After consummating the KD trade, the Nuggets were the worst team we could face.
The Nuggets rely on three point shooting on offense, they struggle against teams that move the and force rotations on defense....
We are a bad perimeter defending team and our offense is built on 2 ISO players.
We're playing a team. The Suns are not a team, the Suns are two superstars and a bunch of dudes vaguely trying to help them.
AS an outsider, and I watched only part of the game. The Suns lack of 3 point shooting is a big issue against Denver. You can put Denver in pick and roll with Joker but he's going to drop cover every time so you have to make him pay with 3's, they really didn't. 7 threes just isn't going to be enough to beat Denver consistently.
The other thing that's been talked about here often, in order to get Durant, the Suns had to trade depth and so they don't have the depth that Denver does, they actually outscored Denvers bench 24-23 but only because the game got out of hand so the deep benches played quite a bit. Brown had 14 for Denver, Landale with 7 was the only Sun bench guy that really scored much in the meat of the game and his defense was exploited repeatedly. When the Suns made a push to get the game close 3 times in a row Denver just went ISO and Gordon beat Landale for basically a dunk, a layup and I think he passed for a 3 on the other one.
If the Suns are going to win they either need more from the bench, or their starters are going to have to put up 100 plus points every game.
I do think the Suns CAN win the series but Denver is a difficult matchup for them, which of course is why Denver won 53 games this year they're really good