Phoenix Suns are a PLAYOFF TEAM thanks to defense centered around Mark Williams

Phoenix Suns are a PLAYOFF TEAM thanks to defense centered around Mark Williams

First of all, Phoenix is a really good basketball team and they have some very exciting developments in terms of internal improvement that have made them even more dangerous than I thought they would be before the season. And then on the Lakers front, Phoenix presented some physical challenges and a game plan that caused the Lakers to spiral in a way that we’ve seen before against OK Oklahoma City back in November or against Minnesota back in the playoffs last year in the first round. I think those are real demons that the Lakers will have to conquer if they want to reach their goals. We’re going to get to the Lakers later, though. We haven’t done a deep dive on the Suns in a while. So, I want to deep dive in on Phoenix. And I want to start with their defense. There are things with the Suns this season that I expected, but there have also been some things that I’ve been genuinely surprised by. I expected them to be a good defense. It just made sense structurally. You have a guy like Ryan Dunn heading into his second year who’s very dynamic and versatile on the perimeter as a defender. He’s got strength. He’s got speed. He competes. He’s got a good motor. Lots of really exciting stuff there. You go into a second season, you expect him to experience a good amount of improvement on that end of the floor. And then you turn Kevin Durant into Dylan Brooks. That’s obviously a talent downgrade, right? But Dylan Brooks is legitimately one of the best perimeter defenders in the entire NBA. And similar to Ryan Dunn, he can guard a pretty wide range of players. So, you add a second guy in that Ryan Dunn ilk of this big, physical, awesome perimeter defender when this team was lacking that type of player last year. But then you look down the roster and everyone else on the perimeter is a plus. Devin Booker was literally the primary point of attack guy on many nights for Team USA a couple of summers ago. Royce O’Neal is a solid perimeter defender. Jordan Goodwin is a solid perimeter defender. Colin Gillespie and Grayson Allen, those are guys who compete. They’re physical. They’re usually in the right spot. They have good game plan discipline, and they have some defensive talent at the center position, some guys who can switch a little bit, plenty of foot speed, and some real length in the form of guys like Mark Williams and Kaman Malawatch. Right? That was what I saw coming into the season, and I’m like, “Oh, this is going to be a good defense.” But then I watched them come out and physically punch the Lakers in the mouth in their first preseason game. You guys remember that? We covered that preseason game. And I was like, “Okay, not only do they have the pieces on paper, but they also look clearly bought in. This is going to be a pain in the ass to deal with on any given night in the NBA.” I specifically predicted before the season that they’d be the type of team who would beat the really good Western Conference teams on any given night where they don’t bring the appropriate effort and focus. In other words, I thought they’d be the royal pain in the ass type of team in the West playoff picture. But I figured they’d be something like 37 and 45. some really fun wins against good teams, some fun nights for the fans, but no real threat, like no real any sort of like consistent success that’s going to be something people have to account for in the playoff picture. Forget all of that. They look like a legitimate playoff team. Like, at this point, they look pretty well entrenched as a top eight seed in the West. It’s still early. Dudes could get hurt. Devin Booker groin injury last night. Things could fall apart, but to me, they look a lot more like a 45 and 37 team than a 37 and 45 team. So, the question is why? Why is it that the Suns on a year where they lose Bradley Beal and they trade Kevin Durant that they suddenly are looking like a team that could very well be better than they were last year? And there’s two reasons for that. One is the internal development on offense, which we’ll get to later on. Guys like Colin Gillespie, guys like Dylan Brooks, we’ll get to that later. The second piece of it though is the internal development on defense, specifically with Mark Williams as a drop coverage big. I remember when the Lakers made that ill- fated Dalton connect for Mark Williams trade last year uh shortly before the deadline. I did a pretty extensive scout on Mark Williams and I thought he looked bad on defense. He obviously had the tools. He’s got good mobility. He’s got a ridiculous wingspan for the position, but his instincts were rough. He made a ton of mistakes. He’d, you know, try to block shots he had no business blocking and give up offensive rebounds or he’d aggressively showing help and give an easy drop off for a dunk. He just looked like a guy that really struggled with the basic decision-making process of rim protection of like when to go for the shot versus when to stay home. Just some basic fundamentals. He looked like he was a real mistake maker. So, I viewed him as a offensive weapon, a