Suns are off to a sneaky good start and look like a possible playoff team

Suns are off to a sneaky good start and look like a possible playoff team

What’s going on everybody? Appreciate you tuning in. We got to do a little checkup on the Suns as we are now 11 games in the season. So, we are about an eighth of the way through and got to hand it to them. They are playing some scrappy ball right now. They’re actually putting together pretty good effort on both sides of the court and it’s resulted in a six and five record. I mean, a nice win the other night against the Pelicans, who might be one of the worst teams, if not the worst team in the league, but it still counts. And they get an effort where, you know, they have Grayson Allen have a career day, bunch of guys contributing. And as it stands right now, you know, they’d be in the playing and they’re only one game back of being the five seed in the West. So, I mean, they are playing Jord has them as as critical as I was on his rotations and stuff, he has them playing hard and the numbers are backing it up. They were horrible defensively. And if you remember, Bill Simmons was talking about how he thought that they might be the worst team in the league defensively. got on a little bit about ownership saying, “Hey, like, you know, he challenged him on Twitter and said, you know, let’s bet on it.” And I mentioned how I didn’t really love having an owner that would go on social media and is is constantly doing this jabbing back and forth. And he’s he’s a little bit too accessible than the way that, you know, I would prefer for an owner to be a little bit more in the back, but he he likes to be right in the forefront of everything. To their credit, to his credit, this defense that was five games into the season looking really rough. Bottom three in the league, they’re all the way up to 12th now. They’re only giving up 115 points per game. By the way, how crazy is that? You’re almost top 10 best defense in the league, giving up 115 points a league. I remember watching 2000’s basketball where if you gave up a 100 points, you were almost always going to lose like that. Just no one scored a 100. You would be far and away the best defense in the league if you held people to 100. Now, the league changed so much in the last 20 years. I don’t know for better or worse, but it definitely has shifted to this, you know, space and pace three-point game, but no, 115 now makes you the 12th best defense in the league. So, if they can hover around in that 10 to 15 range, that’s an incredible achievement for this team, especially considering, you know, what they’re working with right now with injuries and kind of the amount of guys that have missed minutes and have missed games. The most recent on that list, the guy that we need to talk about, Jaylen Green. So, Jaylen Green has missed nine of 11 games as he was dealing with a hamstring injury. And that’s the problem with these hamstring injuries, man. Like, you can try and get yourself back into it, but when you pull a muscle, it just is it takes so long for it to really fully heal. You get to the point where you can have some flexibility. you can feel better and stuff like that, but it like really wants to go again and really tends to get reinjured. Well, that’s what happens. He pulls it again. So, now he’s out four to six weeks. It’s a lot of time for a guy that two seasons prior to this, both seasons prior to this. Didn’t miss a game. Played 82 games both seasons. And now in his first stop with the Suns, his first year here, he’s going to miss a chunk of this season here to start out. Like I said, nine of 11 already. If you’re missing four to six weeks here, you’re going to miss what? 20 games more, probably somewhere around there at least. 25. Okay. So, all of a sudden, you’re going to now have missed 30 games if you want to call be very conservative. 30 of 32 somewhere around there. Maybe closer to 33 of 35 games he’s going to have missed. um significant for a guy that whether he’s efficient, whether he kind of gives it back on the defensive end, a guy that still is going to put 20 in the stat sheet every night, you’re missing that kind of offensive punch. Um an athlete, a guy that can get out there and really run the lanes and kind of help this offense. Um which is still playing pretty well. Again, I got on Jot pretty hard about the rotations and stuff that he’s doing that I don’t love. Still don’t love the fact that you never see Malawash almost ever. He’s only played in six games, barely any minutes, and the stats in the development haven’t shown up at all. Obviously, incredibly early in his career, but like you would love, or at least I would loved, if he gotten more opportunities to kind of grow and develop right now because he’s not getting any better just sitting on the bench. But, you know, these types of injuries are going to happen. So, Jaylen Green, who um you wouldn’t necessarily expect it to happen to him, but to somebody, it’s impossible to get through the whole season healthy. Like, it just does not happen that way. So, now it turns into like who can step up in his absence? How do we feel about kind of the roster and the team and kind of the ability to hold down the four while he’s gone? Now, he ain’t never going to I mean, not not going to very often get the kind of performance from Grace Now that you just saw. That was a wild shooting performance. Um, making 10 threes. I mean, he he got redot and he’s a guy that can be streaky at times, but that’s not something you can really kind of depend on. But, you do get more minutes probably for Ryan Dunn now. you do probably get more minutes and continue to give them to Congless, but he’s been playing well. And then, you know, it turns into some of those other guys. How how can they kind of produce for you a little bit? We still seeing Nigel Hayes. I don’t love that. I still stand by Jordan Goodwin would be better in that rotation, but again, it’s harder to be critical of the moves that Jordan Knot is doing in