OKLAHOMA CITY — The Phoenix Suns are back to being a .500 team after Oklahoma City thoroughly dismantled them, 140-109, Wednesday on the eve of Thursday’s NBA trade deadline.
This was Phoenix’s most lopsided loss this season.
This isn’t how the season was supposed to unfold for the NBA’s first $400-million team.
This is why there was such buzz about Jimmy Butler. Maybe he’d moved the needle for the Suns.
The Suns instead missed out on Butler, who joined Golden State in a multi-team trade Wednesday, and dropped a third straight game before a crowd of 17,451 at Paycom Center.
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Phoenix (25-25) led by as many as 12 points in the first half with hot 3-point shooting, but only took a two-point lead into the locker room at the break. OKC closed the half on a 16-6 burst.
The Thunder (40-9) opened the second half on a 13-0 run as part of a 20-4 surge and never looked back. OKC outscored Phoenix, 43-16, in the third quarter.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander dropped a 50-piece in 34 minutes of OKC’s second win over the Suns this season. Bradley Beal paced the Suns with 25 points off the bench while Devin Booker added 19 points and committed six of the team’s 22 turnovers.
The Suns were without Kevin Durant due to a left ankle sprain suffered in the fourth quarter of Monday’s overtime loss at Portland, but everyone else was available and they still trailed OKC by as many as 38 points.
Phoenix returns home to face Utah (11-37) Friday. Here are takeaways from Wednesday’s game.
Perspective: From 2023 to 2025
Phoenix last lost by 30-plus points Feb. 1, 2023. The Atlanta Hawks blitzed the Suns, 132-100, at Footprint Center. They fell to 27-26 at the time.
Essentially a week later, new Suns team owner Mat Ishbia landed Durant in the blockbuster deal that sent Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson and multiple first-round draft picks to the Nets.
They are now 25-25 after Wednesday’s 31-point defeat.
That is insane.
The Suns are on their third head coach since 2023, have continued to make big moves to put them over the NBA’s second tax apron, have moved draft picks and now have limited roster flexibility.
They’ve gone beyond all-in, only to fall short of the championship goal. Now, they’re barely a play-in team.
Oklahoma City’s record through 53 games in the 2022-23 season was 25-28, after a 141-114 loss at Golden State. The Thunder have grown from that into a team with 40 wins in 49 games this season.
The Thunder stuck with coach Mark Daignault. They developed their players, starting with Gilgeous-Alexander and down the line. Three of their five starters in that 2023 loss to Golden State started Wednesday against Phoenix: Jalen Williams, who is now an All-Star; Aaron Wiggins, who scored 17 points Wednesday; and Gilgeous-Alexander, who was a ridiculous plus-42 against the Suns.
Gilgeous-Alexander, who leads the league in scoring, now is a top MVP candidate leading the NBA’s best team. He is the ultimate shot-maker and has “manipulated” the game with his ability to draw fouls, as Beal said, but the Thunder aren’t a one-man show.
They drafted well, made strategic roster changes and are rolling despite being the NBA’s youngest team going into the 2024-25 season.
The Suns are 15.5 games behind them and 10th in the West. So as ugly as the loss was, the Thunder are the superior team. They just firmly showed it in the second half.
The process that led each team to where they stand today is fascinating on multiple levels.
Suns live and die by the 3
The Suns were cooking in the first half with 60.5% shooting, going 10-of-22 from 3.
That’s on pace to generate 40-plus attempts. That’s right in Suns coach Mike Budenholzer’s desired range, but they should’ve had a bigger lead than two at the break.
Enter turnovers.
The Suns committed 11 in the first half that led to 11 OKC points.
Phoenix cooled off the second half, shooting a bleak 1-of-15 from the field, going 0-of-5 from 3, but the Thunder started hot with that 13-0 run with easy shots in the lane.
It’s a recurring theme that the Suns just can’t seem to fix. They committed 22 turnovers that led to 23 OKC points for the game and yielded 17 offensive rebounds the Thunder turned into 18 points.
For Budenholzer to say the third quarter wasn’t about effort is a head scratcher.
He can chalk it up to missing shots, but OKC outworked his team and played with an energy, force and pace the Suns couldn’t match.
Booker called OKC a “well-oiled machine” before the game and gave them high praise postgame. The Suns simply don’t have any answer for the younger, more active Thunder, especially with Durant out.
Big piece missing, but OKC has been without Chet Holmgren for most of the season with a pelvic fracture. He played in just 10 games, but the Thunder haven’t missed a beat.
Would Butler have made the Suns better?
Phoenix certainly thought so because it kept trying to land Butler despite the Heat suspending him at every turn. Any other team might have thought, nah, we’re good, but the Suns aren’t good.
Like seriously, they’re not good. They truly are what their record is – at best.
Phoenix hasn’t shown resiliency when things go south. The Suns unfold at the seams and don’t know how to reel it back in to give themselves a chance to rally at the end.
Maybe Butler would’ve addressed the mental makeup of the Suns, but he wasn’t single handedly going to fix the turnovers, the poor defense and rebounding.
Budenholzer insists he believes in the group and that “things can change quickly.”
They only have 32 games left in the regular season. As of right now, Phoenix doesn’t look as if it’s capable of flipping the season like a switch.
The Suns look more like a team that’s going to continue to show flashes of good basketball, as Tyus Jones said, only to digress and make one wonder how they lost by such a resounding margin when they have these players and have spent this much money.
Maybe they just are who they are and have been all along and it’s become so obvious, it can’t be ignored anymore.
What Suns said after loss
Mike Budenholzer on the Suns being fixable: “I think if you lean into the first half and how we played for big parts if that, I think we’ve talked about some through the year, doing it for 48 minutes. Finding sustainability both ends of the court. We’ve just got to keep pushing, keep working.”
Devin Booker on difference between 8-1 Suns and now: “I always said at the start of the season, we were squeezing by. It still wasn’t the type of wins that you like to see. They could’ve went either way going down the stretch. If we were beating teams and sitting in the 4th quarter, that’s a different thing, but it was coming down to tough shot making in the 4th quarter. We need to be better than that.”
Tyus Jones on having players in the middle of trade talks: “As much as you want to say everybody is blocking it out, everyone sees it, everyone hears it. It’s around, but at the same time, you’re trying to lock in.”
Bradley Beal on mentality after Jimmy Butler landed in Golden State via trade: “Nothing changed for me. My mentality is the same whether somebody is here, somebody is not here. Whether I’m here, whether I’m not here. My mentality is always going to be the same, stay true to who I am. Maybe it puts people at ease. I wasn’t thinking about it. Taking everything a day at a time. Once I was approached with something, the conversation would be had.”
Have opinions about the current state of the Suns? Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at [email protected] or contact him at 480-810-5518. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @DuaneRankin.
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