Thunder dominate injury decimated Suns 115-87

Tonight marked the NBA debut... of Devin Booker’s purple headband.

T.J. Warren didn’t wear a headband... he was out with back spasms... at least that’s what I tank the official report was.

Then Josh Jackson (left knee) went down.

Then Tyson Chandler followed suit.

The Suns were over-matched and undermanned... and eventually outgunned and overwhelmed by the Oklahoma City Thunder in a 115-87 rout.

How about that headband though?

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It didn’t start out horribly.

The Suns led by seven early and went back and forth with the Thunder through over half the second quarter, but then Oklahoma City exploded for a 15-0 run that helped them push to a 49-38 halftime lead.

Booker was 5-11 for 15 points in the first half.

The rest of the Suns went 7-32, with Troy Daniels 1-9, Josh Jackson 1-8 and Elfrid Payton 2-8 lighting it up from everywhere. A true display of marksmanship.

Russell Westbrook led the way for the Thunder with 14 points, 6 assists and 5 rebounds.

The Suns started the third quarter without Josh Jackson (who started in the place of injured T.J. Warren). Jackson will have an MRI on his left knee. Hopefully it is nothing serious. Chandler also left the game early in the third quarter after getting dinged up.

That pretty much left coach Jay Triano to start subbing from the very end of the Suns bench. The very end of the Suns bench performed about as well as one would probably expect, and the game got completely out of hand.

Westbrook had 13 points in the period, looking basically unstoppable, and Steven Adams played bully ball, he might actually be unstoppable, and the Thunder stretched their advantage to 88-67 after three quarters.

Adams might be the most physically dominant player in the game right now. In a scary moment, teammate Terrence Ferguson collided headfirst with Adams and crumpled to the ground. Adams was calling the trainers for help (for Ferguson) practically before Ferguson hit the ground... While Ferguson was badly stunned, Adams was 100% unfazed.

Adams didn’t show the same concern for the Suns, as he dominated the painted area on both ends, finishing with 16 points and 12 rebounds.

Booker stayed on the floor long enough into fourth quarter garbage time to finish with 30 points. It’s the 22nd time he has scored at least 30 this season with 14 of those games coming on the road.

Paul George (21 points) played early in the fourth quarter to make sure the Suns didn’t sneak back in, but both Adams and Westbrook (27 points, 8 rebounds, 9 assists) got an early night off.

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Games like tonight are really tough on the timeline.

The culmination of all the pain this franchise and its fans have endured paid off tonight in the form of Devin Booker and... his headband?

There was pretty much nothing else.

Nobody else played well.

At all.

Jackson was 1-8 from the field before he left with an injury.

Chriss and Bender combined for 8 points on 3-10 shooting with 7 rebounds... in 55 minutes.

Not that they’re really timeline pieces, but Daniels and Payton combined to shoot 5-28.

That helped the Suns stumble their way to a 33.7% shooting night.

The body language and execution of sets looked even worse than the shooting at times.

The defense was once again incredibly porous.

After actually limiting the Thunder to 49 points in the first half, OKC exploded for 39 in the third en route to a 115 point effort.

After a few recent competitive losses, the Suns have now been blown out in consecutive games.

Phoenix finishes their four game road trip against the Charlotte Hornets on Saturday.

The Suns have lost four straight and 19 of 21.

Phoenix (19-48) now has a league high 48 losses. No other team has more than 46.

Only 15 games of cringe-worthy basketball left Suns fans... and the summer keeps looking more and more important with each passing loss.