PHOENIX -- Markieff Morris complained in the Suns locker room following the team’s wild 114-101 win over the Nuggets on Friday, despite posting a career high 28 points which included the monster putback slam over Timofey Mozgov seen in the video clip above.
Morris was one of the last players to leave, hitting the cold tub postgame as reporters waited near his locker. When he finally emerged, the question and answer session lasted just over three and a half minutes -- not terribly long at all by NBA star standards, but longer than Morris is accustomed to speaking.
Once the recorders were off, he said we asked too many questions, albeit a bit more colorfully than I’m explaining it now. Morris was told that if he continues to score almost 30 points per game, he’d better get used to it.
The aggressiveness and emotion with which Morris has played in the early part of the season is a noticeable jump from his on-court attitude and demeanor from last year. But he says the offensive success he’s seen in his last couple of games is a product of the team’s attitude on defense.
“We’re defensive minded first,” Morris said. “Offense comes second. Coach is doing a good job of calling plays for me and getting me involved in the offensive end, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
Morris is part of the bench unit, even though numbers dictate he’s worthy of playing with the starters. Suns head coach Jeff Hornacek said before the game that he likes the strong second team because it means (hopefully) that the team won’t have very many lapses, and can compete for all 48 minutes.
That last part didn’t exactly happen in this one, when Denver put together a monster of a third quarter behind 21 points in the period from Ty Lawson, and a run that saw an 18-point Suns lead turn into an 11-point Nuggets advantage in a span of less than eight minutes.
“It happens,” Morris said of the turnaround, before quickly realizing that’s not really accurate. “Well not really, it really doesn’t happen. We just fought hard and stayed in there. We had to buckle down, we cut the lead to three heading into the fourth. They were on (the second night of a back-to-back), we just had to pick it up a notch and they kind of ran out of gas.”
Denver did to a certain extent, but Morris and the energy he provided with 14 fourth quarter points (same as his brother Marcus) was a big reason the Suns were able to find the resiliency to improve to 4-2 on the season.
