The Phoenix Suns lost at the Footprint Center in Phoenix on Saturday night, 117-107, in a marquee game against the NBA’s #1 team, the Boston Celtics.
Kevin Durant led the Suns with a resounding 45-point effort on 18-of-26 shooting to go along with 10 rebounds and six assists, while Bradley Beal scored 25 points on 10-of-20 from the field.
Boston’s superstar duo flexed their muscles for the Celtics, relentlessly attacking the Suns.
Jayson Tatum, even on a no-shot night, going 11 of 28 from the floor, still managed to flirt with a triple-double by adding 10 rebounds and seven assists. His teammate Jaylen Brown also scored 27 points.
It was another big test for the Suns, who beat the Denver Nuggets earlier this week on the road without star forward Devin Booker, missing his fourth straight game with a sprained right ankle.
Boston finished the game shooting 49% from the floor and made 15 3-pointers (38%). This could have been the difference in the game as the Suns shot just 9 of 31 from deep, a rate of 29%.
“We had some looks, we had 14 turnovers, but I had six, so everyone was pretty good,” Durant said of the Suns’ performance tonight. “We forced them into 12 turnovers, so I don’t think the turnovers really killed us that much. They made six more 3s than us and had us rebounding, but not as much. I think the 3-point line is really what beat us.
Jusuf Nurkic contributed the Suns with his 22nd double-double of the season, grabbing 11 rebounds and scoring 11 points.
Grayson Allen, who had made 16 3s in his last two games, failed to hit a deep one. Allen and Royce O’Neale combined to go an uncharacteristic 1 of 10 from beyond the arc.
Boston (49-14) entered Saturday’s game with the best record in the NBA and appeared hungrier after suffering back-to-back losses for the first time since Nov. 8.
Trailing 77-64 in the third, the Suns responded at halftime with a 9-0 run. But the Celtics responded immediately with a 21-10 run.
“I thought we fought…proud of how hard we fought. I didn’t like how many loose balls we didn’t recover early in the game and how we bounced back. You have to have urgency against the team with the best record in the NBA, Vogel said after the game. “The marginal error is slim against a team like this, but I was proud of the way we fought.”
Swiss army knife Derrick White played a pivotal role for Boston filling the scoring with 10 points, five rebounds and nine assists. On the Phoenix bench, Bol Bol had 13 points and four rebounds and Boston’s Luke Kornet had 14 points and six rebounds, nearly outpacing the entire Suns bench which had 16.
In the last sequence, it was Kevin Durant who shone again by making a 3 and two jump shots, one of which became a and one.
The two teams went back and forth in the final minutes, but the Suns missed four straight 3s, before Al Horford hit a corner 3-pointer to put the game to bed.
With this defeat, the Suns fall to 37-27.
They will now hit the road for four games, with their first stop Monday night against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
