 3s with how little they shoot at the rim.

The Suns either have to deny Golden State 3s and force it to score elsewhere, or more likely, return to their normally accustomed volume in the mid-to-high 30s. Getting Grayson Allen back from a nagging left hamstring sure would help.

A chef with no ingredients

Curry isn’t working with much in terms of offensive firepower. So how’d the Suns do defending him this year?

Across the three matchups he played in, Curry shot 21-of-55 (38.1%) for 23.6 PPG.

The first was a Warriors rout on Nov. 4. Curry was 9-of-23 and fairly effective in the second half but the Suns did a decent job overall on a night it actually switched one through five, a theme in this fixture. There were a couple of hiccups, though, that forecasted the more common mistakes we have seen in the last few months.

A Dec. 18 matchup was more in line with the Phoenix defense we speak fondly of.

Jordan Goodwin and Collin Gillespie led the charge on some great gameplan discipline for a 3-of-13 Curry shooting performance, one of four times this year he made three field goals or less in a game. That was more so in their individual task, though, as you can see below, Curry got some space on DHOs when the big was a step too far away to chase Curry completely off the line.

“That’s the challenge is that it never stops, so it’s not only the guy on the ball, but the screener’s defender has to be alert, too,” Ott said.

Two days later back in The Bay, it was a mix of the two previous outings. This was the most successful of the three when it came to denying Curry looks in the half-court and some of the on-ball moments were strong, with some mistakes in there, too.

Gillespie might have done the best job overall on Curry, which makes you wonder if Ott should start him instead of Goodwin.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Suns continue that game plan on Curry and how they counter five-out all night through Porzingis, Horford and small-ball lineups.

The Suns have rarely switched 1-5 over the last few months, and some of the latter meetings with the Warriors were rough outings for Mark Williams, even with some good on-ball possessions. Ott should be quick to pull Williams or Oso Ighodaro if Golden State is benefitting too much from their presence. The size doesn’t do much for them elsewhere.

There are other alternatives to explore, such as the Suns’ own rarely-used small-ball lineups, where Ryan Dunn and Rasheer Fleming could find more minutes. Dunn did well on Curry overall on the year and Fleming’s length against a turnover-prone squad could be an asset.

Composure, anyone?

This is a big one for Brooks. Yes, it is easy to hype up his antics against Draymond Green’s.

But Brooks has already gone overboard this season with just Curry, and when asked about watching Wednesday’s game, he said he preferred facing the Warriors.

Why?

“Steph and Draymond. And Steve Kerr,” Brooks said.

The Dec. 18 Suns win was their most chaotic of the year. When they were up five with five with 50 seconds left, Golden State flew up of the floor off a Suns miss and Curry drifted into open space as he often does. The ball found him, and on Brooks’ closeout, he swatted at the attempt a first time before a second that hit Curry in the chest.

Curry missed, but the act was rather blatant on replay and ruled a Flagrant 1.

Dillon Brooks earned a Flagrant 1 foul for striking Steph Curry on this play ? pic.twitter.com/LjlK4cmu61

— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) December 19, 2025

Curry made both free throws and then Butler drilled a 3. Five-point swing and a tie game in three seconds.

After the team traded baskets, a wild Brooks step-back 3 that wasn’t close resulted in a foul on the rebound drawn by Goodwin that won the game.

This was the Valley’s first experience of, “Yo, is he going to chill out?” with Brooks clearly going over the line in a way that almost cost the Suns a win. Booker at the time spoke on it, saying he will “never get used to it” but that “it can be controlled.” The former has proven to be true while the latter has not.

Ditto for Green!

In the Dec. 20 contest, he lost his mind and got ejected after playing just eight minutes. Green blocked Gillespie’s shot in the early second quarter before standing over him and screaming at him. On the way back down the floor with that type of stuff persisting, Gillespie was turning around and Green shoved him right when he did.

That got a tech and Green kept barking at the officials, which resulted in him getting tossed.

Draymond Green has been ejected from the game following this sequence ? pic.twitter.com/U5pE3NQDje

— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) December 21, 2025

Emotions will, uh, be quite high on Friday. Either dude snapping could be a key swing, especially Green feeding a Suns home crowd any extra reasons to get loud.

Clean basketball, anyone?

Even during the heights of the Warriors dynasty, they were known for turning the ball over, so this obviously holds true for when they are a 37-win ball club.

In the 38 games after Butler’s injury, Golden State was 27th in turnover percentage, and had 20 on Wednesday.

The Suns only forcing 15 against the Blazers, the worst turnover team in over a decade, does not bode well for Phoenix pouncing on that weakness that should further magnify one of its past strengths.

In that similar vein, even before the Suns’ loss of form that started in February, the Warriors had a way of bringing that team out earlier in the season.

The November blowout featured a 25-point Warriors lead in the mid-second quarter, and on Dec. 20, a foreboding Suns performance took place. Let me know if this sounds familiar: They shot 71% in the first quarter for 44 points, covering up some poor defensive play before the offense collapsed the rest of the way and the defense only got worse.

We’ve seen at least a half-dozen of those in the post-February Suns regression.

Speaking of!

On Feb. 5 without both Butler and Curry, the Warriors beat the Suns and held them to 97 points without Booker and Jalen Green. Kerr once again used the “this win felt like a championship” line for how badly Golden State needed it. It shot 20-of-55 (36%) from 3, with 37 of the attempts coming in the first half.

Phoenix’s serious issues as of late with crunch-time offense were the culprit in this one, when it scored two points in the final 7:19 of the game.

Like most of the play-in games thus far, odds are this will be sloppy and lack stability from both squads. All these knuckleheads are play-in teams for a reason. But the team that can locate execution the most will be the victors.

And it will most likely have to come in the clutch.

“We know (in the) fourth quarter, it’s gonna be line up and see what you got,” Ott said. “That’s what the playoff basketball is. All the concepts and style of play a lot of the time go out the door when you get into the fourth quarter.”

When the winning time clock started running on Wednesday, the Warriors took over. Do they have that in them again on Friday? And if they do, can the Suns respond effectively?

That’ll be the game.

Follow @KellanOlson

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