PHOENIX — While the Phoenix Suns are 5-1 and showing lots and lots of potential, they haven’t been able to patch together elongated stretches of great play.
For all the ways they appear different than last year’s team, that will have to change before we can definitively declare it as a new era of Suns basketball.
Phoenix led by 26 points with 10 minutes to go against the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturday before squeaking out a 103-97 victory. Portland went on a 30-6 run across 8:46 to cut the Suns’ lead all the way down to two points.
“We just got comfortable,” Suns guard Bradley Beal said. “We just effed with the game at the end of the game, that’s all it was. We got lackadaisical, weren’t making plays defensively and they started hitting shots. It’s the NBA. You let a few guys hit a couple and 20 goes to five real quick.”
And the Blazers could have won this one. They botched a lob in transition off a Phoenix turnover at one point and Dalano Banton’s 3-pointer went in-and-out with 28 seconds remaining.
The Suns’ inability to go beyond a quarter or two of showing their upside reeks of last season, when we used this space to beg for even 30 minutes of high-end basketball, what all great teams do constantly.
This is totally fine in the first week of November. It even will be in December. And the meteor-sized difference this season is the Suns’ play through this issue has been very encouraging.
But alarm bells will start ringing if it isn’t established by the turn of the new year, and it’s more relevant for Phoenix compared to other teams.
“You can’t get comfortable,” Suns guard Devin Booker said. “That could have been a game where we sat the second half of the fourth quarter and then got some rest but we were put in a learning experience, which is good. Instead of getting them for the first time later on the season. … So we have stuff to learn from.”
That’s especially true in the final frame given the record woes the 2023-24 Suns had in that department. This squad has been good in crunch time so far this season, so seeing the lack of organization and such this time around was a new occurrence.
Head coach Mike Budenholzer was asked about the fourth quarter to begin his postgame press conference and responded by saying he was more focused on what happened in the third quarter, a 44-18 Suns result. He later said in his next answer that the Suns aren’t playing a full 48 minutes right now but are “not there yet but I’m sure nobody is.”
He was also asked about concerns about this past problem reemerging and Budenholzer said he is focused on this season, a logical stance given he was not the head coach last year.
Suns embracing 3s early in season
Elsewhere, Phoenix has welcomed the NBA’s new overlord with open arms — the 3-point shot.
This contest featured a poor defensive team that was A-OK with helping off shooters and Phoenix possession after possession used that to keep heaving ’em up. It was 17-for-52 (32.7%) on the night.
The Suns fired away in the third quarter to the tune of a 9-for-18 output from 3, padding a point total of 44 for the period that was more than the Suns scored in the first half (43). Both Beal and Booker spotlighted defense when asked what went right in the period, with Beal pointing out how Portland had 15 second-chance points in the first half.
Phoenix did not tweak a formula that was not successful early. It shot 8-of-27 (29.6%) on 3s in the first half, and despite that, the Suns trusted those shots would fall and stuck with the quality looks they were creating. Booker said it was “exactly that” when asked if the locker room message at halftime was to keep setting those 3s up and keep letting them fly.
While an awful Portland team helped give them a cozy situation to keep the faith, the retainment of it is still quite noteworthy and a great sign of buy-in.
It is a far cry from last year, when the Suns had a dozen games they failed to crack even 25 attempts on triples. This was despite a coaching staff that by all accounts publicly wanted results more similar to this year’s team. Phoenix remains one of seven NBA teams to get up at least 35 in each of its games to begin the year, a consistency that will be key.
This night did inspire the thought of an interesting balance to monitor, though.
Phoenix at one point in the mid second-quarter had only two of its 39 points in the paint, an area to watch with this team all season. The context here is important. A terrible Blazers defense allowed the Suns to generate open 3s in bunches. Phoenix took 27 in the first half and was also 11-of-13 at the foul line to get some freebies elsewhere. So it wasn’t necessarily poor offense.
But Beal is the only ball-handler who puts pressure on the rim at a high level, something Booker definitely does too, albeit more to generate ball movement as opposed to scoring there. Beal took 30% of his shots around the basket last year, a percentile ranking at his position of 74th, per Cleaning the Glass. Booker’s 20% is 40th and Kevin Durant’s at 18%, with his percentile ranking unfairly placed since he is designated as a big.
This becomes a larger problem when centers Jusuf Nurkic and Mason Plumlee aren’t big-time finishing threats there, either, and the point guard duo of Tyus Jones and Monte Morris rely on floaters. This would not have been a discussion point if the Suns didn’t shoot 30% from deep in the first half, but they did, and shooting nights like Saturday will come.
The Suns will likely just trust the process, as they did to start the second half when an 18-7 start included three 3s and a trio of midrange jumpers. They kept this momentum rolling to extend the lead to 16 in the mid-third quarter, and a Nurkic attempt from 3 at 4:36 left in the period was Phoenix’s 40th of the game. It cracked a threshold of 40 only 11 times last season.
The moment it looked like the Suns were going to break the game open came with a lineup that did not feature a point guard or center, with the Big 3 surrounded by Ryan Dunn and Royce O’Neale. Portland’s backup 5 is rookie lottery pick Donovan Clingan, a gigantic human being that the Blazers are not going to run offense through.
This possession is the potential of five-out spacing via small-ball in a nutshell.
Booker and Beal both drove the ball twice, while Durant had the save plus some great passes. The best version of the Suns will be those two guards constantly touching the paint to force defensive rotations, because Phoenix has a deadly combination of ball movement and shooting to take home possessions from there.
We are 6-for-6 on Suns games when the supporting cast is really, really good. O’Neale provided the best energy in the first half, Grayson Allen picked up where O’Neale left off in the second half and Beal was a constant all night. Allen produced 18 points with three blocks after an understandably slow start to the season due to a nagging Achilles while Beal ended up at 15 points, seven rebounds, four assists, a steal and a block.
Booker finished with 28 points, nine rebounds and nine assists while Durant added 21 points and nine rebounds. Booker (2-of-10 from 3) pointed out how he himself could have made more shots.
For those armed at the hip with an agenda-spreading device going into Saturday, those Suns observers were salivating at the fuel Nurkic’s matchup with Deandre Ayton would provide for their takes. What they were left with instead was just watching two players that have waning impact, which we knew at the time of the trade last September. Nurkic was 1-for-6 with three points and 15 rebounds while Ayton shot 3-of-13 for 10 points and 13 rebounds.
