The Phoenix Suns entered the first-round series in the Western Conference playoffs as slight favorites to advance before they were pummeled by Minnesota in Game 1 on Saturday.

Now, the sky is falling and Phoenix appears to be heading toward a first-round exit. The Suns have been in this boat before. They dropped Game 1 to the Clippers in the first round last season before going on to bounce Los Angeles in five games.

“I’m not saying we’re going to win the next four games, but there was a lot of overreacting after we lost Game 1 to the Clippers,” Phoenix guard Devin Booker said. “It’s just a series, so understanding that, understanding every road team had a tough time in the playoffs so far this year (all eight road teams lost Game 1), and we’ll see how Game 2 goes.”

Booker said the series aspect is “the beauty of the playoffs.”

“You see the same team over and over. It’s adjustments versus adjustments. But at the end of the day, you just have to go out there and play,” Booker said. “It’s a roller coaster of emotions for everybody, the fans of each team. I always say you win one game, you’re going to sweep the team, and you lose one game, you’re going to get swept. That’s how everybody feels. That’s the beauty of our sport. That’s why we all love this time of year.”

Maintain the desperation

Minnesota played with a level of desperation Saturday that Timberwolves coach Chris Finch recognized from the basketball his team played over the first two months of the season.

It’s one thing to bring that mentality in Game 1 of the postseason when squaring off against a team that swept you in the regular season, but the challenge now is for Minnesota to bring it again, even with a series lead.

“Our approach has to be one of, like it was the other day, keep our edge, keep our desperation. We still have a ton to prove. We expect this to be a really long series,” Finch said. “That’s a great team over there with a bunch of good coaches who are going to make adjustments. So, we got to be ready for those. Human nature is obviously to relax a little bit and we’ve been preaching that you have to guard against it. I’m pretty sure they’ll be ready.”

Karl-Anthony Towns noted Minnesota’s discipline also has to match its level of desperation. That means continued close attention to details within the game plan and the ability to execute at a high level, even when Phoenix goes on a run.

Minnesota set a high bar for itself on Saturday. Is it attainable to continue to play at that level throughout a series?

“If we want to win, we have to. That’s the main thing. That’s all it is. It’s that easy. If we want to win, we maintain, no, we don’t even maintain — we bring more,” Anthony Edwards said. “If we want to lose, we come out and play how we played at the last game of the (regular) season. It’s just that simple.”

Injury updates

Phoenix listed Grayson Allen as questionable for Tuesday’s Game 2. Allen has a sprained ankle suffered in Saturday’s Game 1.

Suns coach Frank Vogel said Monday that Allen participated in practice but not to a full extent. Allen did some “light movement.”

“He’s been getting treatment nonstop,” Vogel said. “So hopefully the extra day between games should help.”

Allen didn’t make a shot from the field on Saturday, but he’s been perhaps the best 3-point shooter in the NBA this season. He averaged 19 points on 63% shooting from deep in three regular season bouts with Minnesota.

Kyle Anderson — who left Saturday’s game in the first half with a right hip pointer and did not return — practiced Monday, according to Finch.

Anderson, who’s also listed as questionable, looked comfortable while participating in post-practice shooting drills.

“But we’ll see,” Finch said. “See how it keeps responding.”

Either way, Minnesota is comfortable with its options. Monte Morris played well in Anderson’s stead on Saturday.

“We’re lucky to have 10 guys we feel could play rotations minutes. Who those guys are at any given moment may change, obviously injuries force some things the other night,” Finch said. “We leave it open as we do, but we know we got depth to be able to go either direction as we want to.”

Fifth-year cornerback Victor Pless has entered the NCAA transfer portal, a source confirmed to the Pioneer Press on Monday.

Pless, of Kennesaw, Ga., did not play in his four seasons at Minnesota. Pless, who was academic all-Big Ten in 2021, will vacate a needed scholarship for the U to use for another incoming player.

The Gophers have had four players leave the program this spring, all of whom were backups: cornerback Tariq Watson and offensive linemen Cade McConnell and De’Eric Mister.

Pless, who’s exit was first reported by 247sports.com, had been practicing with the Gophers this spring.

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A St. Paul man was sentenced to nearly 26 years in prison Monday for fatally shooting a man in the head outside a North End home, then wounding another man who was headed to church with family on the city’s East Side four days later.

