As far as anticlimactic Suns games go, this one’s up there.
Phoenix cruised to the 132-101 victory, but all eyes are on Kevin Durant’s ankle injury.
Fans were lined up at the door more than two hours before the game, ready to watch Durant play at Footprint Center as a member of their team for the first time.
Then, Durant slipped during his warmups as he drove to the hoop, hurting his left ankle.
He seemed to shake it off as he finished his warmup, but ultimately, was ruled out.
“We’ll get more testing done tomorrow,” head coach Monty Williams said. “Right now, it’s just an ankle sprain…we just have to wait and see how he responds to treatment and we’ll probably get some more imaging done just to make sure everybody’s on the same page.”
“‘K’ is just one of them people that love to hoop,” guard Chris Paul said. “Knowing this was gonna be his first home game, we were all excited…Once we found out he wasn’t playing, not anything against him, but we wasn’t trippin’…we got a lot of guys in our locker room that are more than capable. We knew to just hoop.”
When you have a ‘Big Four,’ that means you got options.
None better than star guard Devin Booker, who dropped 44 points on 17/23 shooting, including six treys.
“The city’s been waiting on this,” Booker said. “We’ll reschedule the party…People that missed out on tonight, I tried to give them a little something to make it better but we’re still anticipating his debut here.”
Durant’s next opportunity to suit up at home will be this Saturday as the Suns host the 2nd-seeded Kings at 8:00pm.
Eliav Gabay
