Dario Saric vs. All-Star Devin Booker?

Huh?

Not the ideal matchup, but their one-on-one battle in practice was a microcosm of how competitive the Phoenix Suns were in the Orlando Bubble.

“I’ll never forget Dario was kicking all of the bigs butts playing one-on-one against the bigs and Book was on the other end whipping up on the guards,” Phoenix Suns coach Monty Williams said. “So we brought them together and to watch Dario try to stop one of the best scorers in the world and the team just rally around him in those type of practices, you knew that we were going to give ourselves a chance to at least compete.”

The Suns did more than compete in going 8-0 in the NBA restart “seeding” games and falling just short of a play-in tournament for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference.

“It was the practices that gave me some confidence about how we could play, but no one knew but God that we would run off eight in a row and that was really fun,” Williams said.

Williams spent nearly an hour talking Suns basketball and more on NBA Republika Huddle, a content series on NBA Philippines Facebook “featuring video conference calls with local influencers and sports personalities to discuss NBA news and events.”

He took listeners inside the thought process of how the coaching staff prepared the youthful Suns for bubble life with an overall theme of handling “the unknown.”

Missing a COVID-19 test. Deandre Ayton didn’t start a game after missing a testing window.

Missing family. Players and coaches couldn’t have visitors during the “seeding” schedule.

Getting bogged down with the daily routine of going from the hotel, to practice, to the bus and back to the hotel.

“We said you got to get yourself ready for that before we even went there,” Williams said.

Combine those elements with the call for social justice in America and the coronavirus pandemic, the NBA teams faced multiple challenges. 

Williams and his staff did all it could to help the players deal with it all in the bubble.

“People forget athletes have a lot going on outside what the fans read about or see,” Williams said. “So we tried to educate our guys and encourage them to be prepared for some emotional roller coasters when you’re in Orlando and it’s all guys, all day. That’s a lot of testosterone in one place. So we tried to prepare them for the emotions that could come with that kind of environment.”

The bubble run concluded a first season in Phoenix for Williams that begin way back in May 2019 when the Suns hired him. 

He was four years removed from his last head coaching job in New Orleans in 2015.

 “When you get a head coaching job and you go through that process of being hired and then a team decides they’re going to move on from you, you never know if you’re going to get a chance again,” he said. “For me, just dove into the jobs that I had with my antennas up if something came up or my representatives brought something to the table that a team was interested in me again was something I really wanted to do.”

Phoenix was one of those interested teams.

The Suns hired him to replace Igor Kokoskov after experiencing the second-worst season in franchise history at 19-63.

 “When I got the opportunity in Phoenix, it was a lot of things that went into it,” Williams continued as he’s on a five-year deal with the Suns. “It wasn’t just a basketball fit for me. It was a fit for my family because I had moved them around from New Orleans to Oklahoma City, back to San Antonio and then we go to Philly and I’m going to move them again. So I was looking for a family fit. I needed, obviously for me, to pray about it and make sure I had the peace that I needed to take on another job because it requires a lot of energy, a ton of time and I had to have a peace about doing it again.” 

Williams talked about how having James Jones, who he helped coach in Portland while working as an assistant, as a general manager, was appealing. Williams liked the young core featuring Booker and Ayton and felt ready to take on this new challenge that got way more challenging than he could ever have imagined.

The Suns were 26-39 when NBA commissioner Adam Silver shut down the season March 11 after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus, which became a global pandemic.

Months later, the league followed a comprehensive and highly detailed plan to resume the season at Walt Disney World Resort with 22 teams. The Suns were one of the final teams chosen based on record, but finished “seeding” play as the only unbeaten team in the bubble.

“That was a great experience for us,” Williams said.

Williams was voted NBA Coach of the Seeding Games, but deferred credit to the players for how Phoenix performed.

“From Day 1, they accepted a style of play,” Williams said. “They’ve wanted to share the ball. They wanted an offense that allowed them to move and use their creativity. Our identity is built around five cultured pieces.” 

• Respecting time.
• Competing every day.
• Defending.
• Sharing the ball.
• Having gratitude.

“Our players have adopted our culture from Day 1,” Williams said. “The thing that we were able to do was get in good shape. Our guys were in the gym over a month before we started and they were getting after it.” 

Adhering to the ‘Four Bs’

Once in the bubble, the Suns religiously followed the four Bs.

“It was the bedroom, the ballroom, the bus and the basketball gym,” Williams said. “That is what we did every day and you mix in a COVID test at random times throughout the day, and we just did that every day. It was just us and we built a camaraderie, a tightness on our team. There was an emotional attachment that we had that grew over the season and I was just thankful to be a part of it.”

The teams practiced in ballrooms that had courts installed in them. It was there Williams noticed a heightened competitive spirit that translated to quality play in the games.

“There was a sentiment that we didn’t belong,” Williams said. “I think our guys wanted to prove that we did belong, but in our practices, man, those were some of the most competitive practices that I have coached as a head coach in my time in the NBA. And we would have one-on-one tournaments, two-on-two tournaments, anything you can think of to create competition. Our guys dove right in.”

Saric vs. Booker was part of that practice environment Williams had to simmer down.

“I’ve been around long enough to where I’ve shut down a practice when I saw it getting too out of hand,” Williams said. “But I also knew the guys were going to stay on the floor another hour to shoot. So I would shorten practice to allow them some time to shoot and it just made our gym really fun.” 

 Have opinion about current state of the Suns? Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at [email protected] or contact him at 480-787-1240. Follow him on Twitter at @DuaneRankin.

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