bwgood77 wrote:Slim Charless wrote:Jdiddy701 wrote:I also want no part of Portland, would love to play the Spurs, Dallas, or Golden State.
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SAS is my fav but Dallas would be interesting especially here in the Suns forum. All the Luka guys would have quite the range of emotions watching that series.
There is probably a good chance we face the Nuggets.
I think this Suns team could beat any of the other West playoff teams in a series (though that doesn’t necessarily mean I would consider it likely against the top teams), but we could also lose a series to any of the teams, which is both a function of how tough the West is and how inconsistent this Suns team can be. If the standings stay similar to what they are now (meaning we don’t face Utah or either L.A. team in the 1st Round) the Nugs are definitely the toughest out. I don’t expect them to stay towards the bottom of the seedings by the time the season wraps up, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Suns/Nugs or Nugs/Suns 4v5 matchup.
All the teams are going to be tough though... Dallas has Luka and GS had Curry; either dude has the potential to win his team a series on his own. Same idea with Portland and Dame, except they’d have a really strong supporting cast to go along with him if they get healthy. Memphis plays hard and usually has our number and would be a tough out for anyone if they get healthy and make it. Spurs are definitely the weakest talent-wise, but they still have some good under-the-radar players and you could throw Pop in with Luka, Curry, and Dame. And then the Nugs are the Nugs, even if their bench might be weaker this year. Jokic is amazing and Murray is a coin-flip game-to-game on having that LCD type of impact.
As others have mentioned, I think the #1 key to our success in the playoffs will be getting Good Booker to show up. If we get 4 games of Good Booker in a series we’ve got a great chance to win the series. If not it’ll be tough. The #1b wildcard would be a consistently dominant Ayton, but I don’t think he’s got that in him quite yet (still really high on him and his future though, despite all the justified frustrations he gives all of us).
We definitely need to find some kind of synergy with our starting unit as well, whatever it may be (maybe it’s just Kaminsky, even if he doesn’t get a lot of minutes?). Book and Paul seem to be jiving better with each other, but still a crapshoot from game to game and quarter to quarter. I think the reason Kaminsky tends to work in the starting lineup is his passing ability, where he gets to the floor to look for those passes, and the discretion on his shot selection. For basically the opposite reasons I think we don’t get a good rhythm with Crowder starting; quick trigger, rarely ventures inside the 3pt line... I love Crowder, and his defense and hustle and fearlessness work well to close games, but I don’t think he compliments the starting unit as well as would be ideal. If Derozan for example was our starting SF then having Crowder would be perfect. But what he brings has a lot of overlap with what we’ve already got out there. And since he’s the 5th starter it makes him the odd man out to get some more complimentary play to start the games out.
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