The fittest team in the NBA was also the runner-up last season and the first in the last regular season. Phoenix Suns had everything under control after the first contact with the playoffs, but this is a long-distance race and the near post has come quickly. In the second match they have already found an injury to the body of their best man, Devin Booker, and with a loss at home that makes them lose home court factor in favor of some very feisty Pelicans. Nothing is guaranteed and this is a pretty good example of what basketball is at this level of demand and at this point in the season.
The Pels came close to giving a scare in the first game and only Chris Paul’s excellence on the floor in the fourth quarter made them 1-0 in the tie last Sunday. Now it was time to endorse those good feelings on the part of the Suns and they ran into, again, a team that does what is asked of them despite the fact that their resources are not up to the rival’s. Without Zion Williamson, who will not return for the remainder of the course and will spend the year blank except for a last-minute surprise, and with Willy Hernangómez lacking an opportunity to play, in this Willie Green team they have become men to take into account Larry Nance (13), transferred from Portland just to balance salaries, rookies like Trey Murphy (9) and Herb Jones (14) or the Puerto Rican point guard Jose Alvarado (8), who has earned his place despite to reach the NBA outside the draft. And they are alive. And they just tied with the 114-125 they had in Arizona. There is no less than applause.
The local team was assaulted again by doubts in the second half, but this time it was not enough to save the situation. His brightest star looked from the bench dressed in a tracksuit jacket that he was not going to take off and his teammates showed signs that, despite how good they are, they are far from being bot programmed to always execute in the same way. Booker could not complete the game with a smile, quite the opposite. Paul, in addition to the sorrow for his partner, saw the ghost again on the court and in the form of a referee in a curious statistic that continues without breaking: the fourteen times that Scott Foster, who is considered one of the most controversial referees in the NBA, has refereed him in playoffs and has lost. Not even from such trivial matters could they escape.
Devin Booker was in one of those days. After 25 minutes played, he had reached 31 points. 7/11 shooting from three and 5/8 shooting from two, with no free kicks, was setting the bar high. In one of the plays in which he was right, he fell due to inertia, he bumped into a father who was holding his son and bumped the little boy’s fists in one of those images that give more value to sport. That was the confidence he had. That will be the image with which that child lives. Everything, to order. But Devin’s body told him to stop. In the third period he went to the locker room with some discomfort and later, when it was also announced that he would not play again, Monty Williams clarified on television that it is a puncture in the hamstring of his left leg and that he has already had to deal with them for part of the season (in December he missed seven games for it). The Suns were orphaned and they noticed it excessively. Ingram (37) and McCollum (23) had the dumb hand, in a good way, throwing shots in situations Phoenix didn’t expect. They were making their way. But when the locals really got worried, at the beginning of the fourth quarter with Alvarado’s eight points. The Pels went from being just two ahead to being six. And he had less than half left to the final room. Herb Jones knew how to see the spaces to score and assist and the best of Green, Ingram and McCollum, sentenced with fifteen goals between them in three and a half minutes. The revelry is justified for them: they extend this first round tie at least until the fifth and they do it with good feelings in the two games played.