NBA Playoffs: The Suns' much-heralded season is all but over after falling 3-0 to the Timberwolves

Anthony Edwards looked dominant in Game 3 on Friday. (Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports)

The Phoenix Suns are just one loss away from being eliminated in the first round. And an off-season full of uncomfortable questions.

The Minnesota Timberwolves defeated the Suns 126-109 in Game 3 of their first-round series on Friday, putting a would-be superteam on the brink of elimination. Game 4 is scheduled for Sunday at 6:30 p.m. MST in Phoenix (ESPN).

No team in NBA history has ever come back from a 3-0 series lead.

It was a hard-fought game for almost a half, but the Timberwolves held a six-point lead at halftime and extended it to 20 in the third quarter. Anthony Edwards once again looked like a budding superstar, scoring 36 points on 12 of 23 shooting along with nine rebounds and five assists.

With Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns both posting double-doubles and Naz Reid and Nickeil Alexander-Walker both scoring in double figures off the bench, it was a classic Minnesota win. And unfortunately, a classic Phoenix defeat at this point.

Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal all scored more than 20 points, but only one other player, Eric Gordon, scored in double figures. The Suns were already missing Grayson Allen, and remaining starters Royce O'Neale and Jusuf Nurkic combined for three points on 1 of 8 shooting.

With a win on Sunday, the Timberwolves will face the winner of the Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals. The Nuggets also lead 3-0 in this series.

The Suns have one loss on the season, which was confirmed as a 49-33 disaster

Let's talk about Durant for a moment.

The 35-year-old is undoubtedly a first-ballot Hall of Famer who was one of the NBA's top five players for a decade. He made the Golden State Warriors a must-have player until injuries to him and Klay Thompson in 2019 derailed everything.

When Durant decided to leave the Warriors for the Brooklyn Nets, he brought Kyrie Irving with him and later James Harden to town. The result was a team that looked elite at times and was literally an inch away from reaching the Eastern Conference Finals. Then it all came crashing down as internal tensions led to Harden demanding a trade and injuries lowered a ceiling that was supposed to be limitless.

The Nets were defeated in the 2022 playoffs and finally agreed to blow it all up by trading Durant to the Suns. The idea sounded very viable because Durant is one of the most malleable stars the NBA has ever seen. He's a 7-foot player who can guard the edge and is a premier isolation shooter who can also torment teams with off-ball movement and catch-and-shoot.

The combination of Durant and Booker should make the Suns elite. Instead, they lost convincingly to the Denver Nuggets in the playoffs last season after defeating a Los Angeles Clippers team that was missing Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.

The Suns responded to this disappointment with some strange decisions. They fired head coach Monty Williams, who had led the team to the NBA Finals two years earlier. And they chose to trade Chris Paul and a bevy of draft picks for Beal, who failed to make the Suns special.

The Suns assembled three All-Stars in Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal. They didn't have much else. (` Photo/Matt York)

It's not exactly Beal's fault that the Suns haven't looked better this year. The team's performance simply did not match its theoretical offensive firepower and was unable to defend against the better teams in the West. Against the Timberwolves, their bench looked even shorter and their iso-heavy offense just wasn't the answer. They were good and immediately gave up when facing a great team, which Edwards appears to have made Minnesota into.

Unfortunately for the Suns, none of the above news is bad news. The bad news is that Durant, Booker and Beal are all under contract for the next three seasons and Beal has a no-trade clause.

The Suns basically need to back off next season and hope that recasting the supporting cast is enough to fulfill their potential. That probably won't be it.

Even when Durant was recovering from his torn Achilles tendon, he was still an elite player. He turned teams into contenders, for at least a season, everywhere he went. But he hasn't done that yet in Phoenix, and it will take something special next season to avoid concluding that he has finally aged out of the NBA elite.