With the Dallas Mavericks looking done for the 2024-25 season, a spot in the play-in tournament may have opened up for the Phoenix Suns. Dwindling as their playoff hopes might be over the past few weeks, Kevin Durant isn’t about to let his Suns just give up. On Tuesday night, they managed to secure a huge win over the Los Angeles Clippers thanks to a furious fourth quarter comeback en route to a 119-117 win.
This victory moves the Suns to 29-33 on the year, and with the Mavs on the downturn, the three-game gap between the two teams looks as surmountable as ever. But for Durant, he is imploring the team to simply take it one game at a time for nothing can be taken for granted in a league as tough as the NBA.
“Can’t think about the big picture too much. We’re in a tough position to think about the playoffs right now, so we gotta focus on each game, each task, each possession ahead of us and see what we can do,” Durant told Stephanie Ready of TNT in his postgame interview following the Suns’ victory.
The schedule up ahead remains very brutal for the Suns. Their next six games will be coming against teams with a record better than .500 — including a crucial matchup against the Mavericks that will have playoff implications. In fact, only three of their final 20 games will come against sub-.500 teams.
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The Suns will find it easier to navigate the upcoming stretch if they manage to avoid going down by a ton of points, necessitating a huge fourth-quarter effort just to get the win.
As much as Kevin Durant would want to take it one game at a time for the Suns, they are racing against time, and it’s not like they’ll find themselves in a favorable position even if they do manage to snag that 10th spot out West.
The Suns have to make the playoffs as a bare minimum requirement, and this upcoming stretch will make or break their season. But for Durant, the solution is simple.
“We’ll just continue to communicate, play physical, do our work early. We got to just play a little harder, up our intensity, physicality, and we’ll be fine,” Durant added.
The next four games for the Suns will be coming on the road, and against teams such as the Denver Nuggets, Mavericks, Memphis Grizzlies, and Houston Rockets — a difficult stretch that they could easily go 1-3 on.
