PHOENIX — Phoenix Suns coach Monty Williams downplayed the thought of adjustments from Game 1 to Game 2 making all the difference Tuesday in a 123-109 win over the LA Clippers that evened the series 1-1 in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs.

“We have a saying here,” he explained. “We call each other up, not out. So everybody felt it. We just executed a lot better.”

While Kawhi Leonard poured in a game-high 38 points in Game 1 on Sunday, erupting for 25 in the second half of LA’s 115-110 win, Devin Booker apparently heeded the Williams call up and duplicated the feat in Game 2 by delivering the exact same numbers in Phoenix’s win. Taking on the role of lead playmaker, Booker drilled a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to tie the game going into halftime, before reeling off 18 of his game-high 38 points in the third quarter. He also finished with nine assists and a steal over 45 minutes.

Booker scored 25 in the second half (on 10-of-14 shooting and 3-of-4 from deep) as the Clippers allowed an opponent season-high (regular season and playoffs) 58.8% shooting on the night. Kevin Durant pitched in an additional 25 points, to go with six rebounds, five assists, a steal and two blocks.

“How we finished the second quarter overall outside of that shot was good momentum going into the third [quarter],” Booker said.

We’ll get into all that and more in our five takeaways from Game 2 as we await Thursday’s Game 3 at Crypto.com Arena (10:30 p.m. ET, NBA TV).

1. Learning on the fly

Game 1 proved Phoenix’s 8-0 regular season record headed into the playoffs in games featuring Durant might have been fool’s gold. That’s understandable, considering those contests came between February and April. Now, ponder the Suns’ developing continuity with the intense level of competition brought on by the high-stakes atmosphere of a playoff series.

Such conditions only increase the difficulty of learning on the fly. But the Suns shook off a slow start in Game 2 and a 13-point deficit with 5:30 left to play in the first half by closing on a 13-4 run with Durant contributing six points, and Booker chipping in another five, including a 28-footer with 1.5 seconds left that deadlocked the score at 59 apiece going into intermission.

“That’s a two-time champ, two-time Finals MVP. He’s proven enough,” Booker said of Durant. “We didn’t lose any games with each other during the regular season. We just dropped Game 1. We wanted to come out and respond.”

Mission accomplished.

Overly deferential to his new teammates, Durant finished the first quarter of Game 1 in this series scoreless, before racking up 17 points going into halftime.

The 12-time All-Star again logged zero points in the third quarter of Game 1, before scoring 10 in the final frame. In that Game 1, Durant drilled a 17-foot jumper with 6:50 left to give the Suns a 96-95 advantage. But he’d take only one more shot the rest of the way, ending the opener of this series sitting at No. 3 on the team in field-goal attempts (15, while Booker and Deandre Ayton took 19 and 16 shots, respectively).

The reality is Durant needs to finish games either No. 1 or a close second to Booker in field goal attempts most nights for Phoenix to find consistent success against this gritty Clippers squad. Booker took a team-high 22 shots in scoring his game-high 38 points in Game 2, while Durant hoisted 19.

“He has the license to play in attack mode all the time,” Williams said. “Are there a few times where he could’ve taken a shot and not passed it [in Game 1]? Yeah. I think he’s always trying to make the right plays. But he knows the right play is him shooting the ball, and everybody else knows that.”

The Suns are 9-1 since trading for Durant, including 1-1 in this series. In the 2023 playoffs, he has amassed 52 points, 14 rebounds and 15 assists, finally shaking off a seven-game losing streak in the playoffs since defeating the Milwaukee Bucks in the 2021 playoffs as a member of the Brooklyn Nets.

2. Ty Lue’s adjustments

LA surprised Phoenix in Game 1 with matchups the Suns didn’t anticipate, leading to hesitation on the home team’s part in executing its sets. In fact, coach Williams said after the series opener that his team was thrown off by the way the Clippers matched up in the early going of Sunday’s loss.

