Dario Saric likes the depth and experience. Jae Crowder likes the focus and motivation. Devin Booker likes the pressure. Welcome to the 2022 playoffs.
Phoenix Suns have their pregame ritual before facing the New Orleans Pelicans last month at Smoothie King Center.The Phoenix Suns aren’t sneaking up on anybody. They’re not proving anybody wrong. And they aren’t convincing anybody — not even themselves. The calm confidence resonates from one end of the roster to the other. Everybody feels it.
“And now we’re in the role of, let’s say, kind of favorites. We had the best record this season, and now everybody is expecting us to go back to the finals.” Saric, a big man who has been sidelined since tearing his ACL in last season’s championship round, has the perfect perspective. No observer has been closer to both the 2021 squad that finished in second place and the current squad that hopes to finish 2022 as champions.
Crowder knows what it should look like. In a nine-year NBA career, Crowder has been to the conference finals three times and the NBA Finals twice, including with the“We’re much more motivated this year,” he said. “Obviously, we made it to the finish line, but we didn’t complete our goals. The goal has never changed. We made it there, but we didn’t leave with anything to show for it.”“The rollover is the motivation,” Crowder said.
“We’ve been talking about that since training camp. The end goal is to win the championship. But there’s a lot of things to do up until that point. We still have games to play. We have a series to take care of, starting Sunday. The focus is there. The motivation is there.”JaVale McGee talks about the pregame huddle the Phoenix Suns have before every game this season.Devin Booker always seems to keep the same energy: He’s cool enough to build a house of cards with two decks on a moving team bus.
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