PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns landing the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round set up four games where all you could reasonably ask for was a serious fight to be shown, more reminiscent of the first half of the season, and we saw it over a sweep that ended Phoenix’s season.
It all culminated with a 131-122 loss to OKC on Monday in Game 4.
A tremendous two-way effort from Phoenix forced the Thunder counter with an effective field goal percentage of 64%, their third-highest since this outstanding squad started making waves two years ago, per Stathead. That was comprised of 54% shooting from the field and 50% on 3s. Their 17 triples tied their best over the previous two postseason runs.
This was the best performance the Suns have put together in a few months. They pushed the best out of OKC, something that will help Phoenix next year.
“Thought it was a hell of a battle. … Sometimes it’s the offense too,” Suns head coach Jordan Ott said of a Thunder team known mainly for their defense. “High-level offense, high-level shot-making.”
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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was exceptional, following up his 42-point masterpiece on Saturday with 31 points (10-for-17), eight assists and three turnovers.
His supporting cast absent of Jalen Williams (left hamstring strain) showed out in a big way. Isaiah Hartenstein dominated the interior with 18 points, 13 rebounds and three assists while Chet Holmgren wasn’t too shabby either with 24 points and 12 rebounds. Clutch shooting came from Alex Caruso’s four 3s and 14 points in 25 minutes and Ajay Mitchell stepped up admirably too, adding 22 points, four rebounds, six assists and three turnovers on 7-of-16 shooting.
OKC needed every bit of it, even with one of the worst halves of Devin Booker’s career.
This was sort of in line with what we’ve seen from Booker’s playoff conclusions.
He was relentlessly chased off the ball, a defensive gameplan pushed into overdrive. With that, Booker didn’t have the desire to continuously seek out the ball and put in the high degree of work to benefit from all the extra attention with taxing downhill drives. When he tried to, Booker turned it over while being unable to create separation, doing so four times in the first quarter and six times overall.
Whether that’s because he’s currently injured or it’s something else, either would remain a consistent theme.
Booker denied any present injury the last couple of weeks or in the moment, saying he’s fine. This comes two days after he hobbled out and to the locker room during the third quarter of Saturday’s loss.
He spoke on the coverage he was seeing from OKC.
“You gotta give them credit — there’s three All-Defense guys over there that they keep in rotation and it seems like the gameplan is don’t let me get any touches at any time,” Booker said. “Still trying to be aggressive and find spots but somebody’s locked onto me and it’s opening up another opportunity for a teammate. The quicker we can exploit that and get that advantage, I think they can sag off a little bit and open more opportunities for me.”
This has always been the plan, and it works a lot against him. What’s the next step he thinks he has to take to overcome it?
“I think make ’em pay for it early in the game,” Booker said. “If my man’s hugged up on me in the corner and we get two lob dunks to the big right away, it’ll loosen up some. If I’m up in the slot and they’re denying me, we run a pick-and-roll to hit the big early in the pocket and have advantage basketball on the back side.
“It shouldn’t take two or three possessions to figure that out. The year that we had success with the Finals, we would do it right away, and throughout the game the defense would loosen up and I’d get cleaner opportunities.”
Even when he was open, Booker deferred at times. After he made his first field goal a few minutes into the third quarter, Booker in transition was open in the corner from 3 but passed to an open Collin Gillespie next to him, who to that point had knocked down six triples. Is that the right pass? I guess? But as discussed plenty over the years, sometimes that’s not the point and Gillespie missed anyway.
Even with suboptimal fits around him and other external factors, the bottom line is we’ve seen it too many times to call it anything but what Booker is now. As previously covered in this space, his playoffs will end with an injury or him underperforming, whether that’s for just one game or a whole series. It’s been too many of these now to call it anything otherwise.
The biggest spurt from Booker came in the mid-third quarter, when he scored nine straight of the Suns’ points. He produced 22 of his 24 points in the second half while shooting 8-of-13. That’s not nearly good enough. The game was already compromised by then.
The last Booker bucket came via a Rasheer Fleming block and then Dillon Brooks got an and-1 in transition off a Fleming steal. The rookie’s long overdue insertion as a small-ball 5 led to the only real roar of the series from the Phoenix crowd, cutting OKC’s edge down to eight.
The Suns entered the fourth quarter trailing by that much and were shooting 56.7%.
That’s where Fleming’s shortcomings as a rookie flashed, the reason he wasn’t in the rotation much at all for the postseason. He set a moving screen that got called before getting sealed out of the paint for a Hartenstein and-1. Those are two possessions taken right back after the two he sparked earlier.
Gilgeous-Alexander returned five minutes into the final frame with the lead bumped from eight to a dozen. He provided the final push, scoring or assisting on OKC’s next seven points to build the advantage to 16, including this fabulous falling finish.
pic.twitter.com/s58KWY4IEs
— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) April 28, 2026
That was it from there, and the Thunder once more were the victors because of a large swing to take things over.
Outside of some early holes defensively, this was the best first half we’ve seen from the Suns in dozens of games.
Their 11 3s were the most for them in the postseason and tied the second-highest total from the regular season. The ball was finally popping again, with five different players having at least two assists, contributing to a total of 14. Phoenix kept forcing the ball out of Gilgeous-Alexander’s hands, with its most aggressive direct double-teams of the series.
Gilgeous-Alexander kept making the right play from there, but eventually, superstars realize that’s not enough and it’s takeover time.
With Phoenix up seven and 5:33 left after forcing a Thunder timeout, Gilgeous-Alexander drilled a pull-up 3, drew an offensive foul and knocked down a contested midrange jumper. Even though the Suns were able to score some, OKC hit that championship gear in a key spurt of the contest, scoring on all 11 possessions after that timeout.
Let me repeat that. Once the Suns finally broke through to deliver a real, substantial blow to OKC, it scored on 11 straight trips.
Mitchell knocked down a 3 and then Gilgeous-Alexander found another middy before setting up Hartenstein for two free throws. And then, in a tremendous amount of trust shown to his guys, OKC head coach Mark Daigneault stuck to his rotations by pulling SGA as momentum was tilting back in OKC’s direction.
The Thunder then scored on the next three possessions anyway before SGA returned. From there, Mitchell converted on two more 3s that were both on possessions that started with SGA drawing in extra help. The last look of the half came on Gilgeous-Alexander making an open corner 3 after Brooks didn’t recover to defend anyone after initially containing SGA’s first drive to the basket. He, in fact, did not have him.
All told, it was a 27-12 avalanche in 5:18, the fourth straight game OKC went on a monumental surge to seize control. The Thunder delivered every time they had to.
This was again similar to the Suns at their best from a production standpoint, since it was a laundry list of contributors.
Jalen Green was 10-of-25 for 23 points while Brooks was 10-of-19 for his 23. Grayson Allen started to look like himself with 12 points, three rebounds and three assists.
Most importantly, Gillespie and Oso Ighodaro looked much more comfortable for the second straight game after running into major issues in Oklahoma City. Gillespie knocked down six 3s for 20 points. Ighodaro compiled eight points, eight rebounds, four assists, two turnovers, two steals and a block in 34 minutes. Both responded in the way you’d hope as complementary building blocks for the future.
Jordan Goodwin (left calf strain) and Mark Williams (left foot stress reaction) remained out. Goodwin is an unrestricted free agent while Williams heads for restricted free agency. Goodwin after the game prefaced he’ll see how everything goes but he prefers to stay in Phoenix while Williams didn’t speak.
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