Game 44: Phoenix Suns (34-9) @ Dallas Mavericks (26-19) l Thursday l 5:30pm l TNT

[King4Day]

All this Gordon love is the top shelf at a carnival emotion. He’s good, but our offer isn’t. The only valuable chip we have is a pick, and it is tainted by whatever/whoever we add to it.


Just wishlisting a trade to happen won’t change anything, and I’m not sure we need to.

We are better off keeping Smith, and hoping The Sham comes around. Payne’s play is more important. Furthermore, I’d take Bridges at the 2 and Cam at the 3 over any trade I’ve seen. Playoff minutes will be, or at least should be played by our best players. Hear me Monty?

I don't know how many contending teams can scrap together 18mil in contracts without giving up too much.
Phoenix can give them Saric, who will be a very easily tradeable contract this offseason or next deadline. Jalen Smith, who they can take a look at and possibly bring back next year, Nader or Payton as a salary filler (probably Payton since we'd have more guards than we know what to do with), and a future first.

Warriors aren't giving up all their youth to get him. Utah would have to dangle Ingles and picks, but I don't believe they have many 1sts.

[Iceman36]

I'm from the same region as Luka (Balkans) and watch his games here and there. I would still pick him ahead of Ayton, but I was calling him Harden 2.0 from the start and questioned his fit with Booker. Good to see more and more people coming around to this opinion after being annoyed by his fanboys denying it.

I think you'd take luka over ayton in hindsight. with that being said, is our current team better than the team we would have if we had drafted luka (assume no cp3 etc. etc.) - yes it probably is. Sometimes the wrong decision ends up being the right decision.

Ayton is the perfect pick/player for the team we have now. Maybe Embiid is the only player in the whole league i'd rather have at the 5 than Ayton with this squad.

Additionally I think a Luka Suns team would have to trade Booker as we'd still have Igor most likely and he would've ran Luka-centric offense.

So no Monty, Booker, Ayton or CP3. I'm sure we'd be good still but I doubt we'd be the #1 team in the league. Probably be where the Mavs are: a 4/5/6 seed.

Good point! I think the same way. And I like our team a lot better!

[King4Day]

Pretty cool to see this from a current NBA player on a good team

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[bwgood77]

Good win and very strong second half. Dallas went into halftime with ton of momentum and Mark Cuban was going around high fiving commentators as if they just won the title lol. Good to see Suns overcome that. Good effort by Mavs too for second night of back to back against best team in the league currently.

Hopefully Booker starts getting more credit for his defense. I don’t think it should be far fetched for him to try and get a spot on the NBA All Defensive Second Team this year. That block was nasty and Doncic had very little success going against Book.

He has improved a ton defensively, but I don't think he is any better than 9th on our team. If you take out 3 Cs, 6th (behind 4 starters and both Cams).

His occasional block is nice and occasional great 1 on 1 defense but still has a ways to go on team defense to get a lot better. But great to see a guy like Gobert applaud that he is now putting in a lot of effort.

[bwoolf2]

Probably cause Bridges doesn’t get abused defensively every single play even when he isn’t hitting shots.

Just hasn't been true and the defensive statistics back it up but sure

Could you provide said statistics?

It doesn't take long look up defensive ratings Shamet is right behind Bridges on the Suns

[Revived]

Good win and very strong second half. Dallas went into halftime with ton of momentum and Mark Cuban was going around high fiving commentators as if they just won the title lol. Good to see Suns overcome that. Good effort by Mavs too for second night of back to back against best team in the league currently.

Hopefully Booker starts getting more credit for his defense. I don’t think it should be far fetched for him to try and get a spot on the NBA All Defensive Second Team this year. That block was nasty and Doncic had very little success going against Book.

He has improved a ton defensively, but I don't think he is any better than 9th on our team. If you take out 3 Cs, 6th (behind 4 starters and both Cams).

His occasional block is nice and occasional great 1 on 1 defense but still has a ways to go on team defense to get a lot better. But great to see a guy like Gobert applaud that he is now putting in a lot of effort.

His team defense is fantastic imo. I watch off ball a lot and he’s an incredible weakside helper/defender. I think Olson had a tweet showing some of this which I posted in this thread and the Booker one.

He needs to get better at fighting through screens and playing the passing lanes (Bridges specialty) but that’s about it imo.

Can’t compare Cs to SGs/SFs for defense imo just cause it’s tough to compare the two. And he’s way better than both Cams imo. The only two non Cs that I would say are better defenders than him on the team is Bridges and Crowder. CP3 has had some bad defensive games or games in which they try to get a mismatch on him and go in the paint with a bigger guard or forward. They don’t do that with Book because he holds his ground now.

Jayson Tatum gets talked about as a really good defender for example and I think Booker’s now better than him or on the same level at worst.

[Revived]

Just hasn't been true and the defensive statistics back it up but sure

Could you provide said statistics?

It doesn't take long look up defensive ratings Shamet is right behind Bridges on the Suns

Yeah and that’s probably why defensive ratings is an awful stat to use judge defense. Every team’s scouting report that plays the Suns reads “Set screen and get Shamet switched on ____ and clear out so ___ can just iso Shamet”.

It’s like just like how steals and blocks don’t decide if a player is a good defender either.

Unlike offense, defense is better off measured through the eye test than the stat test. Of course this makes it complicated because eye test can be subjective from person to person.