The Phoenix Suns again were on the losing end of an NBA game, this time coming at the expense of the Miami Heat on Friday night.
The Suns have lost five games in a row and their last eight-of-nine. They’re 5-14 since the beginning of December.
Phoenix fought back but ultimately fell short without the talents of Chris Paul in the second half after he left the game with right hip soreness.
“I just saw him laboring for a second and when he wouldn’t look at me, I knew something was up and then when he finally did look at me, he needed a sub, and so I didn’t have to put two in two together. I knew something was up,” Williams said after the game before addressing how the team looked after Paul left.
“It’s what we love about our group. We come to the gym every day with that mentality and we have confidence in our game plan and we have confidence in the work. It is deflating when guys keep going down, but I saw the huddle when I was out there talking to the coaches. Guys were like this and that’s what I told them. I started quoting Teddy Roosevelt about the man in the arena, that’s who matters and it’s during these moments that you have to go like this and I saw that from our group tonight.”
Losing isn’t exactly something Phoenix is used to as of late, given their recent success the last two years. Williams touched on a similar stretch that the Golden State Warriors went through last season:
“It’s definitely tough to go through it, you can’t sugar coat that. It hurts to play as hard as we’ve played but to keep losing guys in the middle of a tough stretch of basketball. We felt like the away trip over the Christmas break was going to be a big-time trip for us to bond and to grow as a team because we were gone so long and we had to grow in a different way,” said Williams.
“We had to go through adversity and stress and some tough losses so we can make comparisons to that, but we’ve got to get whole at some point so that we can get some continuity. But the analogy is something we can look at and say ‘It’s never over.’ If you think about everything we’ve been through, we’re still .500. We just want to win one.
“Our guys are hurting to win a game and that’s where as a coach, you just feel bad for those guys because you know how hard we’re playing and how bad they want it.”
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