PHOENIX — The Phoenix Suns season came to a crushing and abrupt end Sunday night with a 123-90 loss to the Dallas Mavericks in Game 7 of the Western Conference Semifinals.
The loss means the Suns came up two rounds short of where the Suns, and their fans, hoped to finish, with the franchise's first NBA title.
With the season now over, Suns head coach Monty Williams met with reporters over Zoom Monday morning. Here is a transcript of the press conference.
Questions and answers may have been edited and/or shortened for clarity purposes.
Q: When you have a season like this that was so good, how tough is that finality that now, guys are going to go their separate ways, but that finality of we worked for 8 months and then it ends like this?
A: It's unbelievably hard, though, just because our expectations are to be the last team standing. And, you know, in a short period of time, we've come a long way, and the process of the expectations has changed so quickly. And that adds a lot more to the stakes. And so when it ends the way that it ended, it doesn't bother me as much because whether you lose by one or 33, the fact is, it's over and it comes to an abrupt end based on where you thought you could have been and that part is tough. And, you know, as I reflected last night and talked to the coaches, talked to my family, as badly as I felt I also reflect on what we've been able to accomplish, not just this year but over these three years and I wanted to remind the players of that. But (I) also wanted them to understand that we accepted the praise when everybody was talking about us and we were winning games and guys were accomplishing things, and now we have to accept this. This is going to help us grow in a way that last year didn't allow for us to grow. These are the adverse times that help you. But to your point, it is numbing. It is a huge sting to end this way. But it's just part of it. It's part of our journey. We have to accept it and embrace it and try our best to grow from it.
Q: When you took Deandre Ayton out, it looked like there was some interaction there and then you obviously didn't put him back in. I respect the fact that you said it was internal, but did you and Ayton talk it out after the game?
A: No, we didn't. And you guys know me well enough. I'm gonna do everything I can to help us win games. And at that point with the lead where it was, I made a decision to not put him back in the game. And I'll keep all of the internal stuff internal, but it was just a decision that I made. And I also got to a point where I didn't feel like Chris (Paul) and (Devin Booker) were going to help us on that particular night. But I do understand the question, but, no, we haven't talked. I talked to the team today but I have not talked to (Ayton) personally.
Q: With a 2-week stretch like this, you guys obviously want to learn from this and adjust, but in terms of the radical adjustments that people suggest after exiting like that, obviously, you guys don't want to do too much, but how do you learn from this going forward and take away what you need to without drastically altering too much in the process?
A: I think that it's going to take time to figure out what those concrete adjustments look like. From game to game, we made in-game adjustments that helped us, some didn't. That's part of it. When you get to a game 7, both teams are making adjustments to counter to get to that point. (As for) the overall adjustments, we'll sit down as a staff this year and look at our style of play and do we need to change anything to fit the playoffs a bit better. We felt like it did help us last year to get where we got. This year, playing against a different team, maybe we need to make some adjustments in how we play or whatever that looks like, but that's always on your mind. (It's) hard to find the concrete answers when you are so close to your last game, but that's something that we will visit over and over this summer.
Q: You guys have a young core with Devin Booker, Mikal Bridges, Deandre Ayton, and Cameron Johnson. When you look at this series and the way the Mavericks were able to key in on Booker and Chris Paul not maybe being 100%, what do you look at for the younger guys as far as areas you could improve with the program moving forward?
A: Right now, I look at myself and how do I put those guys in a position where they can be more confident when teams are taking away Book and Chris? The one thing I'm seeing in the playoffs, when you watch all these games, everybody has three or four guys, maybe, that can put the ball down and go get a bucket. And I'm asking myself over the course of the season, did I put those guys in enough positions where they can grow and do that? We thought that we did, but, when you look at this past series, maybe not. Were there opportunities for us to give Mikal, Cam, (and) Landry (Shamet) more opportunities to play in those 1-on-1 environments? Because, in the playoffs, everybody knows your plays. You throw the ball around two, three, four times, and then one guy gets it and he goes and gets a bucket. I learned that lesson from Kevin Durant after the Finals last year. He said, 'Coach, look. The playoffs, when you get deep into it, you gotta stop a guy from getting a bucket and you gotta go get a bucket.' And a lot of the teams have guys that can do that. I ask myself, am I preparing our guys to do that? I think we have guys that can. Mikal, Cam Johnson, what I saw from Landry in the postseason to complement what we have in Book and Chris.
Q: Monty, you referred last night to the inconsistencies over the past couple of weeks. Can you put your finger on that at all? Especially the times where we all kind of looked at it and thought that wasn't the team we saw in the regular season?
A: You know, I could sit here and make some excuses about stuff. I'm not going to do that. I think everybody is somewhat tired this time of the year. I think teams are dealing with bumps and bruises. We just weren't as consistent as we had shown during the regular season. We were the most consistent team and even in the New Orleans series, we probably weren't at the level that we had been playing at. But the playoffs will do that to you. Teams will take things away and your style of play hopefully can withstand that, but I don't want to make excuses about things that we're all dealing with. We just weren't as consistent and playing with the Suns basketball force that we had played with. We saw it in stretches, but we just didn't see it enough to win games on the road and certainly in a game 7.