“They had some weird lineups out there, weird matchups and we just didn’t identify it fast enough on the fly,” Williams said. “That’s on me to get us in those spots to take advantage of it.”

Williams and the Suns successfully navigated Lue’s adjustments in Game 2, but the club is bracing for even more chicanery from the Clippers coach when the series moves to Los Angeles on Thursday for Game 3.

“That’s T-Lue,” Suns point guard Chris Paul quipped.

Booker added that “when they do that, we just have to simplify” everything on the Suns’ end. “[They do] a lot of things that we haven’t seen before, but they have a veteran team that can do it on the fly,” he added. “I don’t think a lot of teams can do that. I remember our last series with them [in 2021] they had a lot of stuff working, too. So, when they’re doing that, just simplify it for us.”

For Phoenix, that means executing the game plan with no regard for how the Clippers defend.

We’ll see if the Suns can do that on the road Thursday at Crypto.com Arena.

“I feel good where we’re at,” Lue said. “We think we can win this series, and that’s the biggest thing. One hundred percent of the battle is believing. We believe we can do it, clean up some things and do things a little bit different. I like what we did tonight.”

3. Road block

Kudos to security inside the Footprint Center for alleviating the prospects of another altercation transpiring between a player and fans Tuesday by shutting off access to the Club Gila River, situated just outside the visitor’s locker room. Officials posted a sign on the doors that read “Guest Area: No Team Access.” The move came as the result of a verbal exchange that took place Sunday during halftime of Game 1 involving LA guard Russell Westbrook and a Suns fan.

Usually, the doors to Club Gila River provide somewhat of a shortcut utilized by players to access the court faster from the visitor’s locker room.

Blocked access to those doors meant a longer walk than usual to the Footprint Center floor for the Clippers, but security made the correct move in preventing even the slightest chance for another unnecessary and negative interaction occurring between a player and a fan.

4. Tweaking depth issues

Phoenix played an 11-man rotation in Game 1, but it’s important to note that of the six reserves to see action in that outing, five of them played fewer than eight minutes. Two lineups in the series opener featured Booker surrounded by four bench players, and they both yielded offensive ratings of 20.0 and 25.0, respectively, against a Clippers bench that outscored the Suns 30-13 on Tuesday and that leads bench scoring 64-23 in the series.

With Phoenix featuring three likely Hall of Famers in Booker, Durant, and Paul, not to mention a sweet-shooting big in Ayton, the Suns needed to deploy more lineups that included at least two of those five players at all times after what took place in Game 1.

Durant and Booker played the entire first quarter of Game 2, marking the first time the duo did that together. Of the 16 combinations Phoenix used Tuesday, outside of the starting group, the Suns utilized nine five-man lineups featuring three of the players listed above. Of those nine, three included two of them, two were led by all four, and one was manned by Bismack Biyombo, Damion Lee, Josh Okogie, Landry Shamet and Ish Wainright.

So it looks like the starters will take on extended minutes in this series because the Suns’ reserves have proven largely unproductive through the first two games.

5. Battle of the boards

The Clippers dominated Phoenix on the glass in Game 1, outrebounding the Suns 49-42 with 15 offensive boards compared to just six for the Suns. That allowed the visitors to own a 12-7 edge in second-chance points, with those five points turning out to be the margin of victory in Game 1.

The Clippers won once again in offensive rebounding in Game 2 and finished with a 21-15 advantage over Phoenix in second-chance points.

Overall, though, Phoenix outrebounded LA 35-32.

Lue contends, however that Booker, Durant, and Paul made the difference in Tuesday’s outcome more so than rebounding.

“They did a good job of just controlling the game, and in that second half and fourth quarter, they really took over,” he said. “We tried to blitz, we tried to fire. We did a lot of different things. They played great. There’s some things we’ve got to clean up before the next game and we’ll be ready.”

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Michael C. Wright is a senior writer for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.

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