Where the Phoenix Suns WENT WRONG in 2024-25, Vol. 1

Where the Phoenix Suns WENT WRONG in 2024-25, Vol. 1

Welcome to this offseason series that we’re going to go ahead and call where the Suns went wrong. Obviously going to be running point guard here for this series, Stephen Pon Gardner, if you didn’t know. Thanks for your time. And let’s go ahead and dive into the first volume of this series where we’re going to be diving into where the Suns went wrong. Starting with their three-point shooting as well as their assists. All right. So, coming into this season, we heard from the Suns at Mike Budenhoer’s introductory press conference as well as on media day from both Mike Budenhoer as well as the players that there was going to be a desire to play a specific style of basketball. Both of the components we’re speaking to in this volume of the series are going to be diving into just kind of the numbers that entail how they went wrong in terms of not aligning with the process they said they wanted to align with. And the first of which we’re going to be looking at is the three-point shooting. Everybody came in speaking to it being basically bombs away. They were going to shoot threes at nauseium at a high volume clip and they were hoping to be able to dictate to their opponents in terms of the game flow, in terms of the opponent’s shot profile to match theirs because of the volume and the ways in which they would go about creating those three-point shots. Sounds great in process. Sounds sensational, honestly. However, when you look at the details and you look at how things started in the season for the Suns and where it kind of fell off a cliff and they kind of lost the plot offensively, the consistency on volume of their three-point shooting and the looks on terms of shot quality that they were generating really just looked like a stark difference from what it was early in the season. That speaks to a team that kind of lost their way. And that speaks to a team that didn’t have the structure and organization within their offensive principles to sustain and kind of uphold the desired style of play. And I think no nothing is more indicative of that than the numbers that we’re going to see pertaining to the Suns with their three-point shooting over the season. So seventh and makes 14.3 is not bad. 38 attempts per game is not bad either. And obviously being third in three-point field goal percentage at 37.8 is not bad in any capacity. However, when you’re speaking to wanting to dictate to your opponents with the volume of shots that you’re taking and also the number of makes per game and you’re a little bit closer to middle of the pack than you are in terms of being elite, as in top five or top four, really top three of the league. That lends itself to your game bygame process not being as organized as you might need it to be to have the full impact of your offense. Lean into your opponents and kind of shift the ways in which they might go about trying to score the basketball themselves. And that three-point shooting when you break it down past just the numbers and look at the ways that the Suns in theory should and could have been generating those shots and how they actually did it. That’s where you start to see that they lost the plot. One of the key things with the Suns this season is that they had Kevin Durant and Devin Booker at the top of their roster. Two players that get double teams and two and a half players shifting towards them regardless of where they might be having the ball. Specifically for Booker and pick and roll and specifically for Durant playing in the post, but both of which could also switch roles and get to to the ball in that same scenario as well. issue is how often they leaned into it, specific moments in the game where they would go to it, and what the spacing around it looked like, and how the defense reacted to all of that. And that how the defense reacted to it all part is probably is more is more important than anything else because the Suns were good with their spacing this season. They did a good job of having players spaced around the three-point line. However, where they kind of lost the plot with that in particular, which lent itself to their three-point shooting not necessarily having the impact that they desired was because a lot of times it was just stagnant standing around the three-point line in some capacity. And though that is spacing in the literal sense, think about it if you’re on defense. If you know that, okay, let’s say they have an empty corner action that they’re running and on the other side they have three players in trips left spacing. one player in a deep corner, one player at the break, and one player on the wing, but no one’s moving. As a defender, if you don’t have to worry about peeking and being able to see man and see ball, that naturally lends itself to you being a lot more comfortable to maybe taking another step closer to shrinking the floor on the side where there’s only two. And that in turn allows for you to be more successful with your defense because you can kind of predict and anticipate where things are going without having to pay a price. and the Suns not having cutting within their spacing and the templates of spacing that they worked out of really put them in compromise. And I think that in and of itself lends itself to what we’re going to be looking at next, which was the Suns record with their three-point shooting as far as when they hit a certain number of shots and when they didn’t. And same thing going for their field goal percentage. So, as you see on the screen here, 25 and 17 when they made more threes than their opponents. 