Phoenix Suns’ Chris Paul vows to “watch the ball” after costly sales in Game 4 against Milwaukee Bucks.

MILWAUKEE – The ball was in the hands of their veteran leader and the Phoenix Suns were trying to claim a win in the final minutes of Game 4 of the NBA Finals when Chris Paul flipped the ball not just once but twice late Wednesday 109 -103 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks.

The two non-enforced errors resulted in two Milwaukee scores – one remaining 3:40 to reduce the Suns ‘lead to one point, and another 27.2 seconds remaining, increasing the Bucks’ lead to four – and heated an angry Bucks finish to even the Series 2-2.

“It was me,” said Paul, describing the reason Phoenix lost 17 balls as a team, compared to just five for Milwaukee. “I had five of them. It was a bad decision.”

The Suns outperformed the Bucks by 51.3% to 40.2%, but they had 19 fewer shot attempts due to turnovers and all of the offensive rebounds they’d given up on Milwaukee. The Bucks’ 17 offensive boards resulted in 19 second chance points.

“They fired a lot more shots than we did, so I had to watch the ball for myself,” Paul continued. “We lost 17 balls, we shoot the ball too well not to have these chances.”

It was Paul’s worst playoff game since the first round when he played against the Los Angeles Lakers due to a nerve problem in his shoulder. Leaving the ball aside, he only had 10 points in 5-on-13 and seven assists – well below his average of 19.2 points and 8.7 assists this postseason.

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“We just lost the ball tonight,” said Suns coach Monty Williams about his team’s mistakes. “If you have such a lead in the fourth quarter, if we just hold the ball and get good possession of the ball, you have the feeling that you can at least hold it there. … We certainly had a lot of self-inflicted” things tonight. “

And then there was the stuff that influenced the game through the referee’s whistles, something that becomes a bit of an issue in this competitive series.

A big reason the Suns hit more than 50% of their shots was Devin Booker’s brilliant bounce-back game when he scored 42 points in 17v28 shooting.

As great as he was, he conceded five fouls that limited his playing time in the fourth quarter, and he should have called for a sixth and been disqualified around the 3:40 mark when Giannis Antetokounmpo scored the first of two late ball losses from Paul to shorten the leadership of the suns to one.

After Paul turned it over and Jrue Holiday whipped the ball down the other end, Booker Holiday chased down and wrapped him up. The official boxing score attributed a block on vacation to Booker, which Antetokounmpo cleaned up with a layup. Crew chief James Capers told a pool reporter after the game that Booker allegedly fouled the game.

“During live play, I saw the ball take a clean swing and thought it was a no call,” said Capers. “However, after watching the replay, I now realize that I missed Booker’s right arm around Holiday’s waist and it should have been a defensive foul in the game.”

The Bucks won and Antetokounmpo scored after the no-call on Holiday, so that no-foul call may not have hurt. Though Williams wondered what Booker could have been for, he wouldn’t have been called for a fifth foul early in the fourth quarter when he boxed out PJ Tucker.

“It’s hard because he – he could have gone for 50 plus tonight,” Williams said of the decision to keep Booker on the bench from 10:50 am on the fourth until there was still 5:55 am to go try to keep him from getting a sixth foul. “You’re just trying to get as many stops and fixed possessions as possible, but that’s not an ideal situation.”

When Booker left, the suns had risen at six. When he came back in, they were up at three. So they did without him. It was those last few minutes that Phoenix really made.

“This is the final,” said Cameron Johnson when asked if the ending came as a shock after Phoenix led 37:55 for the first 44 minutes of the game before the Bucks made their final push. “It’s the final, you won’t get away with anything easy. You will not win a victory. I am sure they will say the same thing. There are three left, you know. Three more You have to get two of these.

“But there is no roll-out here. It’s about high stakes, very high stakes. They know what’s at stake. We know what’s at stake. We won 2-0 here. They know what they’re into their dressing room. Now you know what we’re going to talk about in our dressing room. “