Kavion Jayvon Barnett, 29, of St. Paul, admitted in January to shooting James Jeffrey King Sr., who was sitting in his pickup truck in his driveway when he was shot in the temple on Feb. 9, 2022, and died March 1. Barnett also pleaded guilty to shooting a 45-year-old man who was driving on the Earl Street Bridge with his wife and two children on Feb. 13. That man was shot in the arm.

Kavion Jayvon Barnett (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Ramsey County District Judge Sophia Y. Vuelo followed the Jan. 29 plea agreement, which called for 22 years and three months for King’s killing and nearly 3½ years for the drive-by shooting. The sentences will run consecutively.

At the time of the shootings, Barnett was on supervised conditional release while awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to an August 2021 shootout in St. Paul. In that case, Barnett, another man who was also charged and a woman were injured. In April 2022, he was sentenced to three years and three months for the shooting.

According to the murder complaint, officers were sent to the 200 block of Front Avenue on a report of a shooting just before 10 a.m. and found King in the driver’s seat of his Ford F-150 parked in his driveway. The driver’s window was partially shattered, and King had a gunshot wound to his left temple.

A neighbor told police he heard a gunshot the previous night, but he didn’t think anything about it because the sound of gunshots are not unusual in the neighborhood.

Officers found a .45-caliber shell casing near Front Avenue and Woodbridge Street. It later matched a casing found after the Earl Street Bridge shooting.

A man contacted homicide investigators and said he had witnessed King’s shooting. He said a Honda Odyssey minivan stopped at Woodbridge Street and Front Avenue, where the driver pointed a gun out the window and shot once.

Further investigation revealed that Barnett had ties to a silver Honda Odyssey that was involved in the bridge shooting. About four hours after the shooting, surveillance video showed Barnett abandon the minivan he’d been driving. Delaquay Levius Williams got out of the passenger side of the minivan.

Williams, 29, of St. Paul, faces charges in two St. Paul 2022 murders — one on Feb. 1, the other March 4. The cases are pending in court.

Analysis of a casing found in the Earl Street Bridge shooting showed the handgun was the same one allegedly used by Williams in the March homicide, according to the criminal complaint against Barnett.

‘Did not intend to kill’

Barnett was arrested on April 11, 2022, and spoke with investigators. When shown surveillance photos from both incidents, he admitted he was the person driving the minivan over the Earl Street Bridge and in the area of King’s shooting, charges say.

Barnett initially denied shooting anyone, then said it was “a manslaughter case because he did not intend to kill (King),” the charges read. “Barnett said he had prior confrontations with JK about loud music. The most recent incident occurred a couple of nights before the shooting.”

Barnett said he saw King in his driveway and that King “started talking crazy” and he shot him once from the minivan, the charges read. Barnett said he only intended to scare King.

When asked about the bridge shooting, Barnett said he shot once at the car because he thought it was a rival gang member — not a family on their way to church, charges said.

After admitting to investigators he fired a .45-caliber handgun in both incidents, Barnett claimed he threw the gun in the river, the charges said. But officers told him that was a lie, since the gun had been used in the March 4 murder after Barnett’s two shooting incidents. He refused to tell investigators who he gave the gun to.

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Nearly 83 years after he was killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Navy Fire Controlman 3rd Class William Gusie’s remains will be returned to his home state of Minnesota.

Gusie, who attended school in White Bear Lake, was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft on Dec. 7, 1941.

William Gusie was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft in Pearl Harbor. (Courtesy of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency)

The Oklahoma sustained multiple torpedo hits, which caused it to quickly capsize. The attack on the ship resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen, including Gusie, according to a news release from Hawaii-based Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency. For his service, Gusie was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart.

Gusie, who was 19 when he was killed, was one of 13 service members accounted for by the Defense Department agency tasked with recovering U.S. troops listed as missing in action or prisoners of war.

From December 1941 to June 1944, unidentified remains from the USS Oklahoma were collected and interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries on Oahu. The American Graves Registration Service disinterred the remains from the Oklahoma in 1947, but were able to identify only 35 of the men at the time, according to the news release.

The unidentified remains were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. They stayed there for 68 years before the DPAA exhumed the unknown remains for testing in 2015.

The DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis and scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA analysis to identify Gusie, the news release states.

Gusie was accounted for on Sept. 23, 2021 – nearly 80 years after his death – but the announcement was withheld until now so family members could get a full briefing on his identification, according to the news release.

Gusie will be laid to rest on June 12 at Fort Snelling National Cemetery

Gusie’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Punchbowl, along with the others who are missing from WWII. A rosette will now be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for, officials said.

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