Suns Coach Monty Williams Reacts To GM1 vs Nuggets | April 29, 2023

Yeah, I thought we gave them their shots. There were a few times we didn't even get a hand up on Aaron Gordon, Jeff Green. Those guys were, they're good players, but you don't expect those guys to shoot that way, but you gotta get a hand up. And I thought that they were just more physical, play with more force, especially in the second quarter. That's where we kinda lost some momentum. And the difference in possessions and turnovers and offensive rebounds just destroyed us tonight. And so we gotta regroup and do a much better job of playing with pace on offense. I thought we slowed down tonight for whatever reason. Their pressure or taking the ball out of the net, we didn't play with the pace that we are accustomed to, especially in the second quarter when they switched a ton on us. Yeah, we just kept turning it over. Every time we had a chance to get it under ten, I don't know how many turnovers we had in the middle of the floor, but that spot was like an ambush spot for them. They just kept coming towards the ball, but we couldn't get over the hump. Every time we had a chance to get under ten or get to ten, we turned it back over. Yeah, just trying to put a stronger, more guard-like body on Murray. And let's be honest, some of the shots he hit, I don't think anybody could have stopped him tonight. But we gotta do something a little bit different in our schemes to keep him from getting the ball or get the ball out of his hands. And that's something that we'll look at. Yeah, we played slow. DA came in and gave us a little bit of production in the paint, but I thought we could have drove it more versus the smaller guy that was on our big. If we can just get past the bigger guy that was on the ball, we could have generated more offense. But I thought it slowed us down for whatever reason. I thought in the second half, we did a much better job. Yeah, there were times where we, in the first quarter, I just felt like we didn't expect him to get the ball. He backdoored us one time. That should never happen against our defense when we play Denver. We know they wanna cut to the basket. We guarded him too high a couple times, and it created a ton of space. And then you compliment that with how he shot the ball tonight. It wasn't a good combination. Yeah, it's just not something that you're gonna see from Kevin. We had a number of turnovers tonight for 18 points. And then you, again, compliment that with the offensive rebounding. It just wasn't a good night for us. So we dug ourselves a hole. I thought we came out in the third quarter and played with our kind of force, but we were in such a hole, just couldn't overcome it. We'll see, we're gonna be better next game. Yeah, it's all on the table. Yeah, he may find himself in the rotation, just to create some more pace, and so Book doesn't have to handle the ball all the time. So we're gonna look at that. This ball just got sticky. We probably shot more shots off the dribble tonight. We didn't move it the way that we're typical or accustomed to moving it. And I thought we could do a much better job of trusting the pocket when they put two guys on the ball. It should allow for us to get a lot of shots on the back side. It's a lot. Yeah, it is a concern. We didn't generate enough, and they generated way too much. And so we have to look at our offense and make sure that we are, again, trusting the pocket pass. DA is capable, and he's done it a number of times where he can score or find guys on the back side. We gotta go step by step, process this tonight, and look at the film, come back in tomorrow with the players. And our guys have, this group has been here already. So we understand what it takes to emotionally settle down, understand it's a big game coming up. But our guys have played in a number of big games. Just more physical than we were. And I thought there were times where we had a guy boxing out and pushing us under the basket, but we had three guys standing outside to paint watching. Where we could have helped that guy boxing out. There was a few times where Gordon was on a smaller guy, or Green was on a smaller guy. And we just didn't go down and help those guys enough. All right, thank you.