NBA PREVIEW : NOW OR NEVER TO REACH FOR THE SUN
The Phoenix Suns’ front office led by James Jones, Mat Ishbia, and Josh Bartelstein did about as good of a job as anyone could’ve conceived after another second-round exit in the postseason.
The asset and cap-strapped Suns were able to acquire Bradley Beal and a very versatile bench group to compliment the star-heavy roster.
The trio of Bradley Beal, Kevin Durant and Devin Booker make Phoenix one of the highest-rated teams in the NBA, but in acquiring Beal back in June, the Suns sacrificed nearly their entire roster. Phoenix did well to fill the roster with personnel that fit well around its star trio, but depth is a real question for a team with the third-best odds to win the NBA Finals.
There are those who would argue that depth does not matter in the postseason, but they would be wrong. It also ignores the fact that depth is greatly needed in the regular season, especially when your team is built around players who have a history of missing time.
Beal has played in only 55% of a possible 164 games the last two seasons, and Durant has played in just 58% of contests since returning from his Achilles injury. Booker has had a sturdier health history, but he missed 29 games last season due to a groin injury. If either Beal or Durant misses time, Booker will need to stay healthy, and those depth pieces will need to play bigger roles throughout the regular season, which could lead to a subpar record by betting market standards.
Eric Gordon is a career 37.1% shooter who can defend perimeter scorer, which is something this team will need. Yuta Watanabe is coming off a career-best 44.4% shooting season for Brooklyn, and he has shown in limited minutes that he can be an effective rebounder. Keita Bates-Diop is a well-rounded forward who does a bit of everything on offense from cut, attack off the bounce and run well in transition.
Fans should factor in the return of Josh Okogie – who posted a career-high in efficiency differential (+4.0) last season – and Damion Lee as well. Lee is an above-average shooter at his position, and the defense statistically improved when he was on the floor.
As far as the core of Durant, Booker and Beal is concerned? It should be very good when they play together.
When Durant and Booker were on the floor together last season the Suns had a +18.4 net rating and averaged 124.7 points per 100 possessions. Now that Beal is in the mix, this offense has the potential to be even better.
Beal is an incredible mid-range scorer who shot 48.9% on 414 mid-range attempts last season. He joins an offense that took 39.1% of its attempts from that area of the floor when the two best players were on. There should be no worry about there being “only one ball to go around” with this offense.
There could be a worry about Beal’s production though. As previously mentioned, his availability has been a question. He also regressed to being a statistical negative on defense. Last season the Wizards allowed 1.2 more points per 100 possessions with him on the floor, and he placed in the fifth and eighth percentile respectively in that category in the two seasons from 2019-2021.
Phoenix fixed its issue at center as well with the acquisition of Jusuf Nurkic in the three-team deal that sent Damian Lillard to Milwaukee. Nurkic is a downgrade at center when it comes to athleticism and defense, but there is an upgrade in moving on from a disgruntled player like Ayton. They also added more depth with the additions of Nassir Little and Keon Johnson.
Overall, the Suns are going to be an incredible offensive team this season now that three incredible scorers share the floor. They should also be better defensively than most think. Beal was a positive defender in his early career, Durant is a good defender, and they can roll out defenders like Okogie and Gordon which should make them competitive on that end of the floor. They should be an above-average team on defense this season.
Phoenix will be one of the highest-rated teams by the betting market this season, and the betting public will likely pile onto that rating with nightly action. That would lead one to believe that the Suns are likely going to be a tough team to back ATS throughout the season.
In the eight regular season games Durant and Booker played together Phoenix was 8-0 SU/6-2 ATS. But that is a small sample size, and in the postseason they were 6-5 SU/4-7 ATS. In the series Phoenix won in five games over Los Angeles, it was 2-3 ATS. They were favored before the series with the Nuggets began. This overvalued nature will likely carry over into this regular season, especially in games where all three of their stars play.
Durant named health one of the most critical aspects of the team’s success.
Injuries were the Suns’ Achilles’ heel last season. Durant injured his leg in the pregame warmup in the Suns’ regular season match-up against the Oklahoma City Thunder, allowing only eight games among the superstar trio of Durant, Booker and Chris Paul.
Phoenix fell to the Denver Nuggets 4-2 in the Western Conference Finals after falling short in its third appearance in the NBA Finals in 2021.
FRANK VOGEL
As previously alluded to, first-year head coach Frank Vogel and his staff already appears to be a breath of fresh air for the new-look Suns. Suns fans can be appreciative of the contributions Monty Williams made to shifting the culture to a winning one, and for the NBA Finals run in 2021 while also acknowledging many of his philosophies were far too rigid
There just wasn’t enough innovation from the newly minted Pistons head coach, and that’s why a change was made.
Vogel’s defensive scheme appears to be getting picked up quickly by the team, and the offense appears to be as potent as ever. Retaining Kevin Young while also adding proven basketball minds in David Fizdale and Miles Simon was an absolute steal for Vogel and the front office.
Coaching certainly matters in basketball, much more than some would like to acknowledge, and the adaptability the coaching staff is a big strength of the team coming into the season.
STAR WATCH
BRADLEY BEAL
The Phoenix Suns went and got their business done early this offseason, turning Chris Paul and Landry Shamet into the much more appealing Bradley Beal. A three-time All-Star who has toiled away on an aimless Washington Wizards franchise for the duration of his career so far.
Now 30-years-old, Beal arrives in Phoenix with no signature playoff run to call his own, and a desire to help the organization to win their first ever championship. The Suns have constructed the league’s only “Big 4”, at a time when the recently revealed CBA should make it harder than ever to achieve this.
Beal of course will be expected to be the third option on a team featuring Devin Booker and Kevin Durant, and to the credit of Beal, he has said all of the right things regarding his place in the pecking order so far. Still, this isn’t going to be as simple as morphing into late career Ray Allen on the Miami Heat and taking open jumpers.
That’s a role more likely to be opened for this guy, meaning Beal is actually going to have to turn in the best season of his career, in what will be year 12 for him, if this deal is going to look like the master stroke that owner Mat Ishbia hopes that it will be.
Beal was one of the best scorers in the league from 2019-2021, when he averaged over 30 points per game throughout that two year stretch, and was named an All-Star once during that period as well. In the two years that followed, his last two in the league, that number has been 23.2 points in both seasons.
Can we put this down to the Wizards just being a bad team? What about a malaise setting in with Beal, once he’d secured a ridiculous bag and the league’s only no-trade clause to boot? Whatever it was, it felt like Beal, when healthy, was sleepwalking through some games, effortlessly putting up 20 points per night.
The plus here if you’re the Suns is that Beal is able to score so many points automatically. This despite every season for the past five years, Beal played for a team that continued to regress in offensive rating. Never once between 2018-19 and last season did the Wizards go forwards, and they slipped from 15th in 18-19 (110.2) to 22nd last season (113.7).
There is a bit of “chicken or egg” theory to those numbers however, as it is unclear how often Beal was dragging a poor supporting cast to a league average offensive rating with his scoring ability, or when he was doing his own one man show and the team were suffering as a whole because of it.
Not that the Suns will care. They know he can score 30 points per game, there is ample evidence that Beal is capable. He will have never had better teammates with which to do this, and with Booker and Durant going to get most of the attention offensively, he will have to step up as that third option that really punishes opponents.
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