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Phoenix Suns coach Jordan Ott said Thursday that Friday’s play-in matchup with the Golden State Warriors will be decided by more than one plan, one lineup or one hot stretch at the Mortgage Matchup Center. His message was simple: prepare, react and stay together.
“Tomorrow night’s a whole new geometry. It’s a different team,” Ott said. “You have a plan going into it and then we got to be willing to adjust and again it’s all hands on deck.”
The Suns enter the win-or-go-home game with two key availability questions. Grayson Allen is questionable with a left hamstring strain, and Mark Williams is questionable with left foot soreness, which affects both Phoenix’s spacing and its interior rebounding.
Ott said Allen is “making progress,” but added, “It’s the hamstring, so it’s one of those soft tissue things. Can he sprint? That’s where we’re at. So going to be more. See how fast he can progress.” He also made clear how much Allen matters. “They’re definitely better with him. I think that’s easy to see.”
Golden State’s own injury list shapes the matchup too. Jimmy Butler is out with a right ACL injury, Moses Moody is out after left patellar tendon surgery, Quinten Post is out with right foot injury management, and Kristaps Porzingis is questionable with right ankle soreness.
Ott said the Warriors’ attack still presents a familiar problem. “They run a lot of off-ball screens to free up Curry obviously and then they just react off of his gravity,” he said. “It might not be a different challenge and in game you always have to be willing to adjust.”
He also said the Suns need to create more clean offense than they did in their previous meeting. “The math was not in our favor,” Ott said. “You definitely want to get some more threes up.”
Phoenix was one of the league’s strongest regular-season teams behind Devin Booker, who averaged 26.1 points and 6.0 assists, while Dillon Brooks added 20.2 points per game. Golden State countered with Stephen Curry at 26.6 points per game and 4.7 assists, and Ott said the answer starts with stopping the ball before the game gets into that kind of rhythm.
“We got to play faster,” he said. “We got to find ways to get him the ball downhill more. We got to play faster. That’s a piece that we can really use his speed.”
Ott said the Suns like the pressure of the moment, not the noise around it. “We need it,” he said of the home crowd. And later added, “We got to crash and we got to take them away.”
