The good camp stuff
Phoenix Suns update:
The Suns, with their eight new players in camp and new staff watching, have been trying to get to know each other leading up to training camp but nothing does that better than what they had Tuesday night at UC-San Diego.
It was the Suns' first true practice scrimmaging. With contact barred at the morning sessions, the Suns suited up for more than two hours of work Tuesday night with a lot of full-court scrimmaging including officials and a 20-second shot clock.
"It's about what we thought it'd be today," Suns coach Alvin Gentry said after the first of three two-a-days was done. "It's going to be kind of wild and crazy and scrambling and stuff like that. Really, all we wanted to do is see them run up and down the court. We've got to establish the mentality that every possession we're going to be in the attack mode. We're not going to be real sharp right now with what we're doing but we've got to keep working and pushing the tempo."
Gentry said it looked, as expected, like a new concept to the new players. He used the example that rookie Matt Janning has never been yelled at to shoot when open, much like what Channing Frye went through last season.
In the portion of practice open to the media, Gentry jumped on his team during one sloppy stretch with this message: "The one thing you've got to do is if you get mentally tired, push yourself through. We've been here one day."
Some other orange slices from scrimmage time:
* The 17 Suns campers were split into three teams. It has been long-assumed that Hedo Turkoglu would be the Suns' starting power forward but confirmation came when he was in black with fellow starters Steve Nash, Jason Richardson, Grant Hill and robin Lopez. The second-string white team was Goran Dragic, Josh Childress, Jared Dudley, Hakim Warrick, Channing Frye and Dwayne Jones. The purple team was Chucky Atkins, Matt Janning, Zabian Dowdell, Earl Clark, Gani Lawal and Garret Siler.
* When they went into full-fledged scrimmaging, the second stringers beat the starters and the third string with Lopez joining the second string some for the latter brief game. Dudley and Childress showed some instant chemistry, doing all of the scoring until Dragic finished with a 3-pointer and a swerving reverse drive. The white team's highlight play was Childress cutting along the baseline for a layup off a no-look pass from Dudley.
"Josh Childress adds a little bit to that unit to the standpoint of being a slasher, being able to get out and run and being able to finish on the break and being able to rebound," Gentry said.
* Lawal, the Suns' second-round pick, continued to impress, particularly with a sequence in which he beat Warrick with an up-and-under post move to draw a foul and then stole a Frye pass on the other end.
"I felt good about myself," Lawal said. "I made some mistakes. I learned some things. It's all part of the process."
Lawal admitted to getting tired, saying his anxiety for his first NBA practice day was contributing to that.
"Gani was a guy who dunked everything (in college) and now he has no legs at all," Gentry said. "He'll improve. He just hasn't been used to all the running, bumping and grinding."
* Turkoglu played with his new team for the first time Tuesday with no restrictions. He had been asked not to participate in last week's voluntary pickup games as a precaution following the knee sprain he suffered in the World Championship final this month.
Gentry on Turkoglu's acclimation: "Right now, he's not having the ball in his hands very much. But there's going to be situations where we rebound it and outlet it to him and he's the guy who pushes it... They played somewhat like this in Orlando anyway, except they had a big guy in the middle. He can create plays and he's a long-range 3-point shooter so it'll work out."
* The team went about 20 minutes beyond its scheduled practice time, making for about five hours of practice on Tuesday. They will have another two-practice day today and Thursday.
http://www.azcentral.com/sports/Blog/PaulCoro/100076