Q: Do you feel like the trash talking and chippiness of this series made you cringe and come back to bite you in the end?
A: I don't know. You could make a case for some of that stuff. My charge to our team and they will tell you, I tell them to just focus on winning and don't get distracted with the antics that can happen in a game. if you look at every playoff series, there's going to be that stuff and the teams that can focus on winning and focus on the game typically have more success. But I don't know. We're speculating. If you think that that was the reason why you lost or lost a series, at the end of the day, it always comes down to the production on the floor. Can that stuff be a distraction? Yeah, it can be. But it's hard to say if it was.
Q: If players aren't performing to the level that you've seen them perform at, maybe they're not as explosive as they were, maybe they aren't knocking down the shots that they typically would hit, but they're the guys that got you there, what is your thought process on relying on those guys vs. pulling them, spelling them, giving guys off the bench who might be fresher more of an opportunity. What is your thought process?
A: It's a hard one. The guys that got you there, you tend to trust them more and you give them a bit more leash, especially your starters or rotation guys. There are moments where you do have that back and forth in your mind and even when you sit and talk about rotations, do we try to help the guy by giving him a rest or do you pull a guy? I've had to change the rotation where I pulled a couple of guys. But as far as the high-level, high-minute rotation guys that may or may not struggle, you tend to trust them more. I think every coach probably, at least the ones I've been around, follow that same paradigm. But it does cross your mind at times, especially after the fact, you question a lot of things. But, yeah, for me, I do give the guys who are high-minute guys, who have been successful, you do give them a bit more leash.
Q: Is Deandre Ayton a part of this team's long-term future and then when it comes to Chris Paul, he's kind of taking a beating among fans today, especially nationally, Patrick Beverly was on national TV today saying he's a traffic cone, what can you tell people about how important Chris Paul is to the success of this team moving forward?
A: Deandre's situation is something that we'll deal with this summer. I don't want to say anything in regards to that. James and I are going to have conversations about the team in general. As it relates to Chris, this is one of the reasons why I don't have social media and I typically don't hear a lot. Not because I don't respect what you guys (reporters) do, I mean you guys have been around me long enough to know that I respect that all of you have jobs. I also respect the fact that some of the sentiment that is out there about us or Chris doesn't necessarily come from you guys. So when I hear stuff like that, about another player taking a shot at Chris, it doesn't bother me at all. I look at Chris' body of work. I look at everywhere he's been, he's taken the organization to levels that, in some cases, they've never been before. Chris' greatest skill is he cares. When I see people taking shots at him like that, or I hear it from you guys, I don't even respond to it. It's not even worth responding. Everybody in this organization, everyone on this team understands how valuable Chris Paul is and how good he is and what he means to us. As a coach, and I probably overdo this, I feel like I rode him too much and may have worn him out, especially in the New Orleans series. If Chris doesn't play as well as he played, we probably don't win that series. But that's what great players do. They win you the series. So when I hear some of this stuff, I just, I could say some things, but we're chasing after other things, bigger things. And so, I'm not going to wrestle in that mud. That's not what we're trying to win. And that was my message to the guys after game 5. We're trying to win the game. So to get into all that silliness, it doesn't do any good, in my opinion. Chris is one of the best basketball players in the history of the game. And so, you're going to have people taking shots at him that aren't even in that class, why would I even comment?
Q: Could you sense early in the game that Devin Booker didn't seem to have that killer instinct he normally has and is that concerning if he's not producing the way he usually does in a huge game?
A: I wasn't too concerned early just because I thought there would be a little bit of angst and tightness just because it was a game 7, it was our first as a group. I thought over the course of the game things would just start to level out a little bit. I thought as a team when we started to miss a lot of open shots, we missed a number of layups, I thought that messed with us a little bit. And then they were hitting everything. And so, I thought from a team perspective we were a bit off, but I thought we'd get it back. We just didn't. As it relates to Book, I still have the same sentiment that I had last night. I just put a lot on his plate. Even the game where we're in New Orleans, his first game back, I was only going to play him around 20 (minutes), at the most 24 (minutes), I played him 32 (minutes). That's a lot. And the thing about Book and Chris is that they just don't run. They don't quit and that was one of the reasons why I took them out when I did because I knew that they were going to just continue even though the score was 30+ at the time, I just knew those guys weren't going to stop. And I just had to make a leader's decision to get those guys out. We all had the proverbial off night, but I still feel the same way after my emotions have settled a bit. I put a lot on those two. And they carried us most of the year. Last night we all came up short.
Williams had one last message for reporters before the end of his end-of-season press conference, after thanking them for their coverage this season.
"We think about Brittney Griner a ton and I want our fans to know that even though I haven't spoken about it a lot, we as a staff pray for her and her family a ton. I just hope that people out there will keep her, even though our season is over and we won't see her symbol on the floor, I pray that people will continue to pray for her and hopefully she can get out of that country and out of prison here soon. And so, thank you guys, and also, please keep Brittney in your prayers."