Nikola Jokic issues stern Suns warning to Western Conference

On Wednesday evening, Kevin Durant and the Phoenix Suns picked up one of their most impressive wins of the season when they went on the road and knocked off Nikola Jokic and the reigning NBA champion Nuggets in Denver. It should be noted that the Nuggets were playing without the services of star point guard Jamal Murray whereas Phoenix was fully healthy; however, just about a month earlier, the Suns had gone into Denver and won again, that time with Murray healthy and Devin Booker out of the lineup due to injury.

The Suns have been a difficult team to figure out this year, as preceding the Nuggets win was a frustrating road loss to the San Antonio Spurs, playing without rookie phenom Victor Wembanyama, despite beating that same Spurs squad just two nights earlier in the same arena.

Still, the star power of Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, and Bradley Beal is definitely something to behold, especially when the trio are all clicking, and one person who seems to know that better than anyone is Nikola Jokic, who took to the platform that was his post-game press conference to issue a stern Phoenix warning to the rest of the Western Conference playoff picture.

“They’re definitely a threat to any team in the West,” said Jokic, per Duane Rankin of AZ Central on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter.

A confusing Phoenix team

As previously mentioned, it’s been difficult to determine just exactly who the Phoenix Suns truly are at times this year. At certain points, they’ve looked like the true juggernaut that James Jones hoped they would be when he traded for Beal this past offseason from the Washington Wizards, teaming him up with the star duo of Durant and Booker that was already in place from another trade the previous seasons.

However, at other times, they look like exactly what they are: a team that was slapped together, with little regard for team-building principles or chemistry, things that may not matter as much as sheer talent in the grand scheme of things but can still manifest themselves in the margins of tight playoff games.

Of course, to even get to the playoffs, there’s a very real chance that the Suns will have to win a game or two in the dreaded NBA Play-In Round. The Suns currently have a top six seed in the vaunted Western Conference playoff picture but with the rest of their regular season schedule featuring exclusively playoff teams, it’s not difficult to envision this inconsistent Phoenix squad going a bit of a slide as the season enters its stretch run.

Still, as Jokic mentioned, the Suns du have the star power needed to strike fear in the hearts of anyone they might line up against come postseason time. While Durant has flamed out in his last two playoff performances, it wasn’t that long ago when he looked like the best player on the planet during his 2021 postseason run with the Brooklyn Nets.