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 – Through their first 14 games, five Suns players have double figure scoring averages, KD, Book, Beal, Jones and… Josh Okogie!?! What are you thoughts on Okogie’s play so far?
GuarGuar: I’ve been very impressed with Josh’s offensive game so far this season. We know about his defense and energy already… that’s never been in question with him. But his shooting has been really solid to start and he’s been super aggressive on the offensive glass creating more opportunities for us. I don’t know if the shooting is real or if this is just a hot stretch for him. He’s had good stretches in the past and then would go ice cold and become unplayable. Time will tell but he is playing superb right now!
Brrrberry: Okogie has played great ball regardless of whether we’ve been winning or not. The guy obviously has as lot of pride and probably didn’t take kindly to the talk of his contract simply being a trade chip and the nuances surrounding the Suns overpaying him for the sole purpose of trading him. The likelihood of getting someone back in a one for one trade that’ll be better than Okogie is basically zero at this point. UNLESS we could bundle him with the 2031 frp. I’ve seen the list of players who can salary match his slot and it’s not pretty. Chances are he stays through end of season and potentially beyond. I’ll be (beyond) content with that outcome.
Rod: I’ve always loved Okogie’s energy on the court and as long as he can sustain even this level of offense, Bud really can’t afford to put him back on the bench. We saw a great stretch of offense from him back in 2022-23 where he averaged 17.5 ppg and shoot 46.9% from three before eventually cooling off (remember when virtually everyone was worried that the Suns wouldn’t be able to re-sign him?) so I suspect that will happen again but we should all enjoy it while it lasts. Or perhaps it won’t disappear this time.
I love how he fights for offensive rebounds even more than his scoring though. 43.2% of his rebounds are offensive rebs and he’s tied with Nurk – who’s 8 inches taller than JO – for off-rebs per game (1.9). He goes after them like a shark in a feeding frenzy, something I’d welcome seeing from some other players who often seem to wait for the ball to come to them rather than expending some energy to chase it down.
Q2 – In his first 5 games Ryan Dunn shot 44.0% from three and 51.4% from the field. In his next 7 games he shot only 24.1% from three and 37.8% from the field. What are your thoughts on why his shooting percentages have fallen off?
GuarGuar: I have similar feelings about Dunn like Okogie. It’s hard to say if that early shooting stretch was an outlier or closer to what will be his average going forward. But Ryan’s been in a shooting funk the past couple weeks and is looking more like what the pre draft analysts said. I think at the end of the day Ryan won’t continue to shoot this cold nor will he shoot as hot as he did to start the season. I see him being around 35% from deep going forward.
Brrrberry: Hard to tell really. suppose you could just chalk it up to the law of averages. There was simply no way a guy who made 13 threes at 20% in 2 years of college ball was going to come into the pros and damn near lead the league in 3-pt percentage on decent volume. It is something to watch moving forward as his on court value looks a lot different if he’s a 25% guy from 3 for the time being compared to 40%+.
I think he’ll sort it out while also expecting it’ll rollercoaster throughout the season. Shooting the cover off the ball is contingent on having sky high confidence and for whatever reason that’s fallen off a little bit, but there’s also the fact he’s likely getting worse looks over the last 7 games too since we’ve been down pretty bad with injuries and the offense has been quite a bit worse across the board, not just Dunn. He’ll sort through it, I’m certain of it. Love what he brings to the team.
Rod: I think that at least part of it was that at the beginning of the season no one was game planning for him. No one expected a rookie defensive specialist who was labeled as a non-shooter in college to even attempt shooting threes in his first few games as a pro so they didn’t take him seriously as an offensive threat. Now they do and it’s beginning to show, especially since KD and Beal have been sidelined.
Speaking of KD and Beal being sidelined, that’s got to put some extra pressure on him to score to help make up for their absences and that could play a role in his shooting slump too. I don’t expect this slump to last and his averages will go back up as the season goes on and he adjusts/adapts.
Q3 – The G League is trying out two rule changes this year, a single free throw for two or three points one shooting fouls (the and-one FTs still count as just one point) and a “target score” overtime (first team to score 7 points in OT wins). Would you like to see either of these rule changes made in the NBA?
FYI, the 1 FT for 2/3 points rule reverts back to the normal NBA rules for FTs during the final 2 minutes of regulation play in the 4th quarter.
GuarGuar: I see the appeal of the free throw rule as it will help speed the game up. Games where both teams are in the bonus can get junked up and feel super slow. In that regard I do like the rule. However I don’t know it just feels very anti-basketball or too big of a change for me having one free throw count for 2 points for most of the game. I’m not a fan of the target score for overtime I’d rather have the 5 minutes. If anything I’d be okay lowering OT from 5 mins to 3 mins during the regular season.
Brrrberry: Man hadn’t heard about those rules. Pretty gimmicky if you ask me. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Figure out a way to get the star players on the court more often, changing the way the game is scored to pump up the scoring even more sounds dumb. Hypothetically a team could end OT in 3 offensive possessions with the OT rule. I could see how that’d be pretty thrilling but it’s cutting it too short IMO. Stick with the 5 min OT, it’s the ideal amount of extra time.
Rod: The free throw rule change I’m leaning toward liking. I’ve watched a few G League games and it does tend to shorten the overall game time as players only get one shot at the FT line rather than 2 or 3 and then play resumes. I might tweak it just a bit more so that if you make the 1st FTA, then you get the 2 points and play immediately resumes but if you miss it, you still get the 2nd FTA to score 1 point.
As for the “target score” OT rule, I like it. It’s basically the Elam ending that the NBA used in the All-Star game a while back but reserved strictly for OT games. The seven points scored target seems a little low though so upping that to 10 or 12 points for the NBA might be better. I watched a Valley Suns game about a week ago where they won 132-128 against the San Diego Clippers in OT using this rule and it actually made the OT period more exciting to watch for me.
As always, many thanks to our Fantable members for all their extra effort this week!
Rookie & Two-way Players Report
Ryan Dunn – 18.8 mpg, 6.9 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 0.8 apg, 0.5 spg, 0.5 bpg, 0.5 TO, 2.4 PF, 42.3% FG%, 33.3% 3P%, 16.7% FT%
Oso Ighodaro – 16.0 mpg, 4.5 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 0.6 apg, 0.4 spg, 0.4 bpg, 0.7 TO, 1.9 PF, 65.6% FG%, 0.0 3P%, 80.0% FT%
Collin Gillespie – 3.4 mpg, 3.0 ppg, 0.0 rpg, 0.0 apg, 0.0 spg, 0.0 bpg, 0.0 TO, 0.0 PF, 50.0% FG%, 100.0 3P%, 0.0% FT%
Jalen Bridges – 5.5 mpg, 0.5 ppg, 0.5 rpg, 0.0 apg, 0.0 spg, 0.0 bpg, 1.0 TO, 0.0 PF, 00.0% FG%, 00.0 3P%, 50.0% FT%
TyTy Washington Jr – 8.9 mpg, 2.7 ppg, 0.3 rpg, 1.3 apg, 0.7 spg, 0.0 bpg, 0.3 TO, 0.0 PF, 50.0% FG%, 66.7 3P%, 00.0% FT%
Statistics courtesy of NBA.com.
Last Week’s poll results
Last week’s question was “Do you believe that the Suns will win at least 50% of their games while playing without Kevin Durant?”
76% – Yes.
24% – No.
A total of 123 votes were cast.
Suns Trivia/History
Suns’ reserve Monte Morris is averaging 2.5 steals per foul this season. That’s the best steal per foul percentage in the NBA.
The last time the Suns had a 5 (or more) game losing streak was between Dec. 28, 2022 and Jan. 8, 2023 when they lost 6 in a row.
On November 23, 1972, Charlie Scott recorded the Phoenix Suns’ first-ever triple-double with 42 points, 10 rebounds and 15 assists in a 128-122 victory over the Detroit Pistons on Thanksgiving Day. Charlie made his first of three All-Star appearances for the Suns that year after previously playing two seasons in the ABA for the Virginia Squires where he was named the ABA Rookie of the Year in 1971 and was a two time ABA All-Star. Scott was also the first of only 5 players in franchise history to score more than 2000 points in a single season in 1972-73. Following his 4th season with the Suns, he was traded to the Boston Celtics for Paul Westphal… who became the 2nd Suns player to score more than 2000 points in a single season in 1978.
Quotes of the Week
“We’re asking Book (Devin Booker) to do a lot, it’s a lot of pressure on him, it’s a lot of focus on them. They’re physical with him, they hold and grab him, all night they’re throwing two or three bodies at him. So, it’s a lot on his plate, and we just got to continue to find ways to get him open the times that we can, and also continue to help him out with other guys making shots and making plays.” – Tyus Jones
“When you get a break like this (5 days), you gotta take advantage of it.” – Mike Budenholzer
“There’s ups and downs of the season….You gotta try to just stay somewhere in the middle and just try to continue to improve as a group, because we know what our goals are, and you can’t win a championship in November.” – Tyus Jones
Important Future Dates
Dec. 3 – Emirates NBA Cup Group Stage concludes
Dec. 10-11 – Emirates NBA Cup Quarterfinals
Dec. 14 – Emirates NBA Cup Semifinals (Las Vegas, NV)
Dec. 17 – Emirates NBA Cup Championship (Las Vegas, NV)
Jan. 5 – 10-day contracts may now be signed
Jan. 10 – All NBA contracts are guaranteed for the remainder of the season
Feb. 6 – NBA Trade Deadline (3 p.m. ET)
Feb. 14-19 – NBA All-Star break
This week’s poll is…