Monty Williams Harps on Lack of Defensive Effort in Loss to Hawks
The Phoenix Suns weren't able to get anything going offensively in their 132-100 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday night.
Chris Paul, Torrey Craig and Cam Johnson combined for a whopping 16 points while Mikal Bridges (23) and Deandre Ayton (20) shouldered most of the offensive load in the starting unit.
Phoenix's bench didn't yield much better results, though Dario Saric and Damion Lee managed to hit 10+ points each.
The Suns converted a whopping 4-of-28 three-point attempts and shot just 40% from the field in the loss. 16 turnovers didn't help Phoenix's cause, either.
Yet in his postgame press conference, Suns coach Monty Williams harped on the defensive deficiencies that plagued his squad throughout the night, which began from the first possession of the game.
“I mean you have games like that, but I thought the start of the game, if you just go to the first possession, we couldn’t find, I forget who it was, but Dejounte (Murray) made the first three of the game. We had five guys on one side of the court, one guy by their bench. That was pretty much the game dictator," Williams said.
"They were a lot faster than us tonight, especially in transition and we just couldn’t make a shot for whatever reason. We didn’t have a 30-point quarter until the fourth and it just happens. You hope that nights like that, you can pull something from it. I think the thing I pulled from it is the amount of energy you need to play, the way we play and have the guys we have out, when Chris (Paul) isn’t going and Mikal (Bridges) is missing shots, it becomes a thing because if you’re missing shots and they’re running in transition you expand a lot of energy to get back and they made shots.
"I think they made ten threes in the first half and they had points off turnovers. I think they had 31, so it was just a bad combination for us to win a game against a team that just lost one and it’s just like us, fighting for wins every night.”
Atlanta seemed like they just couldn't miss at times, shooting 57% from both the field and three.
The Suns carried a top-five defense in terms points allowed per game heading into Wednesday. Atlanta's 130+ point outing was the first time since Jan. 16 where Phoenix allowed a team to hit that mark.
“We just didn’t. We didn’t have it tonight. I felt like their guards and Trae (Young) is a tough one to get into. He draws fouls, one of the best in the league, but I thought Dejounte (Murray) even had his way in pick n’ roll. We just couldn’t get into his hip and he put a lot of pressure onto our bigs and then our bigs started stepping up and their bigs got behind us, and then we had to help on the backside and that’s how we were giving up so many threes," said Williams.
"When we are at our best is when we’re getting into the ball. The bigs can stay back and we’re forcing tough twos and we don’t have to help off of the shooters in the corner so just one of those things that we have to be much better at.”
The Hawks had five players score in double digits with two more finishing at nine points each. Murray led Atlanta with 21 points and a plus-minus of +40.
Now, the Suns embark on a five-game road trip that will feature tough tasks with Boston, Brooklyn and Atlanta again.
Williams says Phoenix can't allow for their mishaps to snowball into the trip:
“Play better defense and not allow the runs to become emotionally staggering. I think that happens to us sometimes at times. Teams are going to have runs in this game. It can be an 8-0 run or a 10-0 run, but I think at times the combination of them scoring and us not scoring sometimes can mess with you," Williams said.
"I thought that was somewhat the case tonight, like this was the first game that Chris (Paul) didn’t have that ‘pow, pow, pow’ to start the game and Mikal (Bridges) was missing shots and then that combination is tough. I think when you’re missing shots, the remedy of that is to have them miss shots or least slow them down and we just couldn’t do that tonight and we were giving up threes. To your point, ‘What do you do?’, you can’t give them both. You can’t miss shots and give up not easy points, but they hit 10 threes in the first half and some of them were just corner threes, which is the ones you don’t want to give up.”
Their trip begins with a matchup against Boston on Friday at 5:30 PM MST.