28 and 13 when they had a higher three-point percentage than their opponents. Those are very good numbers. You would think that’s very sustainable for a team that was built the way that the Suns are on the top end, but also in the middle of the pack with players like Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neal in particular. Look at those bottom two numbers, though, and you see those instances showed up entirely too often regardless of if players were in the lineup or out of the lineup. And that just speaks to a team that didn’t really have a true identity that they were playing to on offense. Eight and 33 when they had a lower three-point percentage and they were also eight and 27 specifically when they had less three-point makes than their opponents. That’s far too often that they actually had less three-point makes than their opponents. Obviously, some of that speaks to the defense, but offensively for them, it speaks to just the inconsistencies that they saw within all of that. And I think just generally as we kind of close on the three-point shooting in particular, if they were able to play to their triggers and the ways in which their roster was constructed to do so and do so more often, having a little bit more movement to the offense, having a little bit more cutting within their spacing principles and the spacing templates that they worked out of, I feel like that would have lent itself a whole lot more to the three-point successes, having more impact on a game by-game basis, and naturally also over the course of the season with their win and loss. record. And tied in with the three-point shooting and the three-point um volume and obviously the efficiency there is also the assist, which is what we’re going to be speaking to in this latter half of this first volume of where the Suns went wrong. And looking at the assist in particular, maybe what stood out most to me was that as I mentioned with Devin Booker and Kevin Durant, them being able to get double team at the volume and in the different context of offense that they can work in, the ball did not move as well as you might desire for it to out of that. When they did do that, you would see a pass that’s met with a cut from in some capacity from the backside. one of the rare instances that they would do so and that would create an opportunity for someone on the backside of where the double team took place to get wide open shots or attack a closeout. When the ball was popping and moving around the perimeter as we look at the stats from this season, that’s when the Suns were absolutely at their best. 27.8 assists per game this season. That was 10th. That’s top third. That’s about where you want to be because you know that you’re going to have some isolation play and pick and roll type of play where players are scoring in that context when you have players like Devin Booker and Kevin Durant and Bradley Bill at the top of your your roster. In addition to that, 73.1 assist points created per game. That’s a very good number. Very, very good number. Eighth in the league, also top third. Number one in secondary assists. A solid majority of that, I think it was close to three a game was off the shoulders and off of the passes that came from Devin Booker alone. But just generally speaking, if it wasn’t Booker, Kevin Durant was also great at making that right first pass out of a double team and that leading to the dominoes falling from the defense in favor of the Suns, getting those wide open catch and shoot three-point opportunities that they value most. And then this last one, obviously, 307.6 passes made per game. And I feel like it wasn’t just them aimlessly passing the ball around to try to, you know, just make sure everybody gets a touch. It was done with intention when they were doing it at their best. And I think that when they made teams rotate and have to make rotations, not just in the first quarter or not just in the first half, but to have to do it for 48 full minutes, on the instances that they did do that, which mostly came early in the season is when they were at their best. And we saw them get off to the 8-1 start and look like a team that was going to be a juggernaut offensively, but also stemming from not just their two best players, but movement of the basketball and the catch and shoot three-point opportunities that they would be able to generate. And getting back to the part where they lost a plot, you look at the assist numbers and look at the record in which they had when they had certain number of assists versus when they were behind their opponents in that. I want to start with the bottom number first because this is one that I was kind of u hammering home pretty much all season long. Whenever they had 31 or more assists, that was their that was kind of their their number to hit. 17 and seven. 31 assists does not that is a big number, but that doesn’t feel like a lot for the Suns because of again the ways in which they should have been able to put defenses and compromise whenever they desire to. And the fact that they lost a plot lends us to seeing what the number at the top is. When they had less assists than their opponents, they hardly ever won. They almost never won. Seven and 29. That happened entirely too often. And again, when you’re a team that preached the things that you did when your head coach was hired, when said head coach had the opportunity to speak to media first, and when everybody had a chance to speak with media on media day, when you speak the ways in which they did, those two things in particular, the assist, the volume of assists, the volume of passes, the ways in which you’re compromising the defense, and obviously naturally the three-point opportunities that you created for yourself stemming from those assists. When you lose the plot on that and you put that in tandem with a ton of the other inconsistencies and weaknesses that we saw from the Suns this season, which we’ll get into as this series continues, you get to see a team that missed not just the playoffs and not just the playin, but finds themselves in a identity crisis of sorts as they head into one of the most important off seasons in the franchise’s history. So, there you have it. Those are two of the first ways that I feel like tied in with one another, which is where the Suns kind of lost the plot this season and where they went wrong. Appreciate your time and tap in with us for the next episode.

Coming into the 2024-25 season the Phoenix Suns had desires on their three-point shooting and balk movement being things that would allow them to dictate to their opponents with, and sway the flow of games. That did not materialize to the extents that they desired on either front, and Stephen PridGeon-Garner (@StephenPG3) is here to dive into “Where They Went Wrong, Vol. 1.”

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