guy that could help Luca on the roll, as a vertical spacer, a guy who’s a good offensive rebounder. Always like like underrated as a guy who could like grab offensive rebounds and make kick out passes to three-point shooters. A lot more connective passing, short roll passing ability than you’d think. I’m like, “Oh, this will be a good offensive weapon for Luca, but this guy can’t guard and that’s going to be an issue.” And there were the health concerns, right? Phoenix has turned him into a legitimate defensive anchor, which I did not see coming. This is a credit to Brian Gregory. He made a big bet on just how incompetent Charlotte was in terms of the talent they had on the floor and the way they were using him. And I think that Brian Gregory just looked at that and was like, Charlotte’s at least partially responsible for Mark not being a good defender. We can turn him around. And then secondly, you have to credit Jordan not for creating an achievable defensive role for him with the talent they had available. We often refer to drop coverage on this show as a bracket. Okay. Why is it a bracket? Because there’s two sides to the coverage. There’s the big who’s keeping the ball handler and the big in front in a deep drop or at least keeping the ball handler in front in a high drop, right? And then there’s the top part of the bracket which is the on ball defender getting over the top of the screen, staying attached, back pressuring, getting a rear view contest. And one of the things that’s kind of difficult with evaluating bigs and drop coverage, and this is some of the one of the things I underrated when I was scouting Mark Williams’ film in Charlotte, is the job of the drop coverage big is substantially harder when the point of attack defense isn’t good. when the top part of the bracket isn’t good and that ball handler is easily getting over the top of the screen and he has lots of separation from his defender and he’s super comfortable operating in the mid-range. He can manipulate the drop coverage big easier because that drop coverage big also has a responsibility to offer contest on those mid-range shots. There’s a little dance you do. You’re backpedaling. You’re stunting and contesting at the guard while making sure you keep that roll man in front of you, right? And if that guy’s coming free and clear off the screen, he’s going to engage you easier. It’s going to look more like a traditional twoon-one where like you jump to the guard and it’s a lob dunk or you stay back and that dude’s getting easy twos or going right at you at the rim, right? If the guy on the top part of the bracket isn’t doing his job, it makes it really difficult. But when you have Ryan Dunn, when you have Dylan Brooks, and those dudes are getting up into the ball, making dudes uncomfortable from the opening tip, staying attached over the top of screens, basically funneling you into the paint, the ball handler, making it so that that dude doesn’t have a lot of comfort in the mid-range, but rather is just driving into your length. It suddenly becomes a very tenable dynamic for a talented drop coverage big. That specific dynamic, the ability of Dunn and Brooks to pressure the ball and stay attached from behind while Mark Williams’s giant wingspan is swallowing everything up at the basket as they’re getting funneled in is literally what broke the Lakers offense last night. And I want to give Jordan not some more credit here because this did not go well early in the game. His idea was we’re going to run a traditional drop coverage and we’re going to guard that action two on two. Meaning Dunner Brooks is going to chase. Mark Williams is going to be there in the drop. The other three dudes, they might stunt and recover a little bit of like opportunistic playmaking, but for the most part those dudes are going to stay home. That leaves the coverage twoon two. That is going to dictate the flow of the game more towards Luca Donuch scoring the basketball. We talked about this a lot over the course of the last couple of games with the Lakers. I talked about it yesterday in our power rankings show against the Pelicans. Luca comes out and he’s facing a lot of single coverage and twoon two in pick and roll. So he’s looking to score and he scores score score. And then suddenly by the middle of the second quarter it’s we’re anybody but Luca please. We’re blitzing the hell out of this dude. Give up the basketball. Right. Versus the Dallas game where Jason Kidd comes out and he’s doubling Luca Donuch like from the opening tip and it’s a a little bit different dynamic. It’s dictating Luca more towards passing the basketball. Right. So Jordan Knott’s game plan last night, he wants to guard these pick and rolls twoon two. He’s willing to live with Luca as a score. And Luca scores yet another 20point first quarter. Something he’s been doing a lot more often as of late. Now, the overreaction would be Luca torched us. Let’s adjust. Let’s start blitzing. Now, all of a sudden, it’s going to be fouron threes for LeBron and Austin off the ball, and it’s going to cause all sorts of problems on the back side of your defense. There was no overreaction from Jordan. He stuck with the game plan and even though