Game Day (Preseason): Suns (0-0) @ Pistons (0-0), Sun 10/8/23

[Flagrant Fowl]

I fell asleep at halftime and just now watched the second half.

I thought James Wiseman was easily the worst player on the court when I watched the first half live, and then I just sat through 9 minutes of Bol Bol. To be fair, they both suck, but Bol is just outright terrible. Marvin Bagley abused Bol and his performance might boost Monty into moving him ahead of Wiseman.

I'm not at all worried about the point guard situation because Goodwin didn't play. Now, if he's always nicked up like Cam Payne, then we'll have an issue with that role.

I thought Nurkic looked good doing the stuff he'll be asked to excel in. The guy is constantly getting teammates good looks with screens and moving the ball when it comes to him. He's a half step slow and flatfooted on defense and that's exactly how he looked. I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised by that and we should expect him to be attacked all season. Yet it won't matter if they're putting 120+ on the score board every night.

[Superbone]

Somehow they got ahold of Saucy’s playlist for this one:

[specialsauce]

Somehow they got ahold of Saucy’s playlist for this one:

Are. You fucking kidding me. What kind of circus operation are they running

[Kryptonic]

Somehow they got ahold of Saucy’s playlist for this one:

Are. You fucking kidding me. What kind of circus operation are they running

It’s like they found whatever DRM free stuff they could find…. Pretty bad.

Tomorrow’s headline: Matt ishbia announces partnership with all record labels to use their music for all promotional material and highlights.

I’d be good with anything as long as it’s not country.

[JNix]

Overall I thought it was a good start for this this team that has never played together. A couple thoughts:

Grayson Allen was easily the best player outside of our big 3. Hes going to play a key role on this team.

Nurkic looked slow in the paint. Makes me worry on a big scale how our interior defense will be.

Teams are going to press whoever brings the ball up the floor. Think Beal and Booker will handle it fine but feel like we need a PG to relief some of that pressure at times. Goodwin may or may not be that guy.

[O_Gardino]

A lot of this has already been said, but here is my take.

Keep in mind that training camp just opened, and that it is shorter than it was in the old days. The team hasn't had nearly as much time together as they used to before the first game of the preseason.

Booker and Beal are READY.
Glad to see Okogie get the start and play well. I expect to see Vogel try out other starters during the preseason, but I do like Okogie.
Nurkic looked like he's not in game shape yet. I'll reserve judgement for now.
It's pretty clear that the role players don't know where they fit in the offensive system yet. Honestly, that's expected. I bet even Vogel doesn't know where everyone fits yet.
Very good game for GrayA. I would love to see us trade him for a PG. TJ McConnell, D'Anthony Melton, and Pat Connaughton make about the same $. A guy can dream, right?

It was fun to hear the Detroit announcers appreciate Monty.

[3TheHardaway]

Watched a condensed game a few minutes ago. I’ll say this much: Nurk is slow footed defensively, but he still clogged things up in the paint. But given his foot speed (or lack thereof), I think I’m sold on Okogie as the 5th starter. I wanna see KBD and Little with the other 4 for some minutes too, but Josh has quickness and length to trail after the ball handler on P/R that will be required with how much of a drop Nurkic is going to need to play with. He was able to contest a slew of midrange shots from behind/side of the shooter to make things difficult anyway. Obviously DET doesn’t have a premier P/R attack, but I thought Okogie filled in the gaps defensively really well.

The offense starting off 12/14 on deep 3s and middies was nearly NSFW. Good god this is a potent offense.

[Split T]

Very good game for GrayA. I would love to see us trade him for a PG. TJ McConnell, D'Anthony Melton, and Pat Connaughton make about the same $. A guy can dream, right?

I would have said yes to trading Allen for TJ right after the trade, but not anymore. Allen is way better than TJ. Also I would not consider Melton and Connaughton point guards. Allen is just as much a Pg as they are.

[JeremyG]

Somehow they got ahold of Saucy’s playlist for this one:

Are. You fucking kidding me. What kind of circus operation are they running

It’s like they found whatever DRM free stuff they could find…. Pretty bad.

Tomorrow’s headline: Matt ishbia announces partnership with all record labels to use their music for all promotional material and highlights.

I’d be good with anything as long as it’s not country.

I’d be good with securing the rights to use their own announcers, and cutting out the music entirely.

[specialsauce]

Very good game for GrayA. I would love to see us trade him for a PG. TJ McConnell, D'Anthony Melton, and Pat Connaughton make about the same $. A guy can dream, right?

I would have said yes to trading Allen for TJ right after the trade, but not anymore. Allen is way better than TJ. Also I would not consider Melton and Connaughton point guards. Allen is just as much a Pg as they are.

Allen is untouchable. Grayson is the best

[TOO]

Yes, join me in Grayson Manor. It's very roomy here.

[djy2j]

First, it's so weird sitting there and being like "who's that guy? with all the roster turnover that took place.

Hate how good Grayson Allen looked out there. It's not in my DNA to like him. But he looked damn good.

Wonder how much we'll see full court pressure applied when we're running the Booker, Beal tandem. Saw it last night but the Pistons are god awful on defense so it doesn't really matter. Looking ahead to games against Alvarado and whatever team Beverley plays on now where it could be more of an issue.

