Suns’ painful lesson to focus on details has them looking like champions

Devin Booker understood — even before the team plane back from the Finals in Milwaukee touched the ground in Phoenix — what had to come next.

“One of the first conversations I had with Book, on the plane back from Milwaukee, was about the details,” Suns coach Monty Williams said. “I said, ‘What’d you learn?’ And the first word out of his mouth was ‘details.'”

Seared into him and his teammates through the heartache of losing in the Finals, Booker saw it was the little mistakes — on the second and third defensive rotation, or not forcing a specific player left, or not boxing out to make sure your team gets a critical rebound — that made all the difference. The pain in Williams’ gut from the loss told him the same thing. Chris Paul got it, too.

That leadership trio made sure the entire Suns team understood this season was about getting the details right from Day 1.

“We have to admit that the finals opened our eyes to the importance of it all,” Williams said. “Coaches talk about it, but we fail in it also. I think when we went through the Finals experience, it allowed for our guys to say these are the things, if we’re going to get to the next level, we not just have to take them seriously, we have to apply it every single day.

“From the time I got there, all our players were all about the details, but we’re all human. And when you get to certain moments, things tend to wane. Well, you can’t have that happen when you get to the playoffs.”

The buy-in and focus from the players is evident in the 48-10 record that is six-and-a-half games better than the league’s second-best team (Golden State).

The mission the Suns have been on this season reminds the team’s believers of the 2013-14 San Antonio Spurs — after a gut punch Finals