Skip to content

Improved Pelicans should terrify Booker-less Suns

Christian Petersen / NBA / Getty Images

Devin Booker's hamstring injury, which could keep the All-Star out for two-to-three weeks, creates all kinds of big-picture concerns about the Phoenix Suns' ability to top off their franchise-best regular season with their first NBA championship.

But there's a more pressing short-term concern.

Despite the mammoth gap in ability between the top-seeded Suns and a New Orleans Pelicans team that needed to win two play-in games after finishing ninth in the West, Phoenix may suddenly be hard-pressed just to get out of the first round.

Don't sleep on the Pels

Christian Petersen / NBA / Getty Images

New Orleans isn't in the same class as the 64-win Suns, but the Pelicans team that arrived in Phoenix for this quarterfinal series was much closer to its mighty opponent than a 36-46 record and a 28-game gap in the standings would suggest.

After trading for CJ McCollum days before the deadline, the Pelicans played .500 basketball with him in the lineup. Even that 13-13 mark belies their newfound competence, as star forward Brandon Ingram missed time with a hamstring injury. With both Ingram and McCollum in the lineup, New Orleans went 9-6, while Phoenix was significantly less powerful than usual without Booker.

New Orleans' defense is also more stout than its 18th-ranked defensive rating indicates, as rookie head coach Willie Green trimmed and solidified his rotation as the season progressed.

Garrett Temple, a well-liked veteran with value in a locker room, was overmatched as a 35-year-old rotation player in his 13th pro season. The Pelicans bled points with Temple on the court and he averaged more than 19 minutes per game through the first four months of the season, much to the dismay of frustrated Pels fans. Green took Temple out of the rotation after the All-Star break while finding more minutes for emerging, undrafted rookie Jose Alvarado, as well as rookie forward Herb Jones and young big man Jaxson Hayes.

Larry Nance, who was acquired from Portland with McCollum, also helped after he recovered from knee surgery and returned to action in late March.

Jonas Valanciunas gives New Orleans classic size at center and can also space the floor on the offensive end thanks to his improved shooting. But Nance and Hayes make the Pelicans more seamlessly switchable on the defensive end, which was evident at times down the stretch of their Game 2 victory.

From Feb. 25 on, the Pelicans boasted the league's ninth-best defense after owning the ninth-worst D up to that date.

With Booker out and New Orleans continuing on an upward trajectory, the Pelicans find themselves with home-court advantage in what's become a best-of-five series between two more closely matched teams. Without Booker, Ingram can fairly claim to be the best player remaining in the series.

What to expect from Suns

Bart Young / NBA / Getty Images

Though Chris Paul's general brilliance and game management, combined with Phoenix's defense, should keep the Suns operating at a high level, Booker's absence is obviously devastating.

Cam Johnson and Landry Shamet will fill the majority of Booker's minutes. The Suns' starting five with Johnson in place of Booker was incredible on both sides of the ball in 40 regular-season minutes together. But beyond the team's two stars, reserve guard Cam Payne is the only other Suns player who really creates his own offense.

Phoenix's attack already relied heavily on Paul or Booker running pick-and-rolls with center Deandre Ayton and assessing what came of them. With Booker on the bench, Paul ran some variation of a pick-and-roll with Ayton nearly every single time down the floor in the fourth quarter of Game 2.

Between Paul's decision-making and Ayton's efficiency inside and on the short roll, the Suns will still get good looks out of those actions, and the Pelicans will still have tough choices to make. If the Pels sell out to stop the Paul-Ayton two-man game, the shooting from players like Mikal Bridges, Johnson, Jae Crowder (0-for-9 from deep thus far), and Shamet could very well decide this series.

But this is far from ideal for the Suns. Paul's age and postseason injury history are concerning given the extra offensive burden that's been placed on his shoulders. Phoenix's margin for error has been drastically reduced.

The longer this series - once expected to be a formality - plays out, the worse it gets for the Suns. As the remaining sample size in a playoff series shrinks, it becomes less likely that what's supposed to happen will happen; a prohibitive favorite becomes more susceptible to being undone by random events.

Even with Booker in the lineup, the prospect of the Pelicans splitting the next two games in New Orleans and shrinking this series to a best-of-three would've been frightening for Phoenix. Given how much more evenly matched these teams appear with Booker sidelined, that possibility should be downright terrifying for a Suns team that looked like the NBA's only no-brainer championship contender.

Joseph Casciaro is a senior writer for theScore.

Daily Newsletter

Get the latest trending sports news daily in your inbox