Bol Bol has incredible ability but at zero basketball IQ it doesn't matter. I don't know how you fix that. Guy is smooth but makes the absolute worst decision every time one is presented to him. Kid needs like 6 years of college ball. I think I'd rather have Biyombo as the 3rd center again rather than Bol or Azibuike. Bizzy has his limitations on offense but he plays hard and is is rim protector.

Yuta looked good as a spot up shooter. Anything outside of that really gets him out of his comfort zone and he looks real G League.

Nurk and Eubanks will be fine as long as they can limit fouls.

Wouldn't mind seeing what Saben looks like with some other starters. Felt like he was trying to do everything with the lineup around him. Looks like he's more comfortable as a distributor and liked what i saw from that aspect but when you surround him with guys who can't score he doesn't do well.

Metu had those 2 nice threes to start his time then he chucked up 5 bad shots after that.

Was surprised how out of sorts KBD looked on offense. Just one preseason game, no big deal though.

[Split T]

I think Metu would be the 3rd C

[Superbone]

Very good game for GrayA. I would love to see us trade him for a PG. TJ McConnell, D'Anthony Melton, and Pat Connaughton make about the same $. A guy can dream, right?

I would have said yes to trading Allen for TJ right after the trade, but not anymore. Allen is way better than TJ. Also I would not consider Melton and Connaughton point guards. Allen is just as much a Pg as they are.

"He played great! Let's get rid of him."

Seriously, not sure why so many are clamoring for a traditional PG. Let's see how we do as constituted before making big changes. I'd say the starters looked pretty good yesterday. Let's give it a little time before changing it up.

[O_Gardino]

Very good game for GrayA. I would love to see us trade him for a PG. TJ McConnell, D'Anthony Melton, and Pat Connaughton make about the same $. A guy can dream, right?

I would have said yes to trading Allen for TJ right after the trade, but not anymore. Allen is way better than TJ. Also I would not consider Melton and Connaughton point guards. Allen is just as much a Pg as they are.

It's more about getting rid of Allen than pure talent exchange. He's for sure one of our top 6 players from a talent perspective, but I'd rather have a player I can root for. Preferably someone who can run an offence or defend faster players while still hitting threes.

[Split T]

Ya I don’t understand how someone could watch the 1stQ of that game and think we need a traditional point guard…the offense was flowing perfectly, we were running at an insane pace, and just completely overwhelming Detroit…

I think people saw the 2nd half and got scared…but those 2nd half lineups are not lineups we will ever be using. And our actual backup pg wasn’t even playing. I also think change is hard sometimes…you spend 30 years as a basketball fan and get used to having a certain type of pg…it’s hard to break out of that mindset.

[Kryptonic]

Very good game for GrayA. I would love to see us trade him for a PG. TJ McConnell, D'Anthony Melton, and Pat Connaughton make about the same $. A guy can dream, right?

I would have said yes to trading Allen for TJ right after the trade, but not anymore. Allen is way better than TJ. Also I would not consider Melton and Connaughton point guards. Allen is just as much a Pg as they are.

It's more about getting rid of Allen than pure talent exchange. He's for sure one of our top 6 players from a talent perspective, but I'd rather have a player I can root for. Preferably someone who can run an offence or defend faster players while still hitting threes.

Someone like...


if only there was a way...

[Split T]

Very good game for GrayA. I would love to see us trade him for a PG. TJ McConnell, D'Anthony Melton, and Pat Connaughton make about the same $. A guy can dream, right?

I would have said yes to trading Allen for TJ right after the trade, but not anymore. Allen is way better than TJ. Also I would not consider Melton and Connaughton point guards. Allen is just as much a Pg as they are.

It's more about getting rid of Allen than pure talent exchange. He's for sure one of our top 6 players from a talent perspective, but I'd rather have a player I can root for. Preferably someone who can run an offence or defend faster players while still hitting threes.

Ok, so you just don’t like Grayson the person…fair. I’ve never been a fan. I’m willing to give him a chance though. Truth is he’s right, most of his dirty stuff came at Duke. He’s been in the league 6 years now. I’ll call him out if he does it again, but I’m not going to throw him under the bus before it happens. We all cheered for CP3 the last 3 years, we can cheer for Grayson too

[O_Gardino]

Very good game for GrayA. I would love to see us trade him for a PG. TJ McConnell, D'Anthony Melton, and Pat Connaughton make about the same $. A guy can dream, right?

I would have said yes to trading Allen for TJ right after the trade, but not anymore. Allen is way better than TJ. Also I would not consider Melton and Connaughton point guards. Allen is just as much a Pg as they are.

"He played great! Let's get rid of him."

Seriously, not sure why so many are clamoring for a traditional PG. Let's see how we do as constituted before making big changes. I'd say the starters looked pretty good yesterday. Let's give it a little time before changing it up.

I'm not going to forget what a piece of trash Allen is just because he's wearing the Suns uni.

The starters will be fine all season long, but there will be a ton of games when one or more of our stars are out. We are going to need someone who can set up our 2nd string players.

[Kryptonic]

Yes, join me in Grayson Manor. It's very roomy here.

As far as I'm concerned... He has a fresh start here. If he does something that jeopardizes things with his shenanigans, I'd be happy to move on. Till then... I'm DHgating a jersey with Wally.