The Suns’ Monty Williams and Devin Booker reacted to Dario Saric’s knee injury at the end of the season: “It hurts our entire team.”
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The Suns defeated the Bucks on Tuesday night to lead 1-0 in the 2021 NBA Finals, but they also lost a key member of the frontcourt rotation.
Phoenix announced on Wednesday afternoon The substitute forward Dario Saric suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee and will be sidelined indefinitely. In the first quarter of the first game against Milwaukee center Brook Lopez, the 27-year-old player appeared to bend his right knee after jumping to stop the ball. Saric only recorded two minutes before limping off the court and was helped to return to the Suns’ locker room.
more: The best highlights of the first game of the NBA Finals
In addition to missing the remaining NBA Finals, Saric may miss most (if not all) of the 2021-22 season while recovering from injury. In a media interview on Wednesday, Suns coach Monty Williams told reporters that it was a “shock” to see Saric withdraw from the series opener so suddenly.
“This is just one of the situations that breaks your heart,” Williams said. “Dario is the person I have worked with twice. I coached him in Philadelphia, in order to have the opportunity to be here with him, he is the basketball spirit of the Suns. Hard work, incredible man, He is looking forward to playing in these finals. He will play for a few minutes and suffer that kind of injury. It was hard to hear when I was talking to the staff this morning when they told me what happened.
“I talked to him and obviously he was shocked and felt bad. So I told the team to check him today. [Saric’s longtime partner] Kara. He still has a way to go, but he is a hardworking worker, and we know he will come back and do better. But it was shocking to see him fall like this. “
Phoenix star Devin Booker scored 27 points and 6 assists in the first game. He said that knowing that Saric would be out “harmed our entire team.”
“Dario is our person. He is our energy in the locker room, you can’t see it, but we love him and we are with him,” Booker said. “Obviously this is an unfortunate turn, but we will contact him, we will make sure that his spirit is normal and his spirit is correct, and we are on the road to recovery.
“As far as the court is concerned, obviously we will miss his presence and what he did on the court, but everyone has to give more.”
In the playoffs, Saric played 11.1 minutes per game and entered the finals, averaging 4.8 points and 2.6 rebounds. Although his stats are not jaw-dropping, Saric’s passing ability as a big man (47.7% shooting and 44.4% three-point shooting) allows the Suns to have both shooting and size on the court, and Provides a more flexible lineup for Williams.
When asked how he would fill up these minutes, Williams suggested Tori Craig, Frank Kaminsky and Abdul Nader as possible Saric substitutes.
“We will just try to make these decisions on the fly. But these three people come to mind,” Williams said. “Then you just need to figure out your coverage. This is the most important thing to try to figure out the coverage of those people, because when you play small balls with someone like Tori, or [Nader]When they defended a five-man diving team, it tried to teach those guys a coverage. This is not something those guys are used to.
“Then the offensive mix may change a little bit. Those guys are used to playing three and four points. Now you have to put them in an environment where they play five points and talk about Torre and [Nader].”
Of these three options, Craig seems to be the best candidate for increased playing time. In the playoffs, he averaged 12.8 minutes, 4.2 points and 3.4 rebounds per game, and participated in every playoff game.
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