Key to Victory: How Suns Can Defeat Heat

The Suns will win if they can capitalize on this Heat deficiency.

PHOENIX -- The Phoenix Suns are once again sitting at a crossroads. 

The Suns came into the weekend slate against the Indiana Pacers and Orlando Magic with tangible belief that they could continue an impressive seven-game win streak, perhaps even continuing to creep up the standings in the West. 

The Suns (currently the No. 6 seed) now are once again trailing the Sacramento Kings in the standings and are sitting just ahead of the New Orleans Pelicans. 

Thankfully, the Miami Heat pose an opportunity to get right - on paper at least. 

What can the Suns do to complete the season sweep against the Heat and end the brief losing streak?

While the victory against Miami on Jan. 5th was against a team sans Jimmy Butler, while also swapping out Kyle Lowry for Terry Rosier, there are some valuable lessons that can be taken from the game just over three weeks ago. 

One of the main keys behind the Suns 113-97 victory was the defensive game plan drawn up by Phoenix coach Frank Vogel.

The Suns did an absolute masterful job of running Heat star Tyler Herro off of the three-point line and throwing the combo guard out of rhythm early, to the tune of a 4-for-17 shooting night. 

“You got to chase him inside the three-point line and then swarm him as best you can, which is difficult to do with Bam (Adebayo) as the roller because the more you commit off of Bam, then he gets going behind," Vogel said after their win vs Miami.

"So they got a lot of guys who can hurt you. Like I said, this is not an understatement of how excited I am about holding that team under 100 points.”  

Butler is a player that can shift a game, but throwing Herro/Rozier/Duncan Robinson out of rhythm is ultimately the key to gaining an upper hand tonight. 

"I think everybody was on the same page. There is more talk out there than there has been in the past and that is a fun way to play. So, it is something to build on, we see that it works, we see that we were locked in to sending certain people directionally to their weak hand and playing people's tendencies today," said Devin Booker after defeating the Heat. 

"(Tyler) Herro and Duncan (Robinson) were guys we were trying to run off the three-point line and make sure they did not get any easy looks. We held them down pretty well.” 

Bam Adebayo and Butler can get their keep during the game, but the Suns' offense has enough firepower to win the game tonight if the defense can hold up when it comes to containing the supporting perimeter threats.