PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns were outplayed in their Game 4 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on Sunday night.
But as the best-of-7 series, which is tied at two wins apiece, returns to Phoenix, Suns head coach Monty Williams believes his team will find a way to fix problems with shooting, rebounding and physicality that have plagued the team in their two losses.
"We have a saying that reps remove doubt," Williams told reporters Monday. "The guys have gotten their reps in. They are shots that we’ve made all year long and I’m not going to get in any of our guys’ heads about missing shots, especially when you get the open looks that we’re getting. They’re going to fall and I believe they’re going to fall at the right time. We’re going to play our tails off tomorrow and it’s going to give us a ton of confidence."
Williams was also asked about the mindset of his team heading into Game 5.
"I think our guys are right where everybody would imagine," Willaims said. "We earned this right to be in this position. We have home-court advantage. That was earned. But there’s also the human side of it. We felt like we could’ve won last night’s games had we knocked down a few more shots.
There’s a stinging that goes with that. At the same time, we do have the experience of being in this situation to a degree last year in the first round against the Lakers. That was when we played our best basketball, was after the situation that we found ourselves in on the road. So, I think it’s something that we all are embracing.
You could look at it in a number of ways. Who thought we’d have an injury to Book and be in this situation? But you can’t change that. We won two games, we lost two games, that’s just the reality. We’re at home in front of our fans and we get a chance to go out there and consistently show the kind of basketball that we played all year that we’ve yet to show in this series."
"Built for this"
Williams also believes that his team will lean on their experience from earlier this year when they played without Devin Booker as they look to get another win and put the Pelicans on the brink of elimination. Booker will miss Game 5 due to his strained hamstring.
"We won Game 1, Chris was lights out, (in Game 2) before Book got hurt, I think he had 31 points in the first half," Williams said. "It looked like we were possibly going to win that game. It’s hard to weigh. I’m sure it has had an effect on the team when you lose a guy like Book, especially in the playoffs. But we don’t have time to go through all that. Our guys are built for this.
They’ve been through a number of experiences playing with Chris, without Chris, with Book, without Book, DA, and so on and so forth. It can have an effect on you, but at this point, we should be over it. And we’ve had chances to win every game regardless of who’s been in the lineup and who’s been out. We’ve had chances to win, we’ve won two.
They’ve done some things from a physicality standpoint that have stifled us at times, but we’ve also been able to counter some of those things too. And the reality is we just have not shot the ball the way that we’re all used to seeing our team shoot and I’m confident that we will tomorrow."
Williams also says his team will work to be as physical as New Orleans has been so far, as that will be a key to winning this series.
"There has been a level of physicality in this series that has been, you know, I’m not going to get into my conversations that I kind of led into last night, but it has been some gray areas in the physicality as far as blind shots on guys who are defenseless on the backside, but we’ve shown the ability to hit first and go get rebounds," Williams said. "We did it in Game 3. Last night we had another situation where we gave up some 50/50 balls.
We weren’t first to the floor the way that we were in Game 3. But we’ve played with this group for most of the year with a bigger guy in the middle and guys around him that aren’t as big and we’ve been a hit first team. And we have to stick to that and tomorrow, playing in front of our fans with a game that we feel like we can win, that kind of adjustment could happen. We’ll just have to wait and see."
Game 5 between the Suns and Pelicans will tip-off at 7 p.m. at Footprint Center in downtown Phoenix. The series will then head back to New Orleans for Game 6 on Thursday night, and if there is a Game 7, it will be on Saturday in Phoenix.