Game Day: Suns (7-6) @ Spurs (10-3), Mon 11/23/15

[djy2j]

Welcome to Phoenix where we make a simple wing entry pass feel like a hail mary.

[The Bobster]

25 turnovers with over 7 minutes left.

25 turnovers and 26 Field Goals.

What a fucking disaster.

[The Bobster]

When three of your starters combine to play 63 minutes and score only 3 points combined, you might have a problem.

[AmareIsGod]

Just glad Bledsoe wasn't out there. His poor play would have made us lose by another 20 or so.

[Superbone]

Morris starting with energy?!?!?!

His best game of the year by far. Probably his first good game at all.

[Mori Chu]

Wow. What a humiliating game. The Spurs are just in a totally different league than we are. They made our offense look like complete crap. (Which it is.) They completely befuddled us. We had almost no idea what to do; on almost every offensive play, we would just float around outside the 3-point line and then jack up a bad shot wih 3-4 seconds left on the shot clock. The Spurs got so many steals, turnovers, and forced us into so many shots. And then on the other end, they almost always made the right play; they got so many easy layups, wide open midrange jumpers, and open corner 3s. It was an absolute clinic; a massacre. The game wasn't even as close as its already lopsided score. I have not been so depressed all season.

Markieff Morris had a decent game, but I think that partly says more about the Spurs' lack of talent at the 4 position with Aldridge sitting out. Warren was also really struggling out there. Tyson Chandler seemed like he didn't even play. Brandon Knight did not look ready for prime time as our starting PG. The whole team pretty much looked useless for most of the game. The fact that we were relying on Teletovic for most of our offense for long stretches tells you how desperate we were.

Ugh. This week is going to be rough. *toilet flush*

[djy2j]

0 - The number of above .500 teams the Suns have beat this year.

Also, Chandler looks a bit different out there to me than he did at the beginning of the year. I don't see his leadership quite as much as I did to start the season. Hoping he'll reassert himself after these 2 bad games.

[OE32]

So, the only point of our centers is to use against other centers? What's the point of the other teams' centers?

When the Spurs started suffocating us on D, nobody moved. Everyone waited for the ballhandler to work magic. But of course the ballhandler was being double-teamed much of the time.

That Boban thing made me question a lot of things. About life, God, etc. I think it made Alex think, with regard to all his working out over the summer, What's the point? My girlfriend asked, when she saw that thing, How tall do you think his parents are? I responded, Shit, what species were they?

[djy2j]

Boban moves a little slow still because he's not completely thawed out yet.

[LazarusLong]

He reminds me of an Eastern European Mark Eaton.
Very large.

[Shabazz]

One of the best NBA vines of the season:

https://twitter.com/calebjsaenz/status/663200905802706944

[pickle]

i caught up to this game. that went fast, between how ugly the game was and the (i know i'm beating a dead horse pretty raw by now) retarded chinese announcers which helps me speed through all the dead ball situations.

apologize if these comments tend to be longish.

clearly this is a game to forget. my god the first quarter i'm amazed we managed to actually take shots. feels like every trip we take down the court our pg, the last guy up, coughs the ball up in some dribble move and then there's no one back there to defend their breakaway layup/dunk. i like brandon knight, read the piece that was posted in our news thread and like that he's a cerebral player, but i think there are some serious holes in his game. maybe the spurs were a little handsy on defense, but my god... this is his second 8 TO game and it can't all be on the officiating. i think of all those turnovers, there might have been one offensive foul. the others were real legitimate turnovers. i'm no expert on reading the court, but i feel like for a guard his dribble is too high which gives elite defenders just that extra split second to get a hand in there. i mentioned this before, but i wish he would spend an entire off season focusing on improving his handles. i can tell that he made a concerted effort to play pg... did not look for his shot and always passed. there were two or three very good passes to open teammates who could not convert, but i liked what he was doing, when he was clearly the lone pg on the team. however, our team has been playing a game where everyone waits for the two pgs to make something happen so naturally when they catch the ball without 5 feet of open space, they aren't sure what to do next. when knight attacks the basket, i've noticed that he puts his head down and just goes... doesn't look to drop the ball off. on the plus side, he's much more accurate around the basket in this game than the pelicans one. the difference seems to be whether he can get that step... if he doesn't, which was the case in new orleans, his physique or shooting-in-traffic ability isn't good enough to allow him to be effective around the rim, whereas if he does, he's very accurate. maybe he could learn some guard footwork from tony parker. on defense, same issue... he just can't move his feet well enough to really stay in front of his man.

teletovic has a much quicker trigger than leuer. their percentages may (or may not) be similar, but he's clearly got a shooter's mentality whereas leuer is a slightly undersized hustling 4 for whom the outside shot is occasionally an option. they do battle hard on the offensive glass when they are in the paint, but most trips it's one big with four guys on the perimeter and we have no chance at an offensive rebound in that setup, unless the ball happens to bounce towards our lone guy in the lane.

i thought warren did okay... i liked what booker was doing a lot. i would describe his play as scrappy... coming in with a shooter's reputation, i always automatically link that to being soft, but he wasn't afraid to get in the paint on both offense and defense, and i really liked that. we definitely got something there.

kieff played pretty hard and shot well. he's not a banger, more of a create space with banging for mid range fall away shot guy so it really doesn't help his offensive rebounding. but when that mid range shot is falling, it's pretty good. but we all know what he's capable of.

maybe this game will give booker and warren, and knight to an extent, a chance to learn how a real advanced offense/defense should look like, and how their respective matchups were schooling them with better timing, positioning, footwork, discipline, and creativity.

kawhi leonard is pretty amazing. his long arms allow him to extend his moves just a split second longer than his defender, giving him a much cleaner look at the basket be it a mid range shot or a drive. wow. i am super impressed and look forward to more amazing things from him.

otherwise, blehhh.

[The Bobster]

I'm not sold on Booker being ready to contribute yet. Obviously he's going to be a great shooter, but he doesn't get enough shots off, doesn't get to the line and doesn't get a lot of rebounds or assists. At this point I think they're probably better off using Goodwin as the first big guard off the bench.

[Mori Chu]

Our offense is stupid. We should be running a metric ass-ton of pick-and-rolls between Bled or Knight and Chandler or Morris, with our other players spaced around the floor for open shots. Chandler is a great pick-and-roll guy, and Morris could be great at pick-and-pop. That plus a decent sprinkling of fastbreak baskets, pushing the ball when we can, SSOL-type offense, etc. should be a decent foundation.

Instead they just run the "let the PG be the hero" play over and over. It doesn't work against good defenses. They see it coming a mile away, they trap or double the PG, and the guy won't pass the freaking ball. It's pathetic.

[Mori Chu]

We also refused to use Brandan Wright in a pick-and-roll role, when he is excellent at this. Seriously, if you let him roll to the basket and throw it anywhere near him, you get a free basket. But no. We didn't care for his services and let him leave. I guarantee that if Nash were here, Wright would have been a valuable player and we'd have kept him.

[JCSunsfan]

Morris starting with energy?!?!?!

His best game of the year by far. Probably his first good game at all.

He's just making the point that the Suns should not have pursued Alderidge. All the more indication that he is dogging it in other games. Show me effort in a game that isn't some sort of personal statement against the Suns and then I will start to come around.

[Indy]

One of the best NBA vines of the season:

https://twitter.com/calebjsaenz/status/663200905802706944

That is wonderful.

[Indy]

We also refused to use Brandan Wright in a pick-and-roll role, when he is excellent at this. Seriously, if you let him roll to the basket and throw it anywhere near him, you get a free basket. But no. We didn't care for his services and let him leave. I guarantee that if Nash were here, Wright would have been a valuable player and we'd have kept him.

We have tried this a lot lately with Chandler. But our "PGs" haven't been that great getting him the ball where he can just flush it. Instead he has to make crazy catches to do damage, and he isn't 28 anymore. And Len doesn't have good hands. So we don't really have the guys to do this until Bledsoe or Knight are already hitting their shots and forcing the defender to run at them instead of sneaking back into the lane to disrupt the poor pass from our guards.

[pickle]

We also refused to use Brandan Wright in a pick-and-roll role, when he is excellent at this. Seriously, if you let him roll to the basket and throw it anywhere near him, you get a free basket. But no. We didn't care for his services and let him leave. I guarantee that if Nash were here, Wright would have been a valuable player and we'd have kept him.

We have tried this a lot lately with Chandler. But our "PGs" haven't been that great getting him the ball where he can just flush it. Instead he has to make crazy catches to do damage, and he isn't 28 anymore. And Len doesn't have good hands. So we don't really have the guys to do this until Bledsoe or Knight are already hitting their shots and forcing the defender to run at them instead of sneaking back into the lane to disrupt the poor pass from our guards.

agree with indy's take... there was one late game sequence where price was driving the lane with chandler diving maybe 3 feet further in, and for the whole play i was thinking "oh no oh no oh no" and sure enough price tried to throw a lob over the outstretched hands of duncan and damn near hit the 24 second clock. i wonder if that's considered a shot and rebound or a turnover/steal.

i don't think our guards understand spacing enough to not go straight at the basket. when they do, there is very little space left even for the smartest passers to maneuver something through, and they often end up throwing the ball off some defender's hip, or right at our centers' feet. if they could show some hesitation in their attack to the rim and maybe take a slight detour to put the onus on the defensive big man to either commit to the guard or back off and give you a shot. i noticed in one of the earlier games the opposing bigs chose to back off and bledsoe actually got caught in mid-air in surprise and short-armed his shots. but if we practice that a few times that could be a real weapon. also knight showed off a pretty smooth runner in the san antonio game, so it's something that could potentially be in the arsenal. if we work at it, that is.

[Indy]

Yeah, I don't get the play where both the center and our "PG" drive the lane at the same time, or 1 step apart. It is awful. Patience on offense is something this team doesn't have. They are always hurrying and rushing, but accomplishing little. It is just one of the reasons we are such a poor assisting team, and have only an average offensive efficiency, despite our blistering pace.

When it comes to advanced stats, the only thing we are great at is defensive rebounding (and I give a lot of that credit to Bledsoe). Everything else we are just meh or down right bad (we are 2nd to last in TO ratio to only Philly).