PHOENIX — Had Devin Booker not missed a few minutes of action while mending an ankle injury in the locker room, he would have surpassed 40 minutes played and led the Phoenix Suns in that category for their Game 3 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Instead, Booker shared the honor of most-used Sun with second-year pro Oso Ighodaro, who because of Mark Williams’ injury played 39 minutes Saturday.
Head coach Jordan Ott got Grayson Allen (hamstring) back on one leg after he missed the first two games of the first-round series, and yet the Suns still managed to shrink the rotation to seven players in a 121-109 loss at Mortgage Matchup Center.
Disagree with that choice or not, it is telling.
It was painful enough that Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander went 15-of-18 for 42 points. But Phoenix lost the bench production by a 26-point margin even though the Thunder were without their second-best scorer, Jalen Williams.
“I think that shows their depth,” Ott said. “This is a team that’s battled through injuries throughout the year, as we have. They’ve learned their depth throughout the season.”
Phoenix has not.
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You can decide who deserves blame for that: coaches’ rotation decisions, players not doing enough to force themselves into the rotation or bad luck.
“We were in the fight,” Ott said.
But after Phoenix went ahead 24-15 after the first nine minutes, an 18-4 Thunder run to end the first quarter deleted what all that effort had gained.
Ighodaro scored 13 points with three boards and four assists, unimpressive stuff until you realize he has earned the total trust of Ott. And that trust is partially because his body has held up as the only Sun to appear in every game this year.
Jalen Green went for 26 points and six assists and just a turnover Saturday. File him under the positives in the past few weeks, though he had his well-chronicled frustrating year.
No more of Phoenix’s young players join those two trending in the right direction. Ryan Dunn, Khaman Maluach and Rasheer Fleming couldn’t push for more playing time. And that paints the picture of where this roster stands on the brink of elimination.
The Suns have run out of bullets.
This series has confirmed some more things, both good and bad.
Dillon Brooks’ production the last two games is more proof his offensive progression this season is real. So is the reality that Brooks’ isolation can sometimes kill the Suns’ ball movement.
He provided 30 points as he attacked the Thunder’s Chet Holmgren, taking the big man out of the game in the first half.
Meanwhile, Allen managed seven points and added some vertical spacing on offense despite being clearly limited with his hamstring injury.
“You can feel it instantly … his gravity, his ability to put the ball on the floor,” Ott said of Allen. “It changes the geometry of what the defense has to do.”
Still, Allen’s health didn’t hold up too well this year. He has played in only 52 games after a stellar start to 2025-26.
Similarly, Booker’s mileage for this season — and for his entire career — will be an offseason talking point. He hit two quick shots after returning from the locker room after his ankle injury in the third quarter but went scoreless from there. Booker scored just 16 while gutting through injury in the second half.
Williams’ long injury history despite his relative youth raises red flags as he is about to enter restricted free agency. The center played in 60 games but has been sidelined most of this postseason.
On Saturday with Williams still out, Phoenix tried to steal 10 combined minutes between Maluach and veteran Haywood Highsmith. They contributed to rough stretches. The Suns followed strong starts to each half with spurts of a few minutes where the bottom fell out.
“Ending quarters is a big thing in this league. Those are things you got to find a way to take care of,” Brooks said.
“It’s good lessons for us to watch on film tomorrow. The playoffs all about details … It’s the details we need to understand and we’re going to learn.”
The details will only go so far, because it doesn’t seem plausible the Suns will be fresh enough or healthy enough in two days for them to give the reigning champs a real test.
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