The 19.512195122 Report

by Mike Lisboa on Nov 28, 2009 8:06 PM MST in Commentary Comment 28 comments

Get out your flags, people, it time for the wacky percentage report! (Photo by Max Simbron)

Hey, we're 16 games into the season, which means it's time for our not quite 20% check-in. Again, I'm reserving a lot of make or break judgment until we're at Gentry's suggested 25-game mark for evaulating the team (Hint: we might make kind of a big deal about that around here.). For now though, here's the good, the bad and the ugly of your Phoenix Suns. (NOTE: All stats pulled from ESPN.com and HoopsData.com.)

I'm starting with the ugliest point so we can move on to happier things: the Suns' defense is terrible. Some numbers: 21st in defensive efficiency, 26th in points per game, 22nd in opponents' eFG% (a stat that combines and weights 2 and 3 point shot percentage), and 20th in opponents' turnovers. Contrary to popular belief, this Suns squad is not playing anything remotely approaching good defense.
So how on earth are they blowing teams out of the water? By playing ridiculously good offense. They are quite simply out-shooting their opponents. Some more numbers: 1st in offensive efficiency, 1st in points per game,and 1st in eFG%. In other words, the Suns' offense has been so good it hasn't mattered how bad their defense has been.
Redefining defense? In light of this, it may be possible to say the Suns have played defense "good enough" to keep getting wins. However, at some point, the Suns will get slowed down (see the Lakers and Magic games) and they will have to play some tight defense. They haven't shown they can do that yet.
The Suns' are about to get thrown in the deep end of the pool. After playing the 25th 5th easiest schedule (.450 winning percentage of teams faced) in the NBA, December brings the Suns the following games consecutively: @ Cavaliers, vs. Kings, @ Lakers, @ Mavericks, vs. Magic, @ Nuggets, vs. Spurs, @ Blazers. That's a collective .678 winning percentage.
Also in December and not listed above are additional engagements with the Cavs, the Lakers and the Celtics. Strap on your seatbelts, Suns fans, the weather isn't the only thing that's going to get rough this winter.
One more degree of scheduling difficulty: @Cleveland, @Lakers, @Nuggets... all on the 2nd night of back-to-backs involving travel.
That said, remember: 25th 5th easiest schedule in the NBA so far. So, no complaining about a scheduling bias, please.
Some good news: The Suns are sitting at 13-3 despite playing the most away games (tied with the Nets and Raptors) and 2nd fewest home games (tied with the Warriors and Bulls Wizards and Nets) in the Association. That's impressive despite their relatively weak competition so far.

The Great Facilitator: Steve Nash not only leads the NBA in assists per game, he is currently averaging a career high (11.8 apg). At age 35.

The old guys are getting some rest: thus far, Grant Hill's minutes per game are his lowest ever with the exception of his injury-shortened 02-03 and 05-06 campaigns in Orlando. Steve Nash? You have to go back a decade to his 2nd season in Dallas (1999-2000) to find the last time his mpg were this low...

...so it should come as no surprise that Goran Dragic, Lou Amundson and Jared Dudley are averaging career highs in minutes per game.

Speaking of Dragic, the kid continues to play solid minutes for the Suns. I still don't see him as a starter, but he's earning his stripes as a back-up, showing more and more moxie and not letting opposing teams rattle him. I'd like to see his assist numbers closer to 4 per game. We know he can get his shot off at this point. Now can Alvin hand him the keys to the car?
Despite his auspicious offensive performance against Minnesota (6-6 FG, 14 pts.), I don't think we're going to see a drastic increase in "quality" minutes for Earl Clark. Despite his considerable on-ball skills, he tends to get lost on defensive rotations and switches.
Robin Lopez sure made a heck of an impact in his first game of the season, didn't he? I like the improved offensive game, but he's still kind of a spaz on defense. It's nice that he's making shots, but he needs to work on not biting on ball fakes and picking up unnecessary fouls (4 in 15 minutes of action).
More on Robin: At least Friday night's performance was a far cry from the last time I saw him in game action: getting positively outworked and outplayed by Hasheem Thabeet in Summer League.
More on the offensive prowess of the Suns: 6 players from the Suns are averaging double figures and Jared Dudley is threatening to be a 7th with 9.3 points per game. Of those 6, 5 have gone for at least 20 in at least one game and a couple have gone for 30. That, ladies and gentlemen, is called forcing opponents to pick their poison.
The Suns now officially join Boston as having a "Big 3" at the offensive end of things. Jason Richardson has turned out to be the perfect complement to, if not initiator of, the Suns offense. The Suns are 7-0 in games in which he goes for 20 or more points. Please remember that when cooking up trade scenarios involving his "fat" contract.
More on Jason Richardson: After a rough 2008-2009 campaign on defense, J-Rich seems to have stepped up his game. He might be the Suns most reliable starting on-ball defender and hasn't been burned too many times on his help defense either. 16 games in to a season marked by consistent leadership from the bench (and on the court for that matter), it's a lot easier to why the Suns traded for him last year.
Grant Hill is old. This is hardly news, but I think there's a reason we're seeing lots of Jared Dudley at the ends of games and it's not just because of JD's effort and hustle. Kudos to Alvin Gentry and the Suns' staff for finding a rotation that maximizes what's left of Hill's considerable talent while minimizing his exposure to the grind of NBA action so far this year.
Suns up by 30 for most of the second half in Minnesota and Tucker doesn't see a minute? O! Alando, we hardly knew ye! Tucker was inactive for the game, due to RoLo's return.

Back to the schedule. Here's what I wrote waaaaay back in August when the schedule came out:

December 6, @ Lakers; December 8, @ Dallas; Dec. 11, vs. Orlando (ESPN); Dec. 12, @ Denver; Dec. 15, vs. San Antonio; Dec. 17, @ Portland (TNT) - Another unkind stretch of schedule. Again the Suns face the 2 NBA Finalists in less than a week. Oh and the other teams in this stretch aren't exactly slouches either. It also marks the first time the Purple Gang will match up against the Matrix Reloaded version of the Dallas Mavericks and the ridiculously stacked nouveau Spurs. Which one of these games do you realistically see the Suns winning? Maybe Portland. If they can keep Brandon Roy to under 45 points that is.

I'd like to revise that statement to hope for something around or better than the .500 mark for this stretch. The Suns have to be in order to maintain any credibility or hopes of a top 4 playoff seed.
Career year: Channing Frye is averaging career highs in 3-point %, minutes per game, points per game, steals per game and blocks per game. He is .2 rebounds per game shy of a career high in that department as well.
Leandro Barbosa is not averaging career lows in all those departments; it only feels like it. OK, LB doesn't deserve that, but is it just me or are his contributions feeling kind of... invisible? To be clear: I understand he's at or near his career averages in most categories. It just seems like those numbers are having less of an impact, probably due to the fact that the Suns have 3 other players they can bring off the bench for the first time in the Leandro Era.
And, in closing: Best. Record. In. The. NBA. Enjoy it while you can.

Have at it in the comments, y'all.

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A bit of a cynical slant, but informative. Thank you, sir.

by jburning on Nov 28, 2009 8:24 PM MST reply actions 0 recs

I seem to remember another recent atricle about lowered expectations and hope vs high expectations and disappointment. I know I’m getting excited about the way the season has started and it is good for me to be reminded that the season is still early. I, for one, would rather have hope than expectations.

by suns_shine on Nov 28, 2009 9:07 PM MST up reply actions 0 recs

I'm excited to see what we're all about!

Fanaticism is not logical

by SunDolphin on Nov 28, 2009 9:15 PM MST reply actions 0 recs

You're saying "no complaining about the scheduling bias."

Are you saying that we can’t comment or post on this issue? I hope you’re not saying that MIke — I didn’t think you guys were that Draconian here at BSOTS.

And, the fact that the schedule thus far has been relatively easy is not the point (at least not the point I would like to make in a post). For me the difficult Dec. schedule is noteworthy because we have 4 B2B games (back to back games) , the first three of which are ALL on the ROAD against Cleveland, the Lakers and Denver ( these teams have a combined winning % of .744). Two of them are division leaders, and the third, the Lakers could very wel be leading the Pacific by the time we play them. The day after Christmas we get Golden State which represents the NBA more or less throwing us a bone after starving us for the first three-quarters of the month.

All teams of course must play back to back. This season the Suns play 21 such games and the Lakers play 20 (fairly even on the surface of things). It is important to note that two of the Lakers B2B games come against the Clippers with the Lakers as the so-called “road team.” Of course this is a joke since the Lakers and Clippers share the same arena (Staples Center). In effect the Lakers get two extra home games or two fewer road games than all other teams in the NBA except the Clippers. One of the difficult aspects of the B2B game is the late night travel followed by a game the following day/night. In the Clipper/Laker scenario this of course does not take place.

What is most significant/interesting is looking at the quality of the competition that each team plays on their back to backs.

Anyway, more on this later (if I am allowed to speak freely here).

by Jack Frost on Nov 28, 2009 10:09 PM MST reply actions 0 recs

Speak freely

Of course you can say what you think here! I’m just saying the Suns have had a pretty ridiculously easy schedule thus far. No one knew they would be this good just as no one knew the teams they were playing would be quite so bad. When you consider that the NBA has to schedule 30 teams for 82 regular season games each, it just seems improbable (though not impossible) that the NBA schedulers would see fit to single out any one team to hurt with some kind of scheduling bias. You can’t blame the Lakers (or the NBA for that matter. Rather, blame the NBA for the fact that Clippers have only fielded a decent team once in the past decade) because they share an arena with the Clippers. It just makes sense that they would play a home-and-home together.

I’m just saying the Suns have had it relatively easy so far, so a tough December (or January or February or whatever month) is to be expected at some point.

Contributor: Bright Side of the Sun Twitter: @MikeLisboa

by Mike Lisboa on Nov 29, 2009 1:57 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

Thanks for the green light to speak freely....

When I write my post Mike you’ll see that’s there more to it than the Clippers thing. It has to do with the quality of opponents played on the back to back. More later….

by Jack Frost on Nov 29, 2009 11:12 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

Not THAT easy

There have been quite a few road games against some decent teams. When you’re playing teams in their gyms that are around .500, you’re going against decent competition. When you play several of these teams over a few days, you’re doing what good teams do.

Mmmmm ... Guinness

by JSun on Nov 29, 2009 10:09 PM MST up reply actions 0 recs

Good point. Maybe true

Not sure that waltzing into the playoffs with an easier regular season is an advantage though.

by dCoye on Nov 29, 2009 7:56 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

About Alondo last night...

since I keep on hearing how even in a blowout he didn’t see minutes…I read somewhere that he was placed on the inactive list along with Taylor Griffin so that would explain his lack of playing time. But besides that yeah, he’s pretty much the “human victory cigar” for us and I do hope that he finds his niche somewhere in the league after this year.

by SF_Punker on Nov 28, 2009 10:21 PM MST reply actions 0 recs

Tucker was inactive

the Suns (all teams) can only have 12 guys active for each game so with Robin coming back that moved Tucker into street clothes along with Taylor G

Blogging Suns Basketball . twitter: @phoenixstan

by Seth Pollack on Nov 29, 2009 8:35 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

Ah, well then.

I take it all back.

Contributor: Bright Side of the Sun Twitter: @MikeLisboa

by Mike Lisboa on Nov 29, 2009 10:34 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

Damn! I thought with all this talk of hustle and scrappiness, the Suns must be okay defensively. How disappointing. I guess Coach Gentry’s attempt to instill defense has failed.

by species8473 on Nov 28, 2009 10:37 PM MST reply actions 0 recs

The numbers are a touch skewed

because we run a fast offense, there are more opportunities for the other team to score as much as there are for us. That’s the nature of the beast when it comes to being an uptempo team.

On another note, Jack, not to speak for Mike, but as an editor on BSOTS, I’m pretty sure he meant this figuratively. Of course you can complain about the schedule. What Mike’s getting at is that we just went through the bottom of the list for the last month or so, and thusly we should not complain that now it’s time to play with the big boys.

Here’s my positive spin on the light schedule we just had: with the exception of one game (against the Hornets), we beat every team we should have beat, and lost to the two Finals teams from last year.

Last year was so topsy turvy. We’d beat a great team then lose to a d-league squad. And we’d do it repeatedly. This year, the team is playing up to their talent and skill level (and I’d say beyond), and they’re doing it consistently.

by Max Simbron on Nov 28, 2009 11:10 PM MST reply actions 0 recs

except that defensive numbers are adjusted for pace

when you look at two key stats: opponents FG% which doesn’t care how fast you play and more importantly points per 100 possessions which is the equalizer

Blogging Suns Basketball . twitter: @phoenixstan

by Seth Pollack on Nov 29, 2009 8:38 AM MST up reply actions 1 recs

what he said

Steve Nash, the league's MVP, is a longhaired Canadian who spoke out against the war in Iraq and reads The Communist Manifesto. Quentin Richardson declared after a game-winning shot that it "was like Hamlet. It was a suspense thriller, and I killed them at the end." Amare Stoudemire, when asked to comment on a 22-point third quarter against the Kings, said, "I've got a tendency to jump over some guys' heads and throw it down."

by rsavaj on Nov 29, 2009 9:23 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

Defensive efficiency during crunch time per 100 possesions

To the extent that the Suns defensive vision is to “create stops during the critical moments”, there hasnt been much need for that lately, skewing the importance of defensive efficiency

by dCoye on Nov 29, 2009 10:27 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

if we have the 25th easiest schedule, who has the easiest and who has the hardest thus far?

by kuato lives on Nov 28, 2009 11:38 PM MST reply actions 0 recs

Ask and ye shall receive

Top 5 Easiest:
1) Milwaukee Bucks
2) Portland Trailblazers
3) Denver Nuggets
4) Cleveland Cavaliers
5) Phoenix Suns

Top 5 Hardest:
1) New Orleans Hornets
2) Houston Rockets
3) Chicago Bulls
4) Toronto Raptors
5) Detroit Pistons

Fun fact: The league worst New Jersey Nets and Minnesota Timberwolves have played the 22nd and 19th hardest (or 9th and 12 easiest) schedules so far. We could have some historic fail on our hands from not 1 but 2 teams.

Contributor: Bright Side of the Sun Twitter: @MikeLisboa

by Mike Lisboa on Nov 29, 2009 2:08 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

i would have definitely thought the lakers would be on the top easiest schedules…they’ve played 3 road games, the hardest being denver and haven’t played very good teams at home.

by kuato lives on Nov 29, 2009 9:39 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

4th qtr defense is impressive, and that is when it counts because they can match or beat opponents offensively

by silverddue on Nov 29, 2009 12:07 AM MST reply actions 0 recs

I can't wait for the so called "tough stretch"

The Suns will get to show everyone what they’re made of. They are beating the teams they are supposed to beat, our starters are playing great and getting rest thanks to the bench. We have the best record in the NBA. That’s more than enough for me. I couldn’t have asked for a better start of the season.

"Basketball doesn't build character. It reveals it"

by PanamaSun on Nov 29, 2009 12:44 AM MST reply actions 0 recs

hey panama

Well said! I agree, this start has been awesome. It seems to me I’m enjoying the suns as much or more than I ever have!
For me, a championship would be awesome, but I care just as much about the season. They’re 2 separate things for me.

Hell, for that matter, each game is its own thing. I’ve found that’s a nice way to be a suns fan. So when they lose a game like they did to the “chris paul less hornets” I can let it go easier.

Hmmm…scratch that…the last 20 games as a whole have been great!!!

Bottom line…this team has good chemistry, they have fun, they hustle, they’re deep, they’re mostly consistent, they tend to win games from behind. Oh, as great an offensive coach d’antoni is, he’s kind of a nut, I can’t count how many times I saw him flip out on the sideline, gentry has class..feel lucky we have him!

by be-the-ball on Nov 29, 2009 1:22 AM MST via mobile up reply actions 0 recs

not to get pedantic..

but if we have the 25th easiest schedule, that means 24 teams have easier schedules than us, implying that we have a really tough schedule…I think what you’re intending is that we’ve had the 5th easiest schedule…

by Fritzy on Nov 29, 2009 12:59 AM MST reply actions 0 recs

Yes.

That’s exactly what I mean. Change reflected in the edited post. Thank you!

Contributor: Bright Side of the Sun Twitter: @MikeLisboa

by Mike Lisboa on Nov 29, 2009 2:02 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

I hope our turrible defense(which is worse than it was during the D'Antoni years) doesn't become our undoing

Once we start playing the better teams in the league, I guess we’ll really see what we can do. I’m thinking we’ll even out to be a 4-6 seed, but top 4 would be glorious. Seriously though….sucks that our defense is still lame.

by rsavaj on Nov 29, 2009 9:24 AM MST reply actions 0 recs

An eighth seed can be good, because not much is more glorious than knocking off a first seed. Don’t we all remember the Nuggets and Supersonics in 1994?

by species8473 on Nov 29, 2009 10:47 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

8 seeds have beaten 1 seeds twice that I can think of...

So, I’ll “roll the dice” with a top seed in the playoffs.

Contributor: Bright Side of the Sun Twitter: @MikeLisboa

by Mike Lisboa on Nov 29, 2009 10:58 AM MST up reply actions 0 recs

time will tell

As you pointed out, the Suns have a difficult schedule ahead. We will soon see where they stack up in the West.
This team is not built for great defense. There is no defensive “stopper” under the basket. The team does not crash the boards because they are looking for a quick bucket going back. They play the pick and roll akwardly but do play good help defense. Too often they fail in some of the basic fundamentals like blocking out. Amare cannot afford to play aggressively on defense for fear of fouls.
The team is built to play offense. That is what they do and they are the best in the league.
Why berate the team for their great start by pointing out their poor defense and their weak schedule? I did notice that you did not point to their win vs Boston.
The Suns are beating the teams that are put in front of them nightly. The team is loose, entertaining, having fun and on a terrific streak. What’s not to like?

by da suns on Nov 29, 2009 10:13 PM MST reply actions 0 recs