Suns finish strong in Memphis, Brooks near return as playoff math gets busy

Phoenix leans on its depth and its defense

MEMPHIS - The Phoenix Suns left FedExForum with a 131-105 win over a heavily depleted Memphis Grizzlies team on Monday, March 30, and yes, that mattered quite a bit. The Grizzlies were missing 11 players, including Ja Morant, so this was not exactly a night for heroic underdog narratives.

Phoenix improved to 42-33 and guaranteed itself a winning season. More importantly, the Suns avoided the kind of loss that would have made the rest of this road trip far more annoying than it already promises to be.

For three quarters, the game was still uncomfortably close. Devin Booker capped the third with a banked-in 30-footer from deep, which gave Phoenix a two-point edge heading to the fourth. That shot also served as a reminder that the Suns had been leaning hard on their top scorers just to stay ahead.

Booker finished with 36 points in 26 minutes and did it without taking a free throw. Jalen Green added 21. Royce O'Neale chipped in nine. By the end of three quarters, those three had accounted for 72.5% of Phoenix's points.

Head coach Jordan Ott opened the fourth with a lineup that looked a lot more like a summer-league roster than a playoff chase unit: Collin Gillespie, Jordan Goodwin, Ryan Dunn, rookie Rasheer Fleming and Oso Ighodaro. No Booker. No Green. No O'Neale.

It worked anyway.

Phoenix outscored Memphis 40-16 in the final period, holding the Grizzlies to 5-for-14 shooting and 1-for-6 from 3-point range over the last 12 minutes. The Suns also forced seven turnovers in the quarter and turned those into nine points. Turns out defense remains useful, even when people are mostly waiting to talk about tiebreakers.

Gillespie finally gets a shot to fall

The fourth-quarter surge started with stops, but it needed somebody to make a basket. That person was Gillespie, who had spent most of the week aggressively auditioning for the role of "everything is almost going in."

Against Utah on March 28, Gillespie went 0-for-8 from 3-point range in a 134-109 Suns win. He then opened Monday's game by missing eight more long-range attempts and was 0-for-10 from the field through three quarters in Memphis.

Still, he kept doing the other parts of the job. He had seven assists and three rebounds against the Jazz, then added eight assists and four rebounds through three quarters against the Grizzlies.

At some point, persistence has to count for something.

Gillespie got his first bucket when he finally connected from the corner after Goodwin forced a turnover and pushed the ball up the floor. That shot put Phoenix ahead by seven with 9:46 left and drew a reaction from the Suns bench that suggested everyone had been holding their breath for a while.

After that, Gillespie kept going. He hit two more 3s and finished with 11 points, a game-high 10 assists and five rebounds.

Before the shooting finally turned around, he also drew a charge early in the fourth, helping set the tone for the defensive stretch that pushed Phoenix away for good.

The Suns shot 60.7% from the field in the fourth quarter.

Dunn grabbed six rebounds in the period. Ighodaro added three boards and two assists. Goodwin and Fleming later hit consecutive 3s, and Fleming finished an Ighodaro pass with a dunk to cap an 8-0 run that made it 110-95 with 6:30 left.

Memphis called timeout. It did not help much.

The Grizzlies never got within 13 points the rest of the way, and Booker, Green and O'Neale spent the final stretch on the bench, where they probably appreciated the reduced workload for the second half of the back-to-back.

Gillespie's night also pushed him to 223 made 3-pointers this season. He is now four away from Quentin Richardson's franchise single-season record of 226, set in 2004-05.

Brooks is close, and Phoenix wants more help soon

The Suns split the 18 games Dillon Brooks missed with a fractured left hand, and his return would be a meaningful step toward getting the roster back to something resembling whole.

League sources told The Arizona Republic that Brooks is expected to return after missing 18 straight games. His comeback could come as soon as Tuesday at Orlando.

Grayson Allen was also expected to be available against the Magic after sitting out the Grizzlies game for left knee injury management.

Phoenix is also hoping Mark Williams can return during the road trip. The Suns continue the trip in Orlando, then play at Charlotte on April 2 and at Chicago on April 5.

Williams missed Phoenix's first meeting with the Hornets because of a foot injury, but the Suns have made a point of being patient with him after three injury-heavy seasons in Charlotte. He has played a career-high 56 games this season.

The Western Conference race is doing what it always does

The Suns entered Tuesday in seventh place in the West. Catching the Houston Rockets, who are 45-29, for the sixth seed is unlikely, but Phoenix cannot afford to relax with the Los Angeles Clippers just behind in eighth.

Phoenix trails Houston by 3.5 games, and the Rockets hold the head-to-head tiebreaker 3-0 with one game left between the teams on April 7 in Kevin Durant's return game.

The top six teams in each conference make the playoffs directly. Teams seeded seventh through 10th go to the play-in tournament for the final two playoff spots.

The Clippers are three games behind the Suns, although they have the NBA's 15th-toughest remaining schedule. Phoenix, meanwhile, has the fifth-toughest. Five of the Suns' final seven opponents are in the top 10 of their conference standings, starting with the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder, who own the league's best record at 60-16.

The Lakers game could matter more than it should

Phoenix also has a major game remaining against the Los Angeles Lakers, who are 49-26. That one could have big tiebreaker implications.

The Suns close the regular season on the road against the Lakers and the Thunder.

Phoenix and the Clippers split their season series 2-2, so the next tiebreaker between them is division record. That is where the extra Suns-Lakers game from Dec. 14 comes into play. Both teams were coming off losses in the NBA Cup quarterfinals, and the league scheduled a fifth matchup between them instead of the usual four division games.

That means Phoenix has one more division game than Los Angeles.

If the Suns beat the Lakers, they would finish 11-6 in division play. Even if the Clippers win their final division games April 5 at Sacramento and April 12 against Golden State to finish 10-6 in the Pacific, Phoenix would still own the better division winning percentage.

Under that scenario, the Suns would host the Clippers in the play-in game for the seventh seed.

And if Phoenix loses that Lakers game? The Suns would still have a path to the eighth seed, with a home game against the winner of the Portland Trail Blazers-Golden State Warriors matchup.

So yes, Monday's win in Memphis was useful. The standings, as ever, remain committed to making everything feel slightly more complicated than necessary.