J. Kyle Mann

And he's going to disappear at moments when you really need him.

He's going to try to do too much at the times where he should recede to the background.

There's just something about the equilibrium of how he plays that isn't really to my liking.

And I feel like isn't really to the liking of a lot of the people who play with him.

I thought Phoenix had a lot of the component parts to really make this an even more competitive game.

And they got close down the stretch, but by the grace of Dylan Brooks going on that run.

But in the first half in particular, I thought we saw the Suns really dealing with a lot of kind of the frenzy of what Oklahoma City throws at you defensively.

much more effectively than they did in game one.

And some of that, I think, was having Colin Gillespie on the floor, who I'm a Jordan Goodwin guy.

I think they really miss him in a lot of ways.

He was out of the lineup tonight.

But Gillespie, I thought, as a connector and a passer and just like an extra ball handler who's a little more confident navigating some of the tight spaces that you have to with the Thunder,

That came in handy, and it really helped them kind of keep their heads on their shoulders as they were trying to break down the Thunder defense.

It wasn't hugely effective.

They still completely fell apart in the third quarter.

Both of these games just unraveled in the third.

But between that and what Dylan Brooks was doing and what you're getting from Devin Booker, it's like this feels like it should kind of be enough to get you in the mix.

And yet, OKC was just kind of keeping him at arm's length all the way down the stretch.

It's me.

What does that even mean?