There was no let down for the Phoenix Suns Saturday night at US Airways Center. They returned home and made quick of the Charlotte Bobcats with a 105-95 win and the game wasn't as close as the score showed.
The Suns led by as much as 27 points and the last time they trailed was at 13-10 less than midway through the first quarter.
That opening quarter belonged to Goran Dragic, who scored 15 of his 25 points on 5-7 shooting, 1-1 from deep and 4-5 at the line.
"It was just in the flow of the game," explained Dragic about his hot start. "Not only me, we tried to start good as a team, tried to build the lead and get into halftime with a 10 point advantage"
Phoenix accomplished their goal leading by 18 when they headed into the locker room mostly on the back of a scorching second quarter from Marcus Morris.
Morris scored 13 of his 15 points knocking down 5-6 shots and two threes. During the four games the team played from January 22nd to January 27th Morris averaged five points on four shots and 43.8% shooting. He's regained his rhythm the last three putting up double figures in each while shooting 54.8% from the field.
More important than anything the Suns did on the offensive end they were able to slow down Bobcats center Al Jefferson.
Jefferson was coming off a three game stretch where he averaged 35.7 points and 14 rebounds was held to 10 points and six rebounds. Big Al struggled shooting 4-15 from the field.
Miles Plumlee, Channing Frye, Alex Len and Markieff Morris all saw time defending Jefferson.
"We wanted to keep throwing guys at him," said Coach Hornacek after the game. "Sometimes it's the case of a guy gets an early foul so we switched over and put Channing on him. We didn't want any of our guys to get two quick ones. When you got a bunch of bigs you can continually rotate guys on him just for the purpose of fouls and plus someone be fresh on him at all times. You have to have that to play against him."
"You got to make it hard," continued Hornacek regarding their strategy with Jefferson. "We want to try push him out, catch it farther out, pressure on the passer so they can't throw a nice easy pass to him. Then when he makes his moves and spins you gotta have other guys there."
Frye, whose reputation on the defensive end isn't heralded, was a big part of the defense on the Bobcats center. Big Al gets added to the list of Blake Griffin and Kevin Love as efficient scoring bigs Frye has helped slow down.
"He's a load man," said Frye about Jefferson. "I just didn't want him to have 40 on me. He's playing pretty much as good as basketball as Kevin Durant the last 5 or 6 games. He's a workload down there and I saw him get comfortable early and I got to figure out a way to turn his water off. My teammates did a great job of helping me and sticking with the plan making sure the second and third options he felt like someone was there to mix it up. I just battled, I just wanted to make him tired and work for it."
As a team the Suns held Charlotte to 41% shooting and through the first three quarters it was an even more impressive 36.7% before letting things get a little slopping in the final 12 minutes.
The Suns have won five straight to get to a season high 11 games over .500. Their next four games are against teams .500 or better starting with the Bulls at home on Tuesday.
Other Notes
- In the short amount of time Len spent on Jefferson he did a nice job. He also had a good contest forcing Ramon Sessions to miss what looked like it was going to be an open lay up.
- It was a quiet night from Leandro Barbosa. He only played 8:57, but did hit 2-3 shots.
- Ish Smith was solid. The offense went through a lull when Dragic was taken out in the first half and Barbosa was the lone ball handling guard. It sparked back up when Smith and Barbosa played together.