Jordan Ott Sends Powerful Message After Suns Playoff Exit

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns' season is officially over.

The Suns fell in Game 4 to the Oklahoma City Thunder and were swept out of the postseason in first round action.

Though it was an unceremonious end, the Suns were able to accomplish more than imaginable this past season, and that's something head coach Jordan Ott shared with reporters afterwards.

"I try to stay in the moment. After game three, we talked a lot about fight the urge. Fight the urge to think about what comes after. So to be honest, I haven't given a lot of thought. Even to the group, I don't think I was fully prepared to talk about the season, and we'll talk tomorrow, but I do think there's a sense of pride with this group we hear often with the city and the fans," Ott said.

"I think that's what hurts today, because this group, it ends. That team ends, and they should be proud of what they did this year. We can only help so much. We can only talk to them so much. They got to go out there and perform. And to perform in this tough environment against one of, if not the best team and the fight of this group that we talked a lot about over the 89 games now or 88 games, it showed up in game 88.

"Down the stretch, that group fought. It's hard to take any of those guys out, so it's probably a long winded answer, but off the cuff, we all can feel proud of what this team did, not only over the course of the entire season, but tonight as well."

The Suns now are set to embark on a long offseason that will feature plenty of tough questions on how Phoenix can improve. What that looks like and how the organization goes about doing so remains to be seen, though the there's plenty to take from their playoff experience against the NBA's best team.

"I think that is one of the minor blessings of the last couple of weeks was the intensity of these games are like no other. And then playing the best is like, any crack — they find it. Anything you try to cover up and get to the next one, they find it. They have a lot of solutions," Ott continued.

"So to play against the best or one of the best teams and battle them like we did and improve over the course of the series, there's probably a mentality in there that we're happy that we saw come through in the toughest moments, but there's also definitely schematics, game plan, messaging that I definitely will learn from as a coach."

The Thunder, besides Game 1, never were able to throttle the Suns for majority of the series like many had hoped. Phoenix seemingly got better over the course of the series, which is exciting for the future.

Ott, capping his first year, says earning the player's trust was a major milestone.

"I think as a coach, you just show up every day and try to show that you're prepared and organized. You're trying to earn trust every second. And you know how quickly that can go away. So us, as a group, coaching staff, organization, we have to come prepare and show them that we have a plan every day, and then at the end of the day, they go out and perform. That's the hardest part," Ott said.

"Ours is preparation/how do we execute, and then on the back end, just evaluate, and it's just a repetitive cycle. So I hope they feel that we show up every day to try and help them have success, because they got the by far the toughest job to go out there and play against another team that's doing the exact same thing to a high level. So it's not going to stop. Our group will not stop. You see how hard our guys play. It makes it easy to get up the next morning and try to help them out."

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