Monty Williams Take Blame for Loss vs. Clippers: 'I Played Too Many Guys'

PHOENIX -- Thursday had the potential to be a magical day in the Valley.

The Phoenix Suns officially unveiled Kevin Durant to a group of rowdy fans hours before hosting the Los Angeles Clippers. A win for the Suns would have seen Phoenix enter the break with a three-game winning streak, even with Durant yet to hit the court due to a sprained MCL.

Yet that wasn't quite the case, as Phoenix fell to the Los Angeles Clippers in 116-107 fashion.

Phoenix is nowhere close to bad form. The Suns won their last seven of ten heading into the All-Star break and currently own the No. 5 seed in the West.

Yet every game matters when fighting through a tough and rugged Western Conference slate. Monty Williams knows that.

“You always want to win before you have a few days off, but we didn’t. You have to accept that and look at why you didn’t win," said Williams after the loss to the Clippers.

"Defensively, we weren’t bad tonight but we gave up a costly 37-point quarter. I thought that gave them momentum. I thought they scored easy, easily in the third and it just put us in a bit of a hole and it wasn’t like a 20-point hole, it was like a nine, ten, eight-point hole that we couldn’t recover from and we just had one of those nights where the team shot the ball really well in the first half from three and then they had a big third quarter and it just gave them momentum.

"I don’t think we played our style consistently tonight. The ball didn’t move the way that it has been moving and that hurt us and then we had some costly turnovers, so you want to win going into the break but we’ve been playing pretty good basketball these last few weeks and I thought from my perspective, I played too many guys tonight. It’s hard for guys to get a rhythm when you’re playing that many guys and I got to settle on a rotation so that guys can get used to playing with each other.”

Chris Paul and Devin Booker went a combined 8-24 on the night, as it was Josh Okogie's efforts with 24 points that kept Phoenix in the game.

Every player in Phoenix's lineup besides Darius Bazley clocked at least four minutes in the game. That's partly due to Williams wanting to find lineup combinations for Phoenix with a handful of new faces in the mix while also just trying to find somebody who could give him something on the court.

“Well, both. Tonight, we were just searching for combinations that could allow for us to get a rhythm. I didn’t give T.J. (Warren) enough of a run, D Lee (Damion Lee) got in later than he typically does, Biz (Bismack Biyombo) and Jock (Landale) back and forth. I got to settle on like I said, about a nine-and-a-half-man group, so that we can get a good team rhythm going forward," said Williams.

With the losses of Cam Johnson and Mikal Bridges, Williams will be forced to find other suitable combinations with the postseason looming after the All-Star break.

Trial and error. It's what Williams will have to gamble until he finds the right puzzle pieces for the Suns moving forward.