How can the Suns improve their defense?

is that they tend to linger to help when playing man to man. When they linger, it’s not really even double teaming because they just tend to be in the general vicinity. Channing Frye does this a lot. He sticks around a bit with one of his teammates and moves with the player that he’s helping to guard but he won’t close in. That leaves the offensive player some room and he can easily just move the ball around until they hit that open man. That open man is of course the result of that lingering and you’ll always see one Sun (mostly Steve Nash or J-Rich) dashing to try to close out on the open guy but fail to do so as they watch him shoot the open shot.

I think the Suns’ starting lineup should just stick with the zone and leave man-to-man for the better defensive lineup (which is basically the 2nd unit minus Frye). I know people say the zone is just a defense that hides a team’s inability to defend but we’ve shown that it works (look at that Nugget game where we shut them down to just 85 points). It may not be the best defense but zone can still give teams problems because they usually don’t have anything to counter it since they except man-to-man coverage.

Basically the Suns just need to stick with a defensive arrangement where some of our weaker defenders will get support and the better defenders will stick to their own man. Matchups are also important but Coach Gentry has done a great job with that. Other than that, communication, dedication, and mental toughness are all that’s needed. And it’s clear the Suns are beginning to show that. Slide your feet, people!

Sign an extra player who plays defense, whether he can score or not. A player who caught my attention is someone named Eddie Basden, who has played briefly for one or two NBA teams but not caught on. He was a defensive player twice in college. He is currently in the D-League.

I’ve wondered why the Suns haven’t even publicly talked about D-League help, much less gotten any, especially when all these injuries have Steve Nash running himself into the ground with no backup. I am guessing Mr. Sarver doesn’t want to pay any new players.

Our offense is top notch, and our defense is falling into place. I tried to be very unbiased in the article about the Suns’ defense, but I think we’re defending decent. We don’t need to be a lockdown defensive team. If we were a lockdown defensive team, our offense would likely be thrown out of sync.

So…I don’t think we need to really change our defensive mindset. We just need to continue on our quest to continue playing solid team defense, and to not let ourselves have many lapses. Signing a new player for the stretch run that’s a “defensive specialist” (remember Linton “CP3 Stopper” Johnson?) will just throw us off. Our team is gelling, and we need to just continue on the improving path we’ve been on.

Defense is a team effor that takes everyone commiting to the concept. What you see sometimes is a break down from players on the defensive end and that leads to the poor defense.

You can see glimpses of the team commiting fully to the idea of playing team defense and they shine. Let’s hope as the season comes to and end here they buy in to it 100% and carry that into the post season.

How good do you guys think we are at adjusting to other teams offensive game plans during game?

I think Gentry has done a decent job at making those quick decisions to adjust to the other teams offense. Like at the Denver game where they out-scored us in the 1st quarter. They were getting a lot of easy baskets in the paint, so Gentry made the guys go zone and they held them to 11 points in the 2nd.

Its good to see us improving in certain areas on the defensive end. However, we still have flaws that need to be improved. I know we will never be a great(top 5) defensive team with this roster, but we can be decent if not good if we just find those flaws and improve on them. Our team is still learning and I hope they can turn things around just in time for the playoffs.

Which is wildly inconsistent on defense and fairly unstoppable on offense. Same as prior years. And we made the WCF twice with that formula.

we don’t want the rest of the league to wake up on this yet, but:

according to hoopsstats.com, the Suns are 4th overall in defensive efficiency since the All-Star break.

Lack of intensity is…At least in my opinion. Our roster is full of good to great defenders, and has already shown it can shut some of the most potent offenses down, when they really WANT to.

That’s what it comes down to in my opinion…How determined are they to play great defense?

It’s a mental thing, not a schematic or skill issue…The players have to want it as much (or more) as we want to see it. That’s the bottom line.