this rotation when it’s producing wins. Six and five is not bad for a team that had very low expectations. I still felt like they were undersold um and kind of underexpected this year. I looked at them as a team that was going to be scrappy. They could get up and down that was going to be a lot more fun to watch than what we saw the last few years um out of Phoenix. A lot less expectations, a lot lower ceiling, but one that at least was going to give you effort. And in the NBA, the dirty secret is if you can give the effort night and in night out, that’s going to be enough to win you a lot of games. So, right now, that’s where they’re at. Six and five. Look, okay, the Jaylen Green hurts. A lot of these guys are going to have to continue to step up. Devin Booker is going to do his thing. And, you know, they’re starting to get some good frontline play. I still would love to see Mawatch get some minutes, but you know, Mark Williams has been playing decent. Didn’t have a great night obviously against the Pelicans. Um, two points and six rebounds, I think it was in that game. It’s that’s not great. Didn’t have a basket from the field. It was two free throws. Um, in 20 minutes, I ain’t going to do it normally, but he’s been more hot than he’s been cold this year. You’re just going to have to continue to find ways to kind of have guys kind of step in and and play some important opportunity minutes while Green is gone because when he comes back, that’s a guy that’s going to need probably 30 minutes a night. Like he’s going to be out on the court. But impressive. I mean, the big takeaway right now, the big the final thing is just, you know, Jordan not as bad as I thought it looked the first, you know, week of the season and there’s so many things that I I would have done differently. It’s paying off. I can’t argue with the results. I I can nitpick. There’s things that I feel like I would do differently, but if he is going to be doing implementing and coaching this team in a manner that gives them wins, that puts them in this position. I I can’t say anything else. I can’t criticize it. If the results are there, the results are there. Whether I agree with the method or not, if they are there, that’s what it’s going to be. And you look at kind of now again, 10 games is 10 games. It’s not nothing. So, an eighth of the way into the season and you look at the teams that you start saying, “Hey, like where do you think we stack up?” Well, New Orleans looks horrible. Like, they will not be in contention about making a playoff run at all. It looks like, okay, so you can say they’re gone. At some point, you would think the Mavericks can kind of figure it out whether Kyrie can come back this year, be healthy, or if they can get a guard to kind of run the show. They’re in they’re in a tough position right now with no point guard, but you’d think maybe they can get going. At some point, you’d imagine the Clippers can get going as well. There’s just a lot of talent on that roster for them to be kind of meddling towards the bottom. No one really expects something from Utah. Sacramento looks like they’re ready to implode every mo any moment. Memphis, they’ve got an entire thing hanging over the entire franchise right now with John Mor kind of what’s going on there. So, if you say those four teams are on the outside looking in, you only have to be better than two other teams, one other team to get into the playin and and to have a chance the postseason, they’re going to have a shot. Like, they’re going to have a a legitimate shot of being on the higher end of that playin. And if things continue to kind of fall their way and play play well, they might just be an outright top six seed in the West. Now, long way to go. The Jaylen Green injury hurts. They have a lot of other things that need to happen. But this team now 11 games in. My takeaway is looking at them as a possible in the top six seeds to have a automatically into the playoffs or a playing team is now a realistic goal. They’ve shown enough that they they can be good enough collectively on defense and active enough and energetic enough to make a difference there. And then they have enough guys that are kind of individual scorers. Is there like a a run in this team? I don’t think so. I don’t see that. But they’re showing you enough that there should be some kind of excitement for this team. And you know, that’s more than what people expected coming in. And a lot of that credit has to go to Jordan on. It’s just plain and simple. Um, and Matt Ishbia was the man behind it that believed in him. He’s the one that has continued to stick by his guns and say that this team has what it needs and and that he’s making the right moves and that they want to win now and that, you know, he believes in kind of what they are doing. I was pretty critical on him as well. He deserves a lot of credit as well. So, this team 11 games in, I know they’re only one game over 500, but it’s kind of the way that they’ve looked. Got to tip your cap to them. They’re doing their thing right now. So, we’ll see if they can keep it up. We’ll see if they can, you know, monitor and kind of deal with the fact that Green’s going to be out for a while. But, if everyone continues to kind of play this role and play like with some effort and they run in a really deep bench, some nights it’s going to be Grayson Allen, you know, some nights it’s going to be Ryan Don Oso. Like, some of these guys are going to have their their moments. It’s fun to watch. It’s a fun team right now to watch because of the amount of effort that they are giving, which is not something we associated the Suns with the last couple years. So, got got some work left to do. Got a lot of season left, but at this point, dip your cap. Boom. The team is doing well. And again, a lot of that has to do with J not making the right moves. And I got to give him some credit cuz I was critical of him to no end the start. So, he deserves some credit right now.

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