Suns News: Week 19 (2/23 - 3/1)

[Kryptonic]

Last Week's Games
Thursday Feb 19 vs San Antonio Spurs 94 - 121 LOSS!
Saturday Feb 21 vs Orlando Magic 110 - 113 (2 OT) WIN!!!
Sunday Feb 22 vs Portland Trailblazers 92-77 FAT LOSS!!



This Week's Games
Tuesday Feb 24 7pm MST vs Boston Celtics TV: Suns+, Arizona's Family 3TV / Arizona's Family Sports
Thursday Feb 26 7pm MST vs LA Lakers TV: Suns+, Arizona's Family 3TV / Arizona's Family Sports


Suns Stories
Perfect Dillon Brooks replacement to save Suns' season hiding in plain sight
https://valleyofthesuns.com/perfect-dil ... lain-sight

For 3! Suns rookie Khaman Maluach hits 1st career NBA deep ball in loss vs. Trail Blazers
https://arizonasports.com/nba/phoenix-s ... 3/3612620/

[O_Gardino]

These injuries, man.

I was hoping we would get 6 or 7 of the 9 games after the break, but now I'm hoping we get 3 or 4. It's hard to imaging beating the Celtics or Lakers without Booker and Brooks. That means we have to take care of business against NOP and SAC, plus grab one against the Bulls or Magic.

It's gonna be a rough close to the season, kids. 24 games left, and I'm not sure we can win 10.

[Split T]

You think we’re gonna go 9-15 or worse? That’s a massive change up from what we’ve seen this team do.

[ShelC]

[Kryptonic]

Damn…. So maybe around April 3rd. Might be back for the last 4 games which are aweful: Rockets, Mavs, Lakers and OKC. Those last 4 games are going to be brutal.

[TOO]

Yay. Go sports.

[Split T]

I don’t know if they will be awful…Mavs aren’t very good. Rockets we will see…I don’t think the Lakers are good…and OKC may have zero to play for in the last game of the season.

[O_Gardino]

You think we’re gonna go 9-15 or worse? That’s a massive change up from what we’ve seen this team do.

I might be overreacting because it's Monday and so many players were out last night, but here's my logic.

We have a bunch of games against playoff teams. Celtics x2, Lakers x2, Rockets, Spurs, Thunder, Nuggets, Wolves, Magic, and Raptors x2. 7 of those are road games. I wouldn't worry about half of those with a full squad, but it's not the same team with the injuries. Brooks is out for the season if the training staff brings him along as slowly as they have everyone else. That means we need both Booker and Allen every night to even have a chance. It's just hard to see that happening.

[Superbone]

You think we’re gonna go 9-15 or worse? That’s a massive change up from what we’ve seen this team do.

I might be overreacting because it's Monday and so many players were out last night, but here's my logic.

We have a bunch of games against playoff teams. Celtics x2, Lakers x2, Rockets, Spurs, Thunder, Nuggets, Wolves, Magic, and Raptors x2. 7 of those are road games. I wouldn't worry about half of those with a full squad, but it's not the same team with the injuries. Brooks is out for the season if the training staff brings him along as slowly as they have everyone else. That means we need both Booker and Allen every night to even have a chance. It's just hard to see that happening.

I'm with you, man. I'm worried. These injuries are killing us. And now with Brooks out 4-6 weeks. Plus, we just haven't had that same vibe we had earlier in the season other than in little spurts here and there. Goody is important. Let's see what his timetable is. I just feel like we're going to blow our win/loss record as we go through these injuries to end the season and may end up near the bottom of the play-in seeding when all is said and done.

If we have to play OKC in the first round (if we even make the playoffs), forget about it. I mean, who knows? Maybe we become fully healthy at just the right time heading into the playoffs and make some noise but I'm not going to hold my breath. The injury bug has been consistent for us this season and there's no reason to think it's going to stop any time soon. Also, Allen has been important to our success and yet has only been able to play less than half our games.

I think we're just going to have to hang our Suns' hats on the fact that we were much more successful this season than anybody gave us credit for and we now have a great young coach and new identity going forward and just enjoy the ride for what it is.

[Superbone]

Oh, and thanks Krypto for the threads!

[Superbone]

[bajanguy008]

This is quite some misfortune on our parts
Borderline unbelievable to be fair

We went from zero expectations to wait a minute can we actually be good
Til now seems like the air getting let out the building

Hope we can find a way to rally but regardless of if we get frustrated with Brooks, the team feeds of his energy and Goodie is a big trend setter too
Sigh

[Aztec Sunsfan]

You think we’re gonna go 9-15 or worse? That’s a massive change up from what we’ve seen this team do.

Not that massive, the Suns are no longer catching anyone thinking that facing them is easy, neither a tanking opponent. Scouting reports are more accurate and include players previously neglected as Gillespie (maybe next year we will think of his early season play as the “Colinsanity days”) and with teams adjusting to him, he looks like nothing more than a capable starter. Good news, it will be cheaper to keep him, but he is just another Grayson Allen on a average rotation, not the cornerstone many rushed to call him.

Brooks is coming down to earth quickly as well, so every time Booker is out, there is zero gravity on the offense and teams can play straight up defense, eliminating the open 3 that became our bread and butter early. This is no shooting slump, this is our offense once the league adapted to the New Suns. You can even see Green struggling, because previous years of scouting are already available on him.

[Split T]

I would consider going from a 57% win percentage to a 37% win percentage as a massive change. That’s somewhere between the Memphis grizzlies and Dallas mavericks.


