Suns address whether they had enough time with Kevin Durant after ...

Monty Williams: 'I can't use that as an excuse'

Three weeks.

That’s how long Kevin Durant was sidelined with left ankle sprain suffered in pregame warmups before what would’ve been his Suns home debut March 8 against Oklahoma City.

Durant not only missed 10 games during that stretch, but the Suns couldn’t continue building momentum off winning their first three games with him in the lineup and improve in-game chemistry.

When Durant returned from injury March 29 at Minnesota, the Suns had just seven games left in the regular season. He played in five of them, rested the final two and Phoenix went into the postseason as a fourth seed in the West, but had only played eight games with their newest superstar.

Durant can’t let his mind go there when thinking how that may have impacted Phoenix in a postseason run that ended with Thursday’s Game 6 loss, 125-100, to No. 1 seeded Denver at Footprint Center.

“If I provide context, it’ll just be looked at as an excuse,” Durant said. “We’ve just got to be better next year.”

Next year.

The Suns won’t have the same exact roster, but they’ll get their first offseason and preseason with Durant as they acquired him in a blockbuster deal before the Feb. 9 trade deadline.

“We had high expectations because that’s just who the Suns organization is,” Suns big Deandre Ayton said. “We play to win, but at the same time, people have to realize that we didn’t have training camp with this team. We didn’t have enough time. I felt that if we had enough time, certain things where we crack down. Late situations in games, we would’ve been better.”

Makes sense, but Suns coach Monty Williams refuses to go there when thinking about how the season unfolded.

“I can’t use that as an excuse,” he said. “It’s my job to put it together. You can ask questions and say did we have enough time and all of those things. May be valid, but I don’t think so. I think it’s my job to make it work and make guys comfortable. At the end of the day, most of that is offensive driven. It shouldn’t affect your defense. It shouldn’t affect transition. So, from my perspective, we had enough time to get things done and we just didn’t.”

The Suns made two deadline deals that removed four players from the roster and brought in three:

—The big one: Traded Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder, four first round picks and a pick swap to Brooklyn for T.J. Warren and Durant.

—The final one: Traded Dario Saric and a second-round pick to Oklahoma City for Darius Bazley.

Later that month, they added Terrence Ross from the buyout market.

So, Phoenix had four new players trying to find their roles with their biggest addition missing 10 games in a three-week span. The Suns then had less than three weeks between March 29 when Durant returned to April 16 when they opened the playoffs against the fifth-seeded Clippers.

Not a lot of time to figure out tendencies, roles, combinations and rotations, but Damion Lee offered a thorough perspective on the idea.

“I wouldn’t say rushed,” Lee said. “I would say we played the hand we were dealt. If KD doesn't get hurt in warmups, things may be different right now. We may still be playing. If we didn't make the trade, things may be different. Who knows. We can't live in the fantasy world. We're not on Earth 2. We can't play guessing games of what happened. We just got to play the cards we were dealt, and even with the cards we were dealt, I still liked our chances.”

They took out the short-handed Clippers in five, but ran into a healthy, more formidable opponent in the Nuggets and were eliminated in six games.

“At the end of the day, as much as we can look at our team, did we have enough time, can we grow, can we get guys involved, guys in the rotation and out of the rotation, whatever way you want to look at it, Denver was better than us for four games,” Lee said.

Denver’s average margin of victory in its four wins was 17.2 points.

“It’s no knock on us or trying to downplay what they did, but they were the No. 1 team in the NBA all year,” Lee said. “They had someone who was the two-time MVP (in Nikola Jokic), who could have won it again this year. He’s going to go down as a great in this league and he’s only what, 28, 29 (years old)?

Jokic will turn 29 next February.

“He can honestly play that way until he’s 40, 45,” Lee continued. “So it’s like, as much as we could’ve jelled, could’ve done more things, tried to do things differently, like I said, we just played the cards we were dealt and you have to give Denver credit and their staff credit. We’ll see what happens this summer and going forward.”

Have opinion about current state of the Suns? Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at [email protected] or contact him at 480-787-1240. Follow him on Twitter at @DuaneRankin.

Support local journalism. Start your online subscription.

Facebook Twitter Email