I know I do not need to belabor the point, but here we are on another night without Suns basketball. It feels strange. They grind through stretch after stretch of back-to-backs, then out of nowhere we get three straight nights without a single tipoff.
Fine. It gives us more time to sit, breathe, think, and wander through our own thoughts. Most importantly, it gives us time to revel in what we are watching. Because the brand of basketball this team is putting on the floor has been flat-out enjoyable.
I went back and watched the Lakers game, and it is wild how often the Suns pushed them into choices they did not want to make. The Luka Doncic 9 turnover fiesta. Ah, it was an enjoyable watch. He said after the game that the Suns were not blitzing him, and that it threw him off. They let him score, and he found it strange, so he kept trying to force passes that were not there.
“I feel like it definitely was a different defense than other teams,” Doncic said after the game. “Kind of trying to let me go score instead of creating for others. So, it was kind of confusing, but like I said, just can’t have it.”
The Suns read every lane, jumped every window, and turned those mistakes into points the other way. They turned 22 turnovers into 32 points.
And that is what makes this team so entertaining right now. They lead with defense.
Offense can be fun, sure, but defense brings a different kind of joy. There is something powerful in watching a team prevent the other side from scoring. You see them doing everything in their power to break through, and it is your will that keeps the door shut.
Maybe that is why most of the football jerseys in my closet belong to defensive players. That kind of mental toughness speaks to me.
I look at the Suns and see something that feels like a dominant defensive line in football. The way they attack. The way they poke and pry and swipe. The way they create steals and force chaos. It keeps opposing offenses on edge.
The Suns lead the entire league with 10.9 steals a night. They’re 4th in deflections (21.0), 2nd in loose balls recovered (6.2), and 6th in screen assist points (20.7).
As the game wears on, opponents start to feel it. Like a quarterback who has been under fire, they get happy feet. They rush decisions. They throw passes they regret the moment the ball leaves their hands.
That is what we saw against the Lakers. Phoenix never let them breathe. The pressure stayed constant. The hands stayed active. Players did not want to hold the ball for more than a heartbeat because they knew it could be taken from them in an instant.
The schedule ahead is a gauntlet. Everyone knows it. But the Suns have placed themselves in a good spot, record-wise and attitude-wise. They have a real chance to survive it, maybe even come out the other side still above .500, which is far more than any of us expected before Christmas. They are one of the most entertaining teams in the league, one of the most surprising, and they bring the energy every night.
So while we wait for the next tipoff, this feels like the right moment to recognize what we are witnessing. A team that refuses to back down. A team built on defiance and grit. A team that walks onto the floor every night knowing they can dictate the terms with effort alone.
The schedule will punch. It always does. The league will try to grind them down. It always does.
But this version of the Suns keeps standing tall, keeps swinging, keeps throwing bodies at passing lanes like it is a contact sport. And if they keep defending like this, if they keep treating every possession like a fistfight at the line of scrimmage, then the gauntlet ahead is not a warning. It is an invitation. A chance to prove that everything we have seen so far is not a fluke. It is the blueprint.