MILWAUKEE. – Elimination games are all about mentality, and the Milwaukee Bucks are acclimating to the demands of finishing while the Phoenix Suns attempt to embrace the underdog role.
“You have to embrace it,” Suns forward Jae Crowder said after the team’s tune-up practice for Game 6 on Tuesday night (Wednesday in Manila). “You have to embrace where you are in the series and from there you have to focus and channel your emotions and energy towards the next game, and that’s tomorrow night. We just know it’s going to be a dogfight. . . It’s win or go home. The words speak for (themselves).”
Where the Suns are right now is one win from being dispatched from the NBA finals after leading 2-0. Milwaukee claimed three games in a row, with late-game heroics to capture Game 4 at home and Game 5 in Phoenix.
Phoenix had the best record in the NBA on the road– 24-12– in the regular season. But Milwaukee, with a 26-10 mark in the regular season, tied for the fifth-best home mark in the league with the Los Angeles Clippers.
The Suns are focused on patching up a defense that allowed a pair of 40-point games to Giannis Antetokounmpo, another to Khris Middleton and a memorable Game 5 effort from Jrue Holiday.
“Our guys have always wanted it, but I think when you’re in moments like this, this is different,” Suns head coach Monty Williams said. “This is different from the first time against the Lakers, where it was just 2-1. This is it. I think we’re just going to see more, like we have throughout the playoffs.”
While the Bucks have shared the leading role to win three straight in the series, the Suns continue to lean heavily on Devin Booker. He has 82 of the team’s 222 points in the past two games in a pair of 40-point efforts in losses. Williams allowed that Booker wants to “win the moment” but the Suns need more of the team’s attack to dismantle Milwaukee’s defense.
“We have had a good balance of the kind of play that Devin brings, but we have also had the ball movement that can break you down,” Williams said. “We have talked about that.
We saw it in the fourth quarter, where the ball was whipping around the gym. That’s basically how we cut (the deficit). And so the balance of that, but at the same time I do not want to get in the way of the gift that our one-on-one players have, because that’s why we are here. We wouldn’t be in this position if Chris (Paul) and Devin couldn’t create their own shots. That’s a fact.”
