Phoenix continues to stumble across the finish line of a resurgent regular season for the franchise.
The Suns missed a 16-point lead in a 122-116 loss to Golden State Tuesday night after losing three of their last four games.
Golden State (37-33) finished the game 12-3 to score two wins against the NBA’s top two teams when the Warriors faced Utah at home on Monday.
Devin Booker hit a team high of 34 for Phoenix, 22 in the third quarter, and Andrew Wiggins hit a game high of 38 with 13 in the fourth quarter. His basket over Deandre Ayton gave Golden State a 118-113 lead, and it remained 1:22 in the game.
With the NBA’s best road record at 22-12, the Suns (48-21) had two critical turnovers during Golden State’s 12-3 end when Stephen Curry Booker stole the ball and the Warriors were three ahead of them.
That led to Wiggins’ banker via Ayton.
Booker sales came after Jordan Poole pitched Golden State forever (116-113) on a 31-foot-3 from a behind-the-back feed of curry.
Then Chris Paul and Mikal Bridges appeared to have miscommunication when Paul’s pass with Phoenix after four, 120-116, got out of hand by 40.2 seconds.
Booker finished the game with four turnovers while Paul, who scored 24 points and 10 assists, got three.
As a team, the Suns only had 11, but they led to 13 points for Golden State.
With a chance to fight for first place in the west in a game from Utah (50-19), Phoenix lost to the Warriors for the first time this season in their only game against them in San Francisco.
The Suns have the tiebreaker on Utah, but now they are two games behind the Jazz with three games remaining. Both play in their last three games against Portland (40-29).
- Jazz: Wednesday versus Blazer, Friday in Oklahoma City, Sunday in Sacramento.
- To sunbathe: Thursday against Blazer, Saturday in San Antonio, Sunday in San Antonio.
The last two losses for Phoenix have been to two teams it could very well face in the first round of defending NBA champions Los Angeles and the Warriors.
The Lakers, who won between 123 and 110 against Phoenix on Sunday based on Anthony Davis’ 42-point performance, are the seventh seed in the west while the Warriors are the eighth.
Golden State and Los Angeles will likely meet in the 7-8 game of the play-in tournament, with the winner taking the seventh seed and the loser playing the 9-10 winner for the eighth and final playoff spot in each conference got to.
Memphis (36-33) and San Antonio (33-35) are the 9-10 seeds respectively, but the Grizzlies are only half a game behind Golden State.
In addition, Phoenix is only two games ahead of the Los Angeles Clippers, who own the tiebreaker through Suns. The Clippers began a four-game road trip to end their regular season with a 19-point win over Toronto in Tampa.
The last three games of the Clippers are against Charlotte (33-36), Houston (16-53) with the worst record in the NBA and Oklahoma City.
Phoenix appeared to be on its way to getting closer to jazz and creating another breakup with the Clippers when it was back on the starting line-up and going 4v4 out of 3 in the first quarter, a nine lead with Jae Crowder Points one after the other.
Crowder finished with 20 points but missed four of his last six three.
The Suns extended the lead to 16 points (60:44), in the first half it was still 4:32, but Golden State finished the second quarter with a 14: 6 run to this advantage despite Curry, 66: 58 to cut in half The NBA’s leading scorer scored just four points in the first half in 2-of-8 (0-on-5 of 3).
Curry finished the game with 21 points on 7-of-22 shooting when he only made a 3-pointer on 11 attempts.
The Suns shot 60% off the field in the first half, went from 3 to 10 out of 18 and limited Curry to just four points, but only led with eight points, which in large part led to Wiggins’ 21 points in the first half to 10 owed was -of-13 shooting and Golden State attempted 10 more shots.
The Warriors had 11 second chance points in the first half, 29 for the game.
Do you have an opinion on the current state of the sun? Reach Sun’s Insider Duane Rankin at [email protected] or contact him at 480-787-1240. Follow him on Twitter at @DuaneRankin.
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