Seems like a lot of overreacting to a few games where we weren’t healthy to me.

[Aztec Sunsfan]

Brooks is out 4-6 weeks, Booker at least for another week, I don’t think is wrong to use those few games as reference.

We are no longer overachieving on shooting and defense, so that 57% is our peak, not our current average play.

[Split T]

We were over 60% earlier, so it is not our peak.

So we’re 1-3 in our last 4, including 2 games against the top 2 teams in the west.

Booker played 1 of those games(and only 9 minutes)
Brooks played 2(again only 7 minutes in 1)
Allen played 1

Allen does not have a long term injury. Booker is out another week, but should be fine. Brooks is the only long term injury(and maybe Goodwin, but we don’t know on him yet).

I think it’s very unfair to take such a small sample size(4 games) and use that as a reference point…especially when 3 of our 4 best players this year hardly played at all. I don’t think these 4 games say anything about this team other than they will struggle to score points if they continue to miss Allen, Booker, and Brooks.

[Mori Chu]

If we have to play OKC in the first round (if we even make the playoffs), forget about it. I mean, who knows? Maybe we become fully healthy at just the right time heading into the playoffs and make some noise but I'm not going to hold my breath. The injury bug has been consistent for us this season and there's no reason to think it's going to stop any time soon. Also, Allen has been important to our success and yet has only been able to play less than half our games.

I wouldn't want to play the #2 Spurs, either. I think if we are in the play-in, even if we make it through, we are basically toast in the 1st round. But oh well, we aren't a real contender this season, so I'm not sure it makes a gigantic difference whether we lose a long 1st-round series or a short 1st-round series or a play-in game. Of course I want us to go as far as we can, but when I look at the West playoff picture, I don't see very many teams I would feel confident playing. OKC, Spurs, Nugs would all wipe the floor with us. Rockets, eh, maybe, but they have a lot more talent than we do, too. Lakers, I'd enjoy THAT challenge, but I doubt we can get to a proper seed to play them. Minny, maybe, but again we likely won't be seeded to see them. I just think that any opponent we would be likely to face in the 1st round would be heavily favored.

It's still a season we can be proud of. Everybody expected us to stink and we were a tough team that nobody wanted to play. I don't need them to have a long playoff run to be really happy and proud of the guys. Hope they can get healthy for next season.

[Aztec Sunsfan]

We were over 60% earlier, so it is not our peak.

So we’re 1-3 in our last 4, including 2 games against the top 2 teams in the west.

Booker played 1 of those games(and only 9 minutes)
Brooks played 2(again only 7 minutes in 1)
Allen played 1

Allen does not have a long term injury. Booker is out another week, but should be fine. Brooks is the only long term injury(and maybe Goodwin, but we don’t know on him yet).

I think it’s very unfair to take such a small sample size(4 games) and use that as a reference point…especially when 3 of our 4 best players this year hardly played at all. I don’t think these 4 games say anything about this team other than they will struggle to score points if they continue to miss Allen, Booker, and Brooks.

Yeah, 60% was our peak, granted, those 3 points throw away everything I said. Jalen Green and who else have hardly played at all?

I talked about the league figuring out this team and particularly Gillespie as my main concerns, and every game without Booker has been awful to see on offense (not just these last four), and considering that we will be without Booker and Brooks for at least more 5 games -but since I'm not holding my breath for him to return in just a week, let's make it 8 games- I can see the team going 2-6 in that span. From there, missing our arguably second player in Brooks for another 10 more games at a 5-5 clip, and suddenly, you are standing at 7-11 with six games to go (4 on the road, and Houston at home)

I'm usually optimistic, but currently the team is not defending as well either, (lack of energy, scouting or both?) so that combination plus no Booker no Brooks and Jalen struggling, makes 9 -10 wins to close the season very likely for me. A massive fall, yeah, but the context matters.

[Kryptonic]

If we have to play OKC in the first round (if we even make the playoffs), forget about it. I mean, who knows? Maybe we become fully healthy at just the right time heading into the playoffs and make some noise but I'm not going to hold my breath. The injury bug has been consistent for us this season and there's no reason to think it's going to stop any time soon. Also, Allen has been important to our success and yet has only been able to play less than half our games.

I wouldn't want to play the #2 Spurs, either. I think if we are in the play-in, even if we make it through, we are basically toast in the 1st round. But oh well, we aren't a real contender this season, so I'm not sure it makes a gigantic difference whether we lose a long 1st-round series or a short 1st-round series or a play-in game. Of course I want us to go as far as we can, but when I look at the West playoff picture, I don't see very many teams I would feel confident playing. OKC, Spurs, Nugs would all wipe the floor with us. Rockets, eh, maybe, but they have a lot more talent than we do, too. Lakers, I'd enjoy THAT challenge, but I doubt we can get to a proper seed to play them. Minny, maybe, but again we likely won't be seeded to see them. I just think that any opponent we would be likely to face in the 1st round would be heavily favored.

It's still a season we can be proud of. Everybody expected us to stink and we were a tough team that nobody wanted to play. I don't need them to have a long playoff run to be really happy and proud of the guys. Hope they can get healthy for next season.

Bingo…. The season could end today and I’d be a 1000x happier than what we watched this year vs anything with KD.

[The Bobster]

Let's face it. Going in we thought this was a rebuilding year and we have to be happy with the results in that respect.

It was pretty much unanimous that this team might have a chance for the play-in if everything went well, and even though health has not gone they're still hanging in there.