Last season's Western Conference champion Phoenix Suns, in this season still showed a very strong competitiveness, under the leadership of veteran St. Paul, they not only successfully surpassed the brave Warriors at the beginning of the season, climbed to the first position in the West, but also established a lot of leadership, but before the Start of the All-Star Game, Paul's accidental injury made the regular season West Champion belong to the suspense again, in this regular season, the Suns encountered the Jazz team that played the best record in the league last season. The two teams played in this game, Mamba passer Booker did a good job in terms of individual offense and tandem whole team offense, which is also the reason why the Suns did not fall behind at all in the starting five tiger confrontation, but the Jazz bench players broke the opponent in terms of personal performance, and finally helped the team to beat the Suns 118-114, so that the leader suffered two consecutive defeats, and the suspense of the Western Championship was restarted!
Without Paul sitting, the Suns' stability and key ball ability have dropped significantly, but the overall performance of the team can still see the impact Paul has brought to this team, that is, the team basketball they have always firmly pursued, this battle Booker was arranged by the head coach to the starting point guard position, and also played a good personal performance, played 39.4 minutes in the whole game, hit 12 goals in 24 shots, and one person bombed 30 points, 7 rebounds, 7 assists and 2 steals.
Under Booker's tandem organization, the Suns' starting five Tigers scored all in double-doubles, of which Ayton played well against the league's best defensive player Gobert, proving that he had the ability to get a maximum salary, hitting 11 goals in 15 shots, cutting 23 points and 7 rebounds, while Johnson, who replaced Paul in the starting lineup, also made 4 of 6 three-point shooting, cutting 23 points, 4 rebounds and 5 assists.
From the overall performance of the starting five tigers, the Suns have a clear advantage, the Jazz's starting five-man plus-minus is all negative, although the defensive gate Gobert has 16 points, 14 rebounds and 3 blocks into the account, but only 5 of 13 shots, Mitchell only 8 of 20 shots in this game, although also got 26 points, 2 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 steals of personal data, but the overall performance is far from meeting expectations.
But the role players played, became the winner of the game, the Suns bench came on as four players, a total of only 11 points into the account, and the Jazz in the bench of the offensive core Clarkson, a person in the 25.3 minutes of its play in the time of 22 points, it can be said that one person broke the first bench seat in the West, in addition to him the other four bench players also scored a total of 21 points.
Before the Suns were very stable to play, so that many fans think that the suspense of the regular season Western Conference championship battle has been very small, but after losing Paul, the Suns have suffered two consecutive defeats, which also gave the Warriors behind them a chance, for the Suns, the regular season ranking is important, but more importantly, the health of the core players, I believe that as long as they can welcome back their strongest lineup in the playoffs, even if they do not enter the playoffs with the first division, they still have a great probability of breaking through from the West!