Luca was awesome in the first quarter, he started to fall apart as the game went along and really really started to turn the basketball over. They turned Luca over nine times yesterday. How do those turnovers happen? Yes, there were some un, you know, kind of unforced ones where, you know, Luca’s forcing ridiculous upthe court passes to covered LeBron or overthrowing Ruie running the the uh running up the lane line, right? Like there were some unforced errors, but most of those were a product of the fact that when Lucas started to work against the twoon two, like he turned one over to Buouet in the right corner and it’s like Buy staying home. When those guys are home, they’re in the passing lanes. Lucas specifically mentioned in the postgame presser that he was kind of confused by the coverage. He got confused because of the fact that he was getting defended twoon two and it felt like he was in a crowd because Mark Williams is there and the dudes draped on his backside and back pressure and they’re kind of stunting and recovering but they’re actually home. That’s he was confused because it felt like he was in a crowd when the action was actually only getting guarded two on two. That’s the dynamic that you when you have the right kind of talent, when you have the types of onball players that Phoenix has and the drop coverage big that Mark Williams is in terms of his length around the basket, you can make things feel congested when they actually aren’t. And that’s what it can start turning into those turnovers. And then JJ Reick mentioned this after the after the game, but a lot there were a couple times where JJ or where Luca got deep penetration and was like in around the basket and there were swarms, but he had opportunities to throw kickout passes, but he couldn’t see them. And he couldn’t see them because Mark Williams’s longass arms are going like this. And JJ mentioned that after the game, Mark Williams and his length caused a problem for Luca getting the ball through those coverages. And I just I just think a a big thing that we underrated and myself included that we underrated about this Phoenix Suns defense is they’ve turned Mark Williams into a legitimate defensive anchor drop coverage big and they were able to successfully guard the Lakers in pick and roll twoon two most of the night last night without giving up too much. And by the way, the Suns this season are nine points per 100 possessions better on defense with Mark Williams on the floor versus off. And I do think it’s worth mentioning beyond the twoman game. So beyond the the Dunn and Williams or Brooks and Williams twoman defensive sequences against pick and roll, I thought the Suns as a team were incredibly sharp with their help and recover decisions and their rotations to shooters. a lot of sequences where guys made opportunistic digs but then got back out or the Lakers did manage to not turn the basketball over and kick out to somebody but there was a great close out that would chase a Gabe Vincent off the line or chase a Maxi Cleb off the line or chase a Dalton connect off the line. A lot of really good closeouts. I just thought they played a very good defensive game last night. Phoenix. That was the number one half court offense in the entire NBA in the Lakers that the Suns faced last night. They held him to a 99 offensive rating in the half court, which is about seven points per 100 possessions below their season average. And that’s obviously impressive in and of itself, but the real damage was done on the margins. They forced 22 turnovers. And again, some of them were unforced, but many of them were like pokeaways by their on ball guys. you know, Ryan Dunn poking the ball away from a a Luca or Austin or like Mark Williams, like we talked about, forcing turnovers on kickouts with his length around the rim. I think Phoenix deserves a ton of credit for the job they did disrupting a great Lakers offense. Those turnovers allowed them to get out in transition and they bludgeoned them in transition. The Suns scored 32 points off of Lakers turnovers in this game. They outscored the Lakers 28-2 on the fast break. That’s basically the difference in the game. So, in other words, the Suns defended so well that they played the Lakers into a below average offensive game and they forced a ton of turnovers which fed their transition attack where they dominated. And again, I just want to credit every one of the Suns like Brian Gregory for the moves he made this summer to balance out the roster, the bet he made on Mark Williams, Jordan for building a scheme that matches the talent really well, and from day one of the season getting a level of buyin from this roster that they didn’t have in years past. And the guys in that locker room have been playing great defense. They just deserve a lot of credit. Now, let’s move to the offensive end.

Jason breaks down the impressive Phoenix Suns defense in their win over LeBron James, Luka Doncic, and the Los Angeles Lakers. He explains how Mark Williams has been so effective defensively and why Devin Booker, Dillon Brooks, and the Suns can make the NBA playoffs in a crowded Western Conference.

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