2024-11-01 22:55:02
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — A rare event occurred early in the first quarter of the Halloween meeting between the Phoenix Suns and the LA Clippers at Intuit Dome. As Suns shooting guard Devin Booker got into the paint, he attracted all five Clippers defenders and kicked out to power forward Kevin Durant, who swung the ball to new point guard Tyus Jones.
Clippers wings Norman Powell and Terance Mann converged onto Jones, who tried to split the Clippers defenders and drive into the paint again. But Jones was stripped of the ball by Mann — the first time all season that Jones had his dribble stolen from him.
The Suns trailed by 21 points with 10:51 left to play in the third quarter Thursday night. But the value of Jones helped the Suns get back in the game, simply by helping Booker and Durant get to advantageous spots on the floor. Booker’s first shot of the second half was a midrange attempt off a screen: good, with an assist from Jones. The next time down, Jones found Booker on the left wing, and Booker hit a one-dribble pull-up midrange shot over Powell going toward the baseline. The third time down, Booker screened for Jones to force Derrick Jones Jr. to switch with Powell, then Booker took Jones’ pass and dribbled into a Jusuf Nurkic ball screen for a 3-pointer.
The Suns wound up making their first 15 shots in a row to start the second half, an offensive avalanche that turned a possible Clippers rout into a coin-flip game. Perhaps that would have been a struggle for last year’s Suns, a team that lost four games after leading by more than 10 points in fourth quarters. But for the fourth time this season, the Suns outscored their opponent in the fourth quarter Thursday night, outlasting the Clippers 125-119 and improving their record to 4-1.
After Jones’ early turnover, he had a season-high 11 assists without adding another turnover to his record. It is one of the things that is very different about Phoenix’s offense this season.
“I think he steadies them, and I think their offense is better with Tyus,” said Powell, who was in the same 2015 draft class as Jones. “It was a good pickup for them offensively. You got guys that can score: D. Book and KD. Some of the best scorers in the game, one of the best scorers ever. I mean, their offense is the same, but I think Tyus really helps them steady down, especially down the stretch of their games.”
Jones was not a priority free agent among NBA teams. Even though he broke his own NBA record for assist-to-turnover ratio (7.3 assists, 1.0 turnovers) last season as a starter for the Washington Wizards, the 6-foot-1, 196-pound Jones was available almost all of July before signing a minimum deal with a Suns team that had a tough time playing competent late-game basketball.
Last season, Booker took on the point guard role. According to Second Spectrum, Booker averaged 73.4 touches per game despite sharing a roster with Durant and Bradley Beal. The only other season in which Booker had more touches per game was in 2018-19, when Booker was entrusted with primary playmaker duties a year after Eric Bledsoe said he didn’t want to be in Phoenix. The results weren’t all bad last season, as the Suns were still the 10th-best offense in the NBA.
But Phoenix was last in fourth-quarter point differential, getting outscored by an average of 2.4 points per game in the money quarter. For perspective, the Miami Heat were 29th in fourth-quarter point differential but were only outscored by 1.2 points per game in fourth quarters. Only the Memphis Grizzlies and Portland Trail Blazers, two teams that lost more than twice as many games as they won, had a worse assist-turnover ratio than Phoenix last season (1.43). The Suns offense plummeted to 105.1 points per 100 possessions last season in fourth quarters, the worst mark in the league.
A big issue the Suns had last year under Frank Vogel was that the roster punted on traditional point guards. The Suns figured they could play through Booker, Beal, and Durant, while adding players such as Eric Gordon to the roster as a de facto backup point guard.
Not this year, though. Through five games, Jones has 35 assists and four turnovers, an even more sparkling assist-to-turnover ratio than last season. In fourth quarters, Jones shares the team-high with Booker with eight assists, but only one of Jones’ turnovers this season has come in the fourth quarter.
“What a relief,” Booker told The Athletic about Jones’ presence.
Booker’s touches per game entering Thursday night were at 57.5, the lowest since the Suns were the NBA’s best regular-season team in 2021-22. While Booker has had to take on a heavy workload before in his career, he is happy to focus on buckets more with the addition of Jones and fellow assist-to-turnover agent Monte Morris on Phoenix’s roster.
“It’s just naturally what I’ve been most of my life, and that’s a playmaker and a scorer,” Booker said after scoring a season-high 40 points on 11-of-18 shooting from the field against the Clippers. “Those guys can set the table and take pressure off us, and make sure every basket isn’t a tough one. You get a couple easy ones in transition, they find you in the corner. Instead of having to create every time down, you have somebody who can do it for you.”
It’s not just Booker’s life that has been made easier. Last season, Durant shot 48.8 percent from the field in fourth quarters. He also had more turnovers (62) than assists (56) in 71 fourth quarters last season. This season, Durant’s efficiency is much better late: 57.1 percent field goals, with a modest but improved 3:2 assist-turnover ratio. Durant pointed out that part of Jones’ value is his ability to also be a threat as a shooter and be willing to play off the ball.
“The more playmaking and decision-makers you can have on a team, at that level, it’s always good,” Durant said. “Ball still running through me, Book, Brad. But you add Tyus in there too, he’s mixing in a little bit. He’s not just simply controlling the whole game and handing us shots whenever he wants to. I think we’re all just playing in the flow of each other. I might bring it up, Ty might bring it up, Book might bring it up. Brad. So the more versatile attackers you have with four or five guys handing the ball, it just throws everybody off. The key is that we all can catch-and-shoot, catch-and-drive, play off the ball too.”
As critical as Jones’ presence is for Phoenix, the Suns still want to be good in lineups that do not feature a true point guard. Suns head coach Mike Budenholzer won a championship in Milwaukee during a season in which Jrue Holiday was his point guard. Budenholzer believes that the Suns have to play well with or without a true point guard on the floor.
“I do think there’s a trend, just with bigs, and just in general, anybody bringing the ball up the court, playing faster, getting it up the floor, and just playing with a lot of space and playing with a lot of movement, and playing more random,” Budenholzer said. “That environment can lend itself to playing without the traditional point guards, where you’re not maybe setting up and playing slower, playing in the halfcourt and playing maybe the way the NBA played for a long time. So I think there has been a trend to faster, more random, more space. I think that can also allow you to play without the traditional setup point guard.”
It’s still early, but the Suns are off to a 4-1 start in part because they have been able to come back in games and get buckets. Before the Suns overcame a 21-point deficit, they overcame an 18-point deficit to beat the visiting Los Angeles Lakers at home. Just a week ago, the Suns overcame a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to escape the Clippers in overtime. The organization that Jones brings can be illustrated in a play that he didn’t even get an assist for — a fourth-quarter Royce O’Neale corner 3 assisted by Booker in the final minute after the Clippers showed Jones multiple bodies on a screen set by Booker:
“Having his experience, having his leadership, having him organize us,” Budenholzer said. “I think to start the third quarter, he was getting us into the right places. He was getting the guys the ball. … He’s exactly what we need.”
(Photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
