Your weekly Inside the Suns analysis straight from the BSotS community who live and breathe the team.
Welcome to Inside the Suns, your weekly deep down analysis of the current Phoenix Suns team.
Each week the Fantable – a round table of Bright Siders – give their takes on the Suns’ latest issues and news.
Fantable Questions of the Week
Q1 – What do you believe is the most frustrating thing about this team?
OldAz: The lack of consistent energy and effort towards team basketball. I have railed on this a lot this year and into last year. It is simply no fun to watch this team a lot of the time because they stand around and act entitled. Their body language communicates that they are great and the other team should just roll over and let them win. Instead, the other team often shows up with more energy and effort, plays together as a team with more aggression and rolls the Suns.
Sometimes it is for a whole game and other times all it takes is a quarter or even an extended stretch and the Suns wilt and have no answer. I could handle close games and recognize there are a lot of good teams in the league, so wins and losses are not the issue. The effort and intensity with which they play is 100% the issue.
Rod: Inconsistency is the #1 answer for me, and that’s mostly inconsistent effort. Some nights players are just going to have off nights no matter how hard they play of how much effort they give but you’re rarely – if ever – going to have a good night if the effort isn’t there. It just seems to come and go during the course of every game. The team plays great for a while and then suddenly decides it can “coast” for a while which gives their opponent the chance to take control of the game.
Q2 – How much faith do you currently have that the Suns will turn things around and finish this season strong?
OldAz: About 25%, maybe less. This probably goes way up with a Jimmy Butler trade but even that may be “hopium” that Butler has the leadership quality so badly missing that will kick this team in the collective butt and get them to give a damn and fight through adversity or step on an opponents throat when the chance is there to do it. Without that change in the team dynamic, I don’t see the “too cool for school” attitude changing or a consistent team dynamic emerging that will overcome some of the good competition in the Western conference.
Getting an athletic center has helped, but so far it has only shown to be effective against lesser opponents. Once they start facing good teams where all 5 players are showing effort and intensity it has a greater chance of looking more like the recent game against Cleveland.
Rod: I have more following the Clippers game than I did before it but then lost much of that in the second half against Minnesota. At the moment, I’ve still got some hope rather than any real faith that it will happen. I actually have a lot of belief that they can do it but faith in whether they will do it is running pretty low. Regardless of any changes to the roster they make between now and the trade deadline, they’re still going to have to prove to me that they’ve got the heart and hunger to play their best at all times before I’ll believe that they can turn this season around in time for the playoffs.
Q3 – There’s plenty of blame to go around for this season’s failure but who do you blame most… the players, the coach or the front office/ownership?
OldAz: I (along with many fans) am often guilty of overlooking how great Kevin Durant really is, even at this stage of his career. Look no further than the BSB standings where KD often gets passed over for Dunn or Richards or some other player who shows up with great energy, when in reality KD being KD is what won the game for them. His greatness, however, does not absolve him of blame for the overall predicament of the team.
I would assign blame roughly in correlation to the size of the players contract, and focus most of it on Book and KD. Beal is the one exception here, as he may have one of the top salaries, but I feel he is clearly not one of the leaders on this team even though he often tries to do this and I appreciate what he is trying to bring. Instead, this falls on KD and Book who love to refer to themselves as “pure hoopers” but they rarely take accountability and when they do it looks a lot like lip service after the fact. They are the personification of the “too cool for school” attitude and too often look like they expect everyone else to put in the hustle so they can just be great.
This is why there is such hope for a Jimmy Butler trade. It’s not like Butler will score more, rebound more, or defend significantly better than what the Suns have now. Instead, the hope is that Butler will have a similar effect to CP3 in that everyone gets held accountable to put forth full time effort and energy. It remains to be seen if KD and Book would allow themselves to be held accountable in this way, but when the two of them show up with effort and energy over an extended period the Suns look close to unbeatable on the court.
Rod: I can’t really decide who gets the most blame but I lean toward laying the least amount of blame on Budenholzer. He can only work with the players he’s given and can’t directly control whether they all stick to the script when they’re on the court. He did an amazing job in 2014-15 with Atlanta when the players all seemed to buy into his system, taking a starting lineup of Jeff Teague, Kyle Korver, DeMarre Carroll, Paul Millsap and Al Horford to 60 wins and to the Eastern Conference Finals and then several great years coaching the Bucks, including the 2020-21 Championship team (which still stings to remember). Even if as some already claim that he’s “lost the locker room” is that on him or the players? As Frank Vogel “lost the locker room” last season to much the same group of players, I have a hard time laying much of the blame for that on Bud.
I give pretty much an equal amounts of most of the blame to the players (some of them at least) and the front office/ownership for some of the decisions they’ve made. The roster would seem to be better than the one they started last season with but they’re performing worse. A lot of fans blame it on a lack of leadership on the court and I tend to agree but is that the fault of the players or the front office? Being a true leader just really isn’t in some people and they just can’t do it well no matter how hard they try. If that’s the case (which I believe it is), then it’s on the front office to identify that as a problem and work to resolve it. I believe that more than anything else is why they’re working so hard to somehow engineer a trade for Jimmy Butler and that might be his biggest contribution to the team if he eventually does wind up in Phoenix.
As always, many thanks to our Fantable members for all their extra effort this week!
Rookie Report
Ryan Dunn – 19.7.0 mpg, 7.2 ppg, 3.4 rpg, 0.9 apg, 0.5 spg, 0.7 bpg, 0.4 TO, 2.4 PF, 45.0% FG%, 31.9% 3P%, 47.6% FT%
- Last Week – 5.4 mpg, 3.0 ppg, 2.5 rpg, 1.0 apg, 0.0 spg, 0.0 bpg, 0.0 TO, 1.0 PF, 28.6% FG%, 50.0% 3P%, 50.0% FT%, 1 DNP – Injured
Oso Ighodaro – 16.1 mpg, 3.8 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 1.0 apg, 0.5 spg, 0.4 bpg, 0.6 TO, 1.7 PF, 55.8% FG%, 0.0 3P%, 54.3% FT%
- Last Week – 2 DNP-CD/1 Assignment to G League
Statistics courtesy of NBA.com.
Last Week’s poll results
Last week’s question was “Which do you think is most likely to happen before the trade deadline?”
35% – Trading Beal.
36% – Trading Nurk.
29% – A few smaller trades.
A total of 208 votes were cast.
Suns Trivia/History
On February 4, 1969, the expansion Suns defeated the Philadelphia 76ers 125-116 to post their 13th win of the season. It was the third win in their first ever 3-game win streak and the last time they would have successive wins that season. They would finish that season 16-66, their worst season record ever, after winning just three more games in their final 27 suffering losing streaks of 3, 6, 7, and 8 along the way. During that season the Suns played 10 games at various “neutral” sites including several at the Catalina High School Gym in Tucson.
Quote of the Week
“We still have room for improvement. But it takes accountability, it takes leadership, amongst everybody. Not just Coach (Budenholzer), not just Kevin (Durant), not just myself. It’s an open dialog throughout the whole game to figure out what’s going on and how you’re going to adjust. But at the end of the day, you gotta play hard too.” – Devin Booker
Important Future Dates
Feb. 6 – NBA Trade Deadline (3 p.m. ET)
Feb. 14-19 – NBA All-Star break
March 1 – Playoff Eligibility Waiver Deadline
April 13 – NBA Regular Season ends
April 14 – Rosters set for NBA Playoffs 2025 (3 p.m. ET)
April 15-18 – Play-In Tournament
April 19 – NBA Playoffs begin
This week’s poll is…