Suns ‘looking forward to competing’ against defending NBA champion Lakers
The Phoenix Suns finished this shortened 72-game regular season with 51 victories to have the second-best record in the NBA, earned the No. 2 in the West and the reward is facing the defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers, who are finally healthy.
That doesn’t seem fair, but not a reason for the Suns to pout, either.
“We’re looking forward to competing against the Lakers,” Suns coach Monty Williams said. “That’s how we look at it. We’re not like upset or feel like anybody’s done something to our Cheerios. We have to go play the Lakers. Everything you want is on the other side of hard. Right now, the Lakers are our hard.”
The Suns are the first two seed to enter the NBA playoffs as an underdog, but Cameron Payne says that’s how it’s been all season.
“I feel like we’re the underdog going into ever single game,” Payne said. “It don’t matter what the rankings says. It don’t matter what position we’re in. I just feel like we’ve got to worry about us. That’s just outside noise that we don’t really care about. We’ve just got to worry about us. Play Suns way, Suns culture and we’ll live with the results.”
So the Suns are more than fine with starting their first playoff run in 11 years Sunday against LeBron James, Anthony Davis and the Lakers at Phoenix Suns Arena.
“Did we think we were going to get to a championship without having to go against the defending champs? No,” Suns two-time All-Star Devin Booker said. “So we’re looking forward to it. It’s going to be a high-intense game, high-intense first round matchup.”
Game 1 of this best-of-7 series is scheduled for 12:30 p.m., Sunday on ABC.
“Somebody had texted me yesterday and was like, they have you guys losing and I asked them, ‘Who are they?'” Booker said. “You know what I’m saying? That’s the approach every day. We have a good group in this locker room from top to bottom that’s focused on winning basketball games and that’s it.”
The Lakers grabbed the seventh seed with Wednesday’s 103-100 win over Golden State in the play-in tournament as James hit a 34-footer with the shot clock expiring with 58.2 seconds left to set up the first-round series against the Suns.
“Well first, just the respect factor,” James said. “They’ve been playing at a high level all year. They’ve got a great Big 3 in CP (Chris Paul), Book and (Deandre) Ayton and the rest of those guys, they’re a star in their role. We’ve got to be able to understand that and match that. I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
The Lakers are focused on containing Booker and Paul as the Suns All-Star backcourt account for 34.4% of Phoenix’s points and 46.9% of its assists.
“At the head of the snake, you’ve got Book and CP,” Davis said. “Those two guys run their team offensively and they make sure that these guys play right. You’ve got a scoring machine with Book and guy who has a very high IQ and can run a team in Chris Paul.”
With James and Paul being such close friends, Davis expects his All-Star teammate to give the Lakers greater insight on how to handle the 16-year veteran leader.
“If we can potentially take Chris out of the series, it’ll be a little bit easier series for us when you take out their head of the snake for them who can control their team and get guys in the right place and also make big-time shots,” Davis said. “If we’re able to limit him and put a lot of pressure on other guys, then it’ll definitely help us out this series.”
Leading the league in defensive rating, the Lakers are also looking to contest Phoenix’s mid-range shooting led by Paul and Booker scoring off pick-and-roll and isolation.
The Suns are second in the NBA in percentage of points from the mid-range at 13.2%.
“There’s a perception that defenses in the NBA want to give up the mid-range, take away threes and basket attacks, but we want to take away everything, especially against a team that’s very good at knocking down mid-range shots like CP3 and Book are and really their whole team is,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said.
The Suns’ greatest challenge is handling the size of the Lakers, something that was problematic in their last matchup May 9 in Los Angeles.
Davis scored a season-high 42 points as the Lakers won, 123-110 without James, who sat with a right high ankle sprain. Between Davis, Andre Drummond, Montrezl Harrell and Marc Gasol, Los Angeles has a clear size advantage as the Suns have Dario Saric and Frank Kaminsky as backup bigs to Ayton.
“We understand that we have to be unbelievably physical keeping them off the boards,” Williams said.
Ayton has missed Phoenix’s last three games with left knee soreness. Ayton said after Wednesday’s practice he should be good to go Sunday, but Williams wasn’t ready to confirm if his starting center or Cam Johnson (right wrist sprain) will play Sunday.
“We’ll see,” Williams said. “Our game plan has been to do our best to have those guys ready. I don’t want to get too far ahead of today, but they’re trending in a good place, but nothing official yet.”
Johnson has missed Phoenix’s last six games with the injury on his shooting wrist. Williams did confirm Johnson has had the soft cast removed.
“He’s been in practice working on strengthening his wrist and he’s gotten up a few shots,” Williams said. “That’s all I’m going to say about that. He doesn’t have a cast on and he’s progressing.”
Have opinion about current state of the Suns? Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at [email protected] or contact him at 480-787-1240. Follow him on Twitter at @DuaneRankin.
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