The Phoenix Suns surprisingly got swept by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of the playoffs. Although the Suns faced injury problems throughout the season, it’s difficult to imagine that a team with Devin Booker, Bradly Beal, and Kevin Durant couldn’t take one victory against the Timberolves that looked so miserable and barely made it into the playoffs just last season. We knew the reason since the very beginning of the season: this team lacks centers and paint presence. The three bigs they have, Jusuf Nurkic, Drew Eubanks, and Bol Bol, were enough to carry them for the regular season; however, come playoff time, Eubanks and Bol are both barely serviceable. Causing Frank Vogel to quickly turn to small ball lineups with Kevin Durant, Royce O’Neal, and Josh Okogie as the technical “bigs” against a Timberwolves team that constantly has two centers on the court at all times. As a result, the Timberwolves won the rebound battle by 14 (46.3 vs. 32.5), and 16.25 out of the 46.3 rebounds are offensive rebounds compared to the Suns, who nearly halved their 8.25 offensive rebounds per game this series. Moreover, the Suns didn’t only lose the rebound battle; they came short in assists as well (24.5 vs. 19.8), a huge downgrade from the 27 assists per game from the regular season. The Wolves had multiple standouts that amazingly facilitated the offense, with Anthony Edwards and Mike Conley both averaging 6.3 assists and Nickeil Alexander-Walker averaging 4 assists. Although some might argue that the pace is slower in the playoffs, and that may be true for most teams, the terminology doesn’t fit the Suns. In the regular season, the Suns had a pace of 14.86, ranking 17th out of 30 teams; however, in the playoffs, the Suns maintained their pace at 14.36, ranking 1st out of 16 playoff teams. On the contrary, the points per possession dropped from 10th out of 30 teams (1.18) to 12th (1.10) out of 16 teams. These two stats combined with the small ball lineups may indicate that the Suns attempted to speed up against the center and defense-focused Timberwolves’ team, which wouldn’t be a terrible idea since the Timberwolves have players that aren’t very agile, such as Rudy Gobert, Karl Anthony-Towns, and Kyle Anderson. But according to their 17th-ranked pace, they aren’t familiar with this brand of play style, and to be quite frankly, this team doesn’t have a offensive or defensive system they’re used to due to the constant injuries this team has. Furthermore, the Timberwolves’ points per game increased from 112.9 to 118.3 in this series, which indicates that not only are there fewer fast break opportunities for the Suns, but also that the Suns simply couldn’t guard the Timberwolves. Perhaps an alternative game plan would be to utilize Booker and Durant’s midrange offense to attack Rudy Gobert in pick-and-roll scenarios. However, the Timberwolves defend these scenarios using show and recover and even hedge; these are bold defensive schemes that leave the screeners open to roll in and attack the rim. The reason why the Timberwolves are able to do this is because the Suns don’t have one roll-in threat. Nurkic is a very all-around player, but he’s not a big threat in these situations. In conclusion, the Timberwolves are simply the better team, as it was shown, and they might be able to put up a fight against the defending champion Denver Nuggets.