The sun, won again.
Against the Thunder, the Suns led 29-17 in the first quarter, but in the second quarter, the Thunder returned a wave of 31-16, and at the end of the half, the Suns trailed by 3 points at 45-48.
Fortunately, a strong team is a strong team, in the third quarter, the Suns made another wave of 37-21 in the single quarter, and never let the Thunder catch up, and finally won 113-101.
After this battle, the Suns won five consecutive victories, with a record of 26 wins and 5 losses, and continued to sit on the first throne of the league, and two days later, in the Christmas war, the Suns will face the second-place Warriors in the league at home, and this game is bound to be full of focus.
Back in this game, the Suns team in four doubles, Paul still played well, the whole game won 16 points, 5 rebounds, 7 assists and 3 steals, Ayton also had 19 points, 12 rebounds and 2 blocks, on the bench, Cameron Johnson shot 7 of 7, 5 of 3 points, and got 21 points, 9 rebounds and 3 assists.
The most crucial thing is Booker.
Booker's feel in the first half was not good, a total of 9 shots 3, only scored 8 points, but in the third quarter, Booker alone shot 6 of 9, scored 15 points, and sent 4 assists, and the individual single quarter created a score of 25 points, as a comparison, the Thunder only scored 21 points in this quarter.
In the end, Booker played a total of 35 minutes, shooting 12 of 23, 4 of 7 three-pointers, 30 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists, and his plus-minus was +19, the highest in the team.
Counting this victory, Booker has won 20 consecutive games so far, from November to now, as long as Booker plays, the Suns have not lost a single game - during the Suns' 18-game winning streak, Booker suffered an injury in the game against the Warriors, and then missed 7 games due to injury, in these 7 games, the Suns lost to the Warriors once and lost to the Clippers once.
Interesting is this statistic - Booker can score in double figures every game during this personal winning streak, and the last player who scored in double figures before the age of 26, at least 19 consecutive wins, and every game during the winning streak, is Kobe Bryant, and since the NBA and ABA merged, this record has only been achieved by Booker and Kobe.
So far this season, Booker has played in 24 games, averaging 23.3 points, 5.2 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game, shooting 46.1 percent from the field, 42.7 percent from three-point range, 86.3 percent from the free throw line, and 57.1 percent from the field.
For comparison, last season's Booker averaged 25.6 points, 4.2 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game, shooting 48.4 percent from the field, 34.0 percent from three-point range, 86.7 percent from the free throw line, and 58.7 percent from the true field.
Compared with last season, Booker's scoring has declined to a certain extent, which has something to do with the new rules, under which Booker's number of free throws has been reduced from 5.9 to 4.0, and his basket finish has also declined seriously, and the shooting rate from within 5 feet of the basket has dropped from the original 62.2% to 55.4%.
But Booker's mid-range is still outstanding, shooting 43.6 percent from 78-of-74 from the 10-14 foot range and 42 from the 15-19 foot range, 50.0 percent from the 15-19 foot range, and improving his three-point shooting percentage from 34.0 percent last season to 42.7 percent.
Now Booker, the league's first quarterback?
In the season when Harden moved to the Nets, Beal had a slippery slope, and DeRozan switched to playing as a forward, Booker is definitely qualified to be the league's first quarterback - the only one who can compete with Booker is probably LaVine, Whose data is better, but the team's record is much worse than the Sun, and according to the data website BBR, LaVine has spent 67% of the time on small forwards this season, only 13% of the time at the quarterback, and Booker has 87% of the time on the quarterback.
Of course, the "league's first quarterback" is only a title after all, really stronger than whom, or have to talk about the performance of the playoffs, for Booker, last season he has tasted the taste of the finals, this season the sun is still soaring, another finals, another championship, why is it impossible?