Preseason Game 5: LA Lakers @ Phoenix Suns | 17 Oct | 7:00PM

[sunsbg]

Teams exploited Nurk + Allen defensively and now doing the same to Nurk + Jones. No surprise there. Booker and Beal are redundant together from the start. More redundancy with Tyus now. There is a simple (semi) fix to all of this ... start Dunn. Convince Beal he's much more valuable in a 6th man role.

[handsome salary]

I feel like Beal's ceiling is make a real impact every third game.

[darealjuice]

I think it’s just time to accept that the Beal experiment is a huge bust. Even if he accepted a 6th man role and thrived, he’ll never live up to the amount we pay him. The fit is wrong, and it makes the entire team worse forcing a round peg into a square hole like this. This team needs size, shooting, and defense around Book and KD, not another ball pounder.

I understand the trade and don’t know that we could have done much better with trading CP3’s contract at the time, unfortunately it’s gone about as bad as possible. It’d be nice if we could find a mutually beneficial landing spot for him, but that’s a big uphill battle.

[ImNotMcDiSwear]

Beal reminds me of Brandon Knight at times.

I saw this too - the common thread being their playing too fast to get any rhythm going on offense. BK did this because he was too light to compete if he wasn't speeding past. Beal's doing this with the starters because without the ball in his hands, he's a forward on offense.

He's really trying out there. It's just a bad fit. Even without the NTC I don't see where we could possibly trade him. Perhaps we deal Allen to carve out a clearer role for Beal off the bench. Hopefully the coaches can work something out.

[bwgood77]

I didn't watch the game, but yeah, looking at the box score it looks like he was really off on ballhandling and shooting. I don't watch much of the preseason but did watch the first Pistons game when he shot well, over 50% overall and from 3 and had a few assists, steals and like 6 boards. I was actually wondering what was wrong with Booker's shooting in that one where he was like 0-6 from 3.

But yeah, the lineup is weird, and small, and redundant. Ideally we have more defense and size. I think it's most important in the middle, but we are still small. I think Tyus is an ok defender. I was hoping Booker had evolved enough as a defender to be able to guard 3s. It looked as though he really stepped up in the olympics. KD is a solid defender.

I think we will stagger enough though overall. I don't know that it matters a ton who starts as long as substitution patterns allow us to keep a balanced lineup on the floor for the most part. I imagine Beal sits quickly since Book likes to play the 1st quarter and Allen comes in, or eventually Dunn.

But, all three of our main scorers being injury prone, the redundancy isn't a negative if we face injury.

Beal's obviously not worth his contract, but we know the situation there, turning Shamet and Paul into him or into nothing with no cap space. Given I think we all or most of us agree he's a negative contract, trading him would likely mean taking a negative one back, but maybe at a different position? I don't know.

Anyway, I'd still rather have him than not have him since we couldn't use that "extra cap space" somewhere else since it doesn't really exist and was over the cap "spending (or trading)".

The team was much better with him on the floor last year though, and aside from all the complaining about him missing so much of the season at the start, he had a good year, offensively at least, scoring over 18ppg on 51/43/81 (over 55% from 2 which is pretty elite as well), with 5 ast, 4.4 reb, 1 stl.

The big negative with him (as well as KD and Book) was the turnovers last year and oddly enough, the one preseason game I watched those 3 had zero turnovers combined.

Very few players put up those kind of season #s across the board with those splits.

I know overreactions come fast, but it is just the preseason and that was one game. Beal very rarely has shooting and turnover nights like that.

It might be better to use him as a 6th man but I think for all intents and purposes, he kind of will be used that way. He may start but I think he sits fairly quickly to stagger our main scorers and our ball handlers throughout the game.

And ultimately, the extra depth is likely to help us.

I feel pretty good about the team. I think we will not be very good defensively, but we have the right coach, you know you can be great offensively, so maximize that. Last year was like when we hired Terry Porter for SSOL. This is like going backwards from Terry Porter to D'Antoni.

In a perfect world we surround Booker and KD with size and D, but it's not a perfect world.

We just need to maximize our offense, take care of the ball, and shoot plenty of 3s..don't trade 3s for 2s like we have done. Just cutting down turnovers from last year and increasing our ratio and % of 3s will make a huge difference.

I think if Dunn plays quite a bit, his energy will be contagious, and if Book can take pride on D like in the olympics, it will also help everyone do more on that side among the starters. It's kind of contagious.

I just hope our guys buy into Bud ball....Tyus (or Monte) handling, the other guys putting up shots quickly...not too much ball pounding.

I think OKC is the best team in the west, but I really think after that 2-8 or maybe even like 2-10 could be very close. It's up for grabs. But if our key guys stay healthy, I think we will be closer to the top.

[RaisingArizona]

It was a good game to watch. It's preseason so whatever about the end result.

[lilfishi22]

Interesting end of preseason stats (limited to those playing at least 4 games):

Tied #1 in total FTA's: Gillespie and Beal at 13FTA. Both hit 11. Gillespie took 19 FGA less and played 24min less
Tied #1 in total rebounds: Plumlee and Bol at 26. Plumlee grabbed 5 more offensive rebounds and played 5min less
#1 in total assists: Tyus Jones at 21 which came with 5 TO's. Monte at #2 with 20 assist, only 1 turnover and now the A:T KING
#1 and #2 in total minutes played: Oso and Dunn, great to see
#1 in 3PA: Dunn with 30 (+9 over #2, Royce)
Top 5 in 3P%: Jones (61.5%), Dunn (43.3%), Gillespie (42.9%), Bol (41.7%) and Monte (40.0%)
Top 3 in TS%: Jones (79.2%), Gillespie (68.8%), KD (64.5%)
Top 3 in AST%: Gillespie (40.2%), Jones (36.6%) and Monte (35.8%)
#1 in FTA: Beal at 3.3FTA. Gillespie at #2 with 2.6FTA
Top 5 in APG: Jones (5.3), Monte (4.0), KD (3.5), Gillespie (3.2), Oso (2.6)

Top 7 ORTG:
1. Jones (137.7)
2. Monte (136.2)
3. Tank (125.5)
4. Gillespie (123.7)
5. KD (115.9)
6. Royce (111.1)
7. Plumlee (105.8)

Top 7 DRTG:
1. Okogie (102.8)
2. Tank (103.3)
3. Dunn (103.9)
4. Royce (104.0)
5. Monte (104.9)
6. Plumlee (105.8)
7. Jones (106.0)

Top 7 Net Rating:
1. Jones (31.7)
2. Monte (31.2)
3. Tank (22.2)
4. Gillespie (16.8)
5. KD (7.3)
6. Royce (+7.0)
7. Plumlee (0)

General observations:
- Beal has had a poor preseason. He'll need to show up in the regular season
- Gillespie, despite mostly playing against 3rd stringers, has had a really good preseason
- Book, DLee and Beal all sit in the 110+ DRTG club which isn't good
- Our 3 PG's all in the top 4 of ORTG is a good sign we will have solid PG play no matter which of the 3 are out there
- Dunn being the 3PT attempts leader by a significant margin might be one of the bigger surprises, if not him hitting 13 of 30.