Kevin Durant can solely be blunt to what occurred because the Phoenix Suns had been spanked en route to a Conference Semis exit by the dominant Denver Nuggets on Thursday night time.
“It sucked. It was a bad feeling. It was embarrassing. They came out, hit us on the mouth, we couldn’t recover,” he said.
“You gotta give them credit for being a disciplined team.”
At one level within the first quarter, with 3:05 left, the scorecard for each groups was nonetheless 27-26. Suddenly, the Nuggets got here out aggressive for a battle, capping off the body with a large 17-0 run behind the lead of each Nikola Jokic and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
Starting with this scorching skid, the Nuggets went on to utterly steer themselves away towards the Suns, posting an 81-point first-half rating and a 30-point lead because the halftime buzzer sounded. And after one other 24 minutes, with the jumbotron flashing a 125-100 Denver victory, the door finally opened itself for Phoenix to go away this yr’s playoff enviornment.
In six gruelling video games, Denver kicked out Phoenix and moved ahead to the Conference Finals enviornment for the second time in 4 years.
Durant solely chipped in 23 factors in 8-of-19 capturing, however the time that the Nuggets had been build up their 30-point margin within the second body, he failed to reply with 2-of-11 discipline objectives.
“We got down big. It happened pretty fast,” Durant stated. “They were getting whatever they want on offensive side of the ball so it’s hard to get going on offense, it’s hard to get going as a team if you’re giving up that many points.”
Perceived by many as one of many prime favorites to win all of it, the highway in direction of this yr’s title formally ends for the Suns.
From pulling the commerce deadline set off to full the blockbuster acquisition of Durant from the Brooklyn Nets, simply to get eradicated after three months by an amazing Nuggets team, the franchise has towering questions that want to be answered as they nonetheless look to seize that ever elusive championship for subsequent seasons to come.
But within the minds of the future corridor of famer, the painful expertise they felt from their second-round downfall is an efficient stepping stone for them to construct additional and orchestrate a responsive marketing campaign subsequent yr.
“It’s hard right now to see what the future will hold for our team,” Durant responded when requested about his team’s outlook transferring ahead. “But we got a good foundation, good infrastructure we can build on and move on from this. Learn from it and get better from it.”
“It’s a hard question to answer right now. As summer and offseason starts to progress, we’ll figure that out a little bit more.”
