Jalen Green missed all three regular-season meetings between the Phoenix Suns and Golden State Warriors. He made up for it Friday.<\/p>\n
Green scored 36 points \u2014 including 13 in the third quarter \u2014 to lead the Suns past the Warriors, 111-96, in a Play-In Tournament elimination game in Phoenix.<\/p>\n
After blowing an 11-point fourth-quarter lead in Thursday\u2019s 7-8 matchup, the Suns didn\u2019t let this one slip. They held off the Warriors to secure the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference and a first-round matchup with the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder.<\/p>\n
The Suns led by five to begin the third quarter and stretched the margin to nine, 78-69, thanks in large part to Green, who went 5 for 7 from the field in the quarter, including 3 of 5 from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n
The Warriors, who rallied from 13 down to win Wednesday\u2019s 9-10 Play-In game, got 17 points from star Stephen Curry.<\/p>\n
Here are our takeaways from Phoenix:<\/p>\n
Phoenix needed this<\/p>\n
If you asked which organization needed this more, the answer was obvious. An aging Golden State would had little to gain from advancing, with a rested and powerful Oklahoma City team waiting. Better to head home and figure out how to reload for next season.<\/p>\n
Phoenix, on the other hand, is a different story. After the Kevin Durant-Bradley Beal disaster, the organization needed to win back the fan base\u2019s trust. The eighth seed is nothing to celebrate \u2014 and the Suns made the Play-In Tournament much more difficult than it needed to be \u2014 but reaching the playoffs was an important step. The Suns may not win a game against the Thunder. In fact, they probably will not. But as long as they don\u2019t get embarrassed, this can at least be a starting point. \u2014 Doug Haller\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not overlooked<\/p>\n
Jalen Green was the star, but Jordan Goodwin set the tone.<\/p>\n
He had three steals in the opening minutes. He chased Stephen Curry. That\u2019s what Goodwin does: hustle, hound and harass. It isn\u2019t always pretty \u2014 he grabbed an offensive rebound in traffic in the first half and rushed a miss that didn\u2019t hit the rim \u2014 but what he provides is invaluable.<\/p>\n
Along with his defense, Goodwin finished with 14 points, nine rebounds (four offensive), five steals and two assists \u2014 a performance that shouldn\u2019t be overlooked. \u2014 Haller\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jalen Green missed all three regular-season meetings between the Phoenix Suns and Golden State Warriors. He made up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,8217,459,6002,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-611719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golden-state-warriors","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-phoenix